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Michael Kranish: The Trump/Kushner/Saudi Vortex

February 15, 2023
Notes
Transcript

In early 2021, both Kushner and Trump needed a game plan for making money. MBS — who both men had helped to consolidate power and literally get away with murder — came to the rescue with billions of dollars. Michael Kranish joins Charlie Sykes today.

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This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:09

    Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. It is February fifteenth two thousand twenty three. And the the other day in Applebaum from the the Atlantic tweeted out a story that appeared in the Washington Post and she said, this may be the most blatant example of high level corruption in recent American history cannot think of a precedent. And I have to admit, I sat around and I tried to think of anything that was a parallel to the Washington Post revelations about Jared Kushner, Trump, and the Saudi Arabians, And frankly, I couldn’t.
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:50

    And so we’re really lucky to be joined by the author of that story today, The Washington Post, Michael Cranish. Thanks for joining me. I appreciate it very much. Thanks for joining me. Well, let’s talk about this.
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:01

    Michael is the National Political Investigator border for the Washington Post. These books include the world’s fastest man, the extraordinary life ofcyclist, major Taylor, America’s first black sports hero, which looks very, very interesting. But let’s just dive right into this, Michael, because I’m only trying to get my head around all of this, particularly as we live in the age of Hunter Biden’s laptop and and the absolute necessity of congress doing the deep dive into whatever Hunter Biden was up to Hunter Biden who has never had a job in the federal government at all. And the juxtaposition of the Jared Kushner story, which continues to play out. And I guess part of what strikes me about your story, Michael, is that maybe we’re in an era where we can’t handle this kind of because it’s so big and it’s in broad daylight.
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:53

    I mean, there’s just two things about it that are just extraordinary. It’s like it’s right there. We’re looking right at it. We are talking about billions of dollars. From somebody that was clearly deeply involved with the foreign leader who’s filling his pockets during his time in the White House.
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:13

    And it’s playing out right in front of us. And so it’s testing our capacity to recognize a massive bit of corruption in plain sight. Do you follow what I’m getting at there? Well, it’s up to others to say, you
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:27

    know, whether it’s corruption because that’s a legal term. So I I don’t making conclusion of the story. But as to whether it’s in broad daylight, I mean yes and no. So let’s say in two parts. Number one, clearly during the administration, there was a quite a strong relationship between Trump, Jared Kushner, who was essentially running part of Middle East’s policy and the Saudi crown prince mama bin Salman.
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:53

    At the time, Kushner came into office as he later wrote that he was learning foreign policy on the fly. He basically was given the portfolio to deal with Middle East peace policy, and the way he sought to do that was to go sort of outside in as he put it, and that meant working with the person who was then the deputy crown prince, Ben Salman, and he convinced Trump to make Saudi Arabia the first visit of Trump’s presidency, very unusual, never been done. That’s a president, but go to Saudi Arabia. Mhmm. First, might have been Israel first, other places first.
  • Speaker 2
    0:03:28

    And Christian earned and Bin Salman both young basically form this relationship. And Kushner went to Trump. And so let’s go to South Korea first. And Trump said, read my lips. We’re not going there first on paraphrasing, but the quotes in the story.
  • Speaker 2
    0:03:45

    And as Christian leader told us, he didn’t take no, you know, as a no. He didn’t take us a hard no. He knew that Trump often changed his mind. He went back, said, look, you know, they’ll do these arms deals with us, they’ll do other things. And, eventually, Trump and Kushner did go to Saudi in March twenty seventeen.
  • Speaker 2
    0:04:01

    And long story short, they developed this very strong relationship. And Trump and Christian were very helpful Tubin Salman helped him in his rise to become crown prince and now heir to the throne of Saudi Arabia, and then along comes the concerns by Saudi Arabia about Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post, contributing columnist, and the CIA determines that bin Salman had ordered the killing or caps sure of Khashoggi. And Trump does not allow that finding to be made public. It later became public through president Biden, no, though the post reported essentially what it said at the time. And Trump later told Bob Whitaker to the Washington Post that he had, quote, saved unquote, been still on by not embracing the finding of the CIA, by vetoing a commercial bipartisan effort to stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia and so forth So — Mhmm.
  • Speaker 2
    0:04:52

    — we had this, you know, admission by former president Trump that he saved in Selman. And I quote, close associate of because she’s saying, if it were for Trump and Kushner, then then someone would not have become crown prince mail, know if that’s the case, but that’s his opinion. And then right after the Trump administration’s over, Kushner forms a company that eventually has a private equity fund that on the form with the SEC, it doesn’t indicate that two billion dollars from this fund came from Saudi Arabia. In fact, there was a box that says check this box if your client’s sovereign wealth fund they didn’t check that box. And the reason they say they didn’t check that box is because they put all their funds in what they call a pool investment vehicle, which is sort of typical.
  • Speaker 2
    0:05:37

    It’s a loud. And some people say that’s a shortfall of a law. So it was not known that New York Times last year, got minutes of a meeting in which members of the Saudi public investment fund, which has been someone chairs that the advisers have said, let’s not do this investment. Christian doesn’t have the experience. It’s a high risk for us.
  • Speaker 2
    0:05:55

    And Vince somehow, eventually, as chair of that fund said, no. We’re doing it. So, separately, the public investment fund is the same one is supporting the entity called LiveGolf, which in turn is paying millions of dollars to have tournaments at president Trump’s former president Trump’s golf courses. So it wasn’t in the open initially that Kushner was getting two billion dollars for his private equity fund from the Saudis. Later regarding Liftgolf, it was public, but we don’t know how much.
  • Speaker 2
    0:06:23

    It’s still opaque to us. How much money he’s getting for having these tournaments on his property. So yes and no, some people say there should be more accountability that you should have disclosed after you leave office, you know, what you’re getting so that people don’t have suspicions that during your time in administration, you were setting yourself up to get payments later. The
  • Speaker 1
    0:06:43

    extraordinary thing about I think about your reporting is the timeline and the heart of this let me just read a little bit of it, which you reported earlier this week. The day after leaving the White House, the day after leaving the White House, Jared Kushner created a company that he trans four months later into a private equity firm with two billion dollars from a sovereign wealth fund, chaired by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmon. Kushner’s firm structured these funds in such a way that it did not have to disclose the source as you just mentioned it. And then you talked about how a year after the presidency, Trump’s golf courses began hosting these tournaments. These substantial investments by the Saudis and enterprises that benefited both men.
  • Speaker 1
    0:07:25

    Came after they cultivated close ties with Mohammed while Trump was in office as you just described. Well, let’s go back to the beginning here. The beginning of your story, this whole Kushner Trump MBS vortex, In your lead, you set the scene in early twenty twenty one where Trump is about to leave off as Kushner is about leave office. They’re facing unprecedented business challenges. The revenue from Trump Properties has plummeted January six made his brand more polarizing.
  • Speaker 1
    0:07:59

    Jared Kushner, real man of genius. His last major business dealer left family needing a one point two billion dollar bailout. And he was facing his own political fallout, right, from being tied to Trump. So that moment is really quite dramatic. You know, what is Jared Kushner going to do?
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:20

    Who are his friends? What is his next move? Because you could certainly make the case that right then January two thousand twenty one was a low point for both Donald Trump and for Jared Kushner. Yeah.
  • Speaker 2
    0:08:33

    You know, Trump had issues with a lot of businesses. He had made his name basically selling the Trump brand. He had not been terribly successful as a business person. Six corporate bankruptcies, wrote a lot about this in the post biography. Trump revealed before Trump was elected, and the co author of that.
  • Speaker 2
    0:08:52

    So I have a lot of knowledge, I think, about, you know, my colleagues, about what Trump had done in business, but he then became very successful selling himself as a successful businessperson and did the apprentice and so forth and then branding his name, selling his name around the world and hotels and in this country and so forth. So, you know, that was a lot of, you know, what he said in campaigning for the presidency. And notwithstanding, you know, all the difficulties he actually had in running certain businesses, you know, that was his image. Jared Kushner, as you mentioned, his family business, he took it over when his father went to prison. And his big deal was to buy the most expensive office building purchase that ever been done in the United States history, one point eight billion dollars for six six six Avenue.
  • Speaker 2
    0:09:39

    And that did not turn out well. It came just as the financial crisis was around the corner, and they actually needed a bailout of one point two billion dollars from this Canadian company, Brookfield. And there’s a investigation going on in Congress as to whether Brookfield got part of its financing for that from Qatar. So there have been some questions about both of their business acumen, despite the fact that they’ve also, you know, both made a lot of money in business. So when they leave the administration, you know, what’s next?
  • Speaker 2
    0:10:09

    Typically, a former president, some of them, you know, do go on and make very well paced speeches around the world and so forth. But — Mhmm. — it’s not typical for someone to after having worked so closely with an individual in a foreign government to then benefit in their business from essentially that same individual or that person’s sovereign equity fund as, you know, we write about here. So I quote Senator Ron Biden saying, you know, this is the cat’s cradle of financial entanglements. And their efforts to get all sorts of documents what’s actually happened.
  • Speaker 2
    0:10:42

    We don’t know whether, for example, Jared Kushner talked with Baham and Ben Salman while he was still in office about, hey, after I leave, we used to port putting money from the sovereign wealth fund into my private equity fund. We do know that Kushner in early January of twenty twenty one just before the administration was over, went to Saudi Arabia for a final meeting with bin Salman So that did occur, and he declined to talk to me for the story. So I would certainly wanna ask him, you know, that question. And did Trump talk to to crown prince about live golf. You know, that’s something again, we don’t know, but Trump has said that it’s worth billions of dollars of publicity in good public relations.
  • Speaker 2
    0:11:24

    For Saudi Arabia, which has gotten a lot of criticism, not just for the khashoggi matter, but for human rights record in general, to have this tournament on Trump courses? This
  • Speaker 1
    0:11:35

    may seem like a naive question, but I’ll ask it anyway. Why Saudi Arabia? What was the attraction for Trump and Kushner of Saudi Arabia? I mean, other than the fact that they have more money than than god. I mean, given, you know, how fraught the politics of the Middle East was, given, you know, Donald Trump’s comments about Muslims, it was not an obvious play at the beginning of his presidency.
  • Speaker 1
    0:12:01

    Do you have some insight into what was the attraction that led to this really deep entanglement.
  • Speaker 2
    0:12:07

    Well, for many years, the Southeast and the US government have been allies, but there’s also been oil embargo. So it’s been a relationship where Saudi Arabia has been very important to the United States. And also, you know, there’s been tension there over what they’ve done in the region, what they’ve done with oil. We saw recently Joe Biden had his own difficulties. He asked that Arabia not to increase production.
  • Speaker 2
    0:12:33

    They did it anyway. So, you know, there’s been this long running relationship with Saudi Arabia. That’s important to both countries, but also has had its share of tensions, to be sure. Jared Kushner, the way he’s told it, and he wrote about this in detail, in his memoir. He wanted to come in and find a way for a Middle East peace line to work in a way that hadn’t been done.
  • Speaker 2
    0:12:55

    He saw this as he put in this outside in approach. So rather than try to get the Israelis and Palestinians to sit down as other administrations and states have done. He had hoped to work out a deal where other countries would make their peace with Israel, recognize each other, and so forth. In a way that said, but then put pressure on the Palestinians to come to some kind of agreement with Israel that that was sort of down the road and and that was not follow through on. And clearly, the relationship between Israel and Palestinians is not good today.
  • Speaker 2
    0:13:28

    I talked to a diplomat for the story. He said it’s the worst that he’s seen in decades. So, you know, where it is today is a little different. Kushner certainly tells what they call that Abraham accords with certain countries. But Saudi Arabia itself, you know, has not essentially, you know, made its relations with Israel as I think Kushner, what, you know, might have hoped.
  • Speaker 2
    0:13:49

    So that was the big prize some other countries have. And he certainly touched that. And, you know, probably if you run this podcast, he’d say, well, if we’re still in power that they would be able to see it through. But, you know, the reality is that they left office and there’s a lot that’s, you know, not done in what’s going on today and and, you know, the region, obviously, it’s not, you know, the peace that, you know, they were hoping for. So I think they saw a lot of potential there and they got some of what they were hoping for.
  • Speaker 2
    0:14:19

    And then, you know, after administration, you know, why do they look at Saudi Arabia? Well, you know, if you are in the investment field, you know that some of these Middle Eastern and sovereign wealth funds, you know, it’s where the money is to use that phrase.
  • Speaker 1
    0:14:31

    That’s why I said it was a naive question. I mean, as you go with the money is so you talk to some national security experts who are expressed concerned. Looking ahead, even with Trump running for president again, they know that he and Kushner set themselves up to profit from their relationship with the Saudis after the administration and ended. And of course, this is going to be the subject of investigations. Right?
  • Speaker 1
    0:14:51

    Democrats have launched investigations into Trump and Kushner’s ties to Saudi Arabia. And they’re saying, look, there’s no precedent for how they relied so significantly on Saudi investments after helping MBS get into office. So What is the status of those investigations? What kinds of questions are Democrats gonna try to answer with their own investigations? In the Jared Kushner’s business.
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:15

    Yeah. There are investigations ongoing into whether Qatar helped finance the bailout of the Kushner property that I mentioned a few minutes ago. There’s a House Oversight Committee investigation that launched in June of last year, seeking all sorts of documentation from Jerry Kushner about was there some kind of setup during the administration that led to the two billion dollar investment in the private equity fund? Just as I went to start recording this podcast with you, I got a letter from that same committee — Mhmm. — which was taken over by Republicans so that investigation sort of went into a ban.
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:47

    But just this morning, the Democrats in that committee released a letter that they’re sending to Jared Kushner, which they say essentially, we asked you for documentation. You didn’t send us what we’re looking for. We still are seeking these records and please send us this information. So we’ll have to see if Kushner responds to that. At this point, democrats aren’t the majority.
  • Speaker 2
    0:16:07

    On the house side. They don’t have the subpoena power that they might have been able to use as they’ve done that last year. However, there’s a Senate Committee, the Senate Finance Committee And I’ve talked to their folks, and I quoted Semler Wide in the story. And their plan, you know, they do have Democrats in power, obviously, on the Senate side. So they could pick up some of that, work with the Democrats on the minority side in the House Committee to try to, you know, further these investigations.
  • Speaker 2
    0:16:31

    So from their perspective, they still want to get a lot of information, particularly from Kushner because there’s so much, you know, money involved, but also various questions about Trump. About all this. So, you know, we’ll have to see where that goes. It’s the same committee on the House side that on the Republicans is looking into the Hunter Biden matter that you mentioned. So, you know, there some people have said, okay.
  • Speaker 2
    0:16:52

    If you’re looking to hire somebody and, you know, they may stay fair enough. But what about, you know, looking into what we’ve already started here on the Christian side. I don’t get into the Hunter Biden matter in my story. I just looked strictly at this, but I have read in the past about Hunter Biden and the work he did for Ukrainian. Gas company and so forth.
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:09

    So I’ve written about, you know, frankly about both matters.
  • Speaker 1
    0:17:12

    Let’s go back to this personal relationship between Jared Kushner and Mohammed. You know, you’re you’re right about how, you know, they connected shortly after the twenty sixteen election. I mean, they were both young, they’re both ascendant, Christians thirty five, Mohammed’s then thirty one. They develop a very, very close relationship Mohama gets armed sales, you know, presumed green light, the blockade, cutter, the lot of other things. I mean, I’m trying to break it down.
  • Speaker 1
    0:17:39

    How much of this is a diplomatic relationship, a personal relationship, a financial relationship, or is it impossible to disentangle them all because these two
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:50

    men bonded on a lot of different levels, didn’t they? Hey, Jay. They’re both young. They’re both, you know, basically in the family business, so to speak. So they really had, in that sense, quite a bit in common.
  • Speaker 2
    0:18:03

    I thought that was a very telling anecdote that Kushner tells himself and his memoir that, you know, you write a memoir people take on when it comes off as a few tidbits to come out, but I thought there was a lot in there about his relationship with Bin Salman that didn’t get noticed when it came out. And for this story, I went back to look at a bunch of memoirs that have been released over the last year to try to see in various bits and pieces as well as interviewing from where senior bonus officials to get a better sense of the timeline here. And there’s a wonderful anecdote that where he basically says, senior white officials came to him and said that he was a fool for trusting him and so on. And then he then goes and calls up and so on and said, and I’m paraphrasing of his exact quotes in the story, and people say that I’m a fool for trusting you. When he says, Ben Stavant says, no, you can trust me.
  • Speaker 2
    0:18:51

    And, you know, they’ve started to continue to work out. But there were certainly a number of people and Rex Tillerson, the former secretary of state, has actually testified to this in Congress And in a court case where he said that, essentially, Christian was unparaphrasing here, but, you know, running things in a way that kept him out of the loop. That he didn’t think it was a good idea for president Trump to meet directly with then deputy crown prince been some on in March of twenty seventeen when that pre crown prince happened to be in DC. He didn’t think it was a good idea for Trump to make, said it maybe the first stop. He didn’t think it was a good idea.
  • Speaker 2
    0:19:28

    For what essence was interpreted as Trump’s endorsement of the Saudi Arabian blockade of Qatar. And on and on, Kushner was overseeing a lot of this, and Tillersten and others felt that they were out of the loop. And I quote another senior vice official was saying, you know, he didn’t know what was going on. With Kushner and Saudi Arabia. There’s a lot of concern within the White House at the time not just in retrospect about what was going on.
  • Speaker 2
    0:19:56

    As Christian acknowledges by the fact that he says they say, you know, that they view them as a fool for dealing with than someone in this way. But that relationship strengthened. Christianer thought, essentially, hey, you know, we worked on Middle East piece for a long time. It hasn’t worked. You know, these people just wanna do it the same old way.
  • Speaker 2
    0:20:14

    And, you know, I’m gonna try something different. So he saw himself in fairness to someone breaking the molt. That’s basically the way he portrays it throughout his no more in saying that he was learning foreign policy on the fly pretty extraordinary for someone to make that statement and then be so heavily involved in foreign policy development. But that’s the way he portrays it. Conspiracy theories.
  • Speaker 2
    0:20:37

    Paranormal. UFOs. During the entire nineteen seventy one debacle of this red die number two. Parents all around America were buying Frank and Berry So only a few days after the cereal was released, kids all across the country started being rushed to hospitals. All of them had one symptom in common.
  • Speaker 2
    0:21:00

    Theories of the third kind on YouTube or wherever you listen.
  • Speaker 1
    0:21:06

    Okay. So the one of the biggest tests obviously of this relationship was over the murder of Khashoggi. And then you write about all of this. Either he becomes a columnist for the Washington Post. Then this assassination team flown to Istanbul on plane to his a dazzling detail flowing to Istanbul on planes owned by the same investment fund that gave Kushner’s private equity firm two billion dollars murdered Khashoggi in October two thousand eighteen.
  • Speaker 1
    0:21:34

    And then, you know, after Turkey rules that Saudi Arabia was directly responsible, Kushner gets on the phone, and he talks with with MBS about how to respond. So how did Jared Kushner handle that? How did he help cover up, save the MBS after what was, you know, worldwide outrage about has led direct involvement in in the murder of this journalist. So my understanding is Kushner told him basically, you know, you should say what happened and,
  • Speaker 2
    0:22:05

    you know, explain yourself and explain what happened. And so forth. So that’s what we know. There are communications that occurred between Kushner and Bin Salman, Mohammed Bin Salman, that have not been publicly released. So there’s things we don’t know, and those have been requested by the Democrats on the House oversight committee among others.
  • Speaker 2
    0:22:26

    So those have not been made public. I did interview former senior rights officials, including what I was on the phone with Kushner and men’s salman right after the murder took place who said that, you know, they had this conversation. You should say what happened and so forth. At that time of that conversation, you know, there were unknowns. And Ben Salman has always denied that he order to killing our capture.
  • Speaker 2
    0:22:50

    But also, I think seven sixty minutes, it was saying that given his position, he takes some responsibility. But he hasn’t been held accountable in a way that, you know, perhaps you might think there was a recent court case here in DC, the Biden administration essentially said because bin Salman has simultaneously been named prime minister otherwise not king, but that essentially made him like a head of state, and that, therefore, you have unity. Mhmm. So given immunity in the US court, it’s very unlikely that he’d be brought to some kind of trial or other kind of legal standing in other countries. Though it’s possible, there’d be some other venue, but it hasn’t happened.
  • Speaker 2
    0:23:30

    There was a trial of certain individuals in Saudi Arabia, a lot of those proceedings really are not made public. So to the Khashoggi, family and allies, you know, they feel like accountability has not been been made and they’re concerned because of the scranthing of immunity. That it’s not going to happen. And the reality is, the Biden says he’s gonna treat something maybe, like, quote, proactive quote, that it is. But then he went to this bump with the crown prince.
  • Speaker 2
    0:23:59

    He asked the crown prince to not increase oil production. He didn’t catch up in any way. So the Biden administration now has sort of picked up this realpolitik, and there’s not any indication that they’re gonna go further, you know, they do
  • Speaker 1
    0:24:12

    this relationship. And so they’ve that’s the figure that they’re in right now. As you report though, the Trump Kushner MBS relationship around this murder is fascinating. You know, Trump tells Bob Woodward a recorded interview. I saved his ass.
  • Speaker 1
    0:24:27

    Referring to MBS, he refused to endorse the CIA’s conclusion that he was complicit. He equivocated about MBS’s involvement. He posed the release of the report. He veered a bill to block arm sales to the Saudis, Mike Pompeo, who eventually had replaced Tillerson, wrote in his memoir that Trump told him to meet with MBS and to remind him that he owed him my mic go and have a good time. Tell him he owes us, certainly implying a quid pro quo.
  • Speaker 1
    0:24:58

    You have the democracy group founded by Khashoggi. Telling the Washington Post that MBS that they believe that he would have fallen from power. Had it not been the fact that they were protected by Jared Kushner and Donald Trump. This seems to be a pretty significant, you know, I’m going to protect you. I’m going to cover up your involvement in a murder and in return for which you owe me.
  • Speaker 1
    0:25:25

    Is that overstating it? Because that record seems to be pretty clear. The quote from Mike Pompeo replaced Solar Senator Secretary
  • Speaker 2
    0:25:32

    of State right after, you know, it’s comes out as to what happened with Saudi Arabia’s responsibility in the consulate in Turkey for the murder. Trump sends Pompeo over this. This isn’t a memo or this is trying a couple of weeks ago. Over time, we get a little more bits and pieces of the chronology and the narrative as to to what happened here. And he said, as you just recounted, that Pompeo should tell that someone tell him he owes us.
  • Speaker 2
    0:25:57

    Now and it just begs the question is that a figure of speech? I, you know, of course, contacted Pompeo spokesperson and said, can you please explain and have Pompeo tell us, you know, what exactly he meant by this? Because it’s kind of an explosive. Thing to say. And they just basically didn’t respond.
  • Speaker 2
    0:26:13

    They let those words stand as they are. So it’s basically for subject to interpretation. We know that Trump is a transactional person. I mean, that’s been very well documented for decades. So what does that mean?
  • Speaker 2
    0:26:26

    Does that mean, like, diplomatically? Does that mean after the presidency, there should be some financial payback. We don’t know. The best that we can do is say, here’s what happened. Here’s what Pompeo says Trump’s told him says to the crown prince.
  • Speaker 2
    0:26:41

    So, you know, I certainly thought that was striking, and that’s why I put it in the story. It’s just not much we don’t know because certain things are obviously said in private. And particularly, not just difficult to find some of those things out here in this country, but even a much more secretive country like in Saudi Arabia where very few people have access to what’s being said in private conversations. So, again, I think if we had access to the communications that were made, particularly between Kushner and the crown prince and WhatsApp, as has been reported, or, you know, also conversations that occurred between Trump and and then Samad. There there are certainly there’s certainly a lot of risks there for more investigation, perhaps a congressional hearing.
  • Speaker 2
    0:27:25

    While there has been an ongoing investigation, there’s not a hearing. And it’s not clear that there’ll be a hearing, but there could be. I
  • Speaker 1
    0:27:34

    am amazed by some of the things that we did learn about what happened. So, again, it’s going back to the end of the Trump administration. Kushner has his final meeting with the Prince in early January. You know, he was trying to finalize an end of this Qatar blockade. He flies home the morning of January six.
  • Speaker 1
    0:27:50

    Than as we we discussed before. He really needed to bail out. He, you know, things were not going well for Jared Kushner and for Trump. He needed to bail out from that office building in New York, which, I don’t know, is it is it silly to focus on the fact that it was six six six the address under Since changed the
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:06

    address by the way. You know, with the new Did they really? Yes. Did they? They yes.
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:12

    Because they got so much, you know, noticed I mean, that’s the noticed never one knows that. It’s a very negative connotation.
  • Speaker 1
    0:28:18

    It does.
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:18

    Did you owners change the I can’t remember the numeric — Nope. — something that doesn’t
  • Speaker 1
    0:28:23

    make you immediately think of the Antichrist in the end the world. Okay? So okay. Saudi Arabia, as you pointed out, you know, had jumped in to help them both at the end. And this is the thing that wanted to ask you about.
  • Speaker 1
    0:28:33

    So Kushner who’s sort of, you know, desperate for help first creates this company called Fin Management and then used it to create this private equity fund. And he was looking for, obviously, some some money from the Saudis. And yet, the panel overseeing the Saudi public investment fund looked at it and they said, no. We don’t think you should invest in Jared Kushner’s firm because he has no experience. MBS basically overrides this to give him the thing.
  • Speaker 1
    0:29:03

    I guess the question is, how do we know that? For a very secretive country.
  • Speaker 2
    0:29:08

    That was true. And as I saw it cited the story, that was reported by The New York Times last year in in their scoop in obtaining the minutes, which have not been made public. Mhmm. I haven’t seen the minutes and certainly the times, you know, it was quite a story. It’s
  • Speaker 1
    0:29:21

    a hell of a dazzling detail. And
  • Speaker 2
    0:29:23

    first indication, that this had happened. It was known that Kushner was seeking money for a private equity fund or some kind of investment. Fund from foreign sources, probably Saudi’s. And I’ve written in the past about Kushner seeking perhaps financing for the bailout of six six, in fact, from various sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East. So there is quite a history there prior to this.
  • Speaker 2
    0:29:49

    Trying to remember it was even before they came into office. It might have been just before they took office as I recall. But, yes, this is where the money is and this is where a number of funds, you know, do look for financing. So, you know, there is that long standing interest.
  • Speaker 1
    0:30:04

    So his firm will get twenty five million dollars in management fees and in his pitch to investors, Kushner very directly plays off of his government experience, you know, who talks about his experience managing Middle East peace efforts, ending the cutter blockade. That’s from reporting from the intercept And again, this is something that Democrats like senator Ron Wyden are pushing to investigate this lack of transparency in private equity firms like customers. I guess the question is, you know, with all of this and, you know, we started off by saying, you know, you didn’t wanna describe this as corruption. I guess the question is, how do we describe this? And will the investigations by the senate democrats lead to the question of whether there are any violations of law.
  • Speaker 1
    0:30:54

    Because it certainly seems that if there are not laws governing high level government officials than trading upon their relationships, or maybe that’s just the way things were, that that’s a flaw. So, I mean, Is there any suggestion that laws were actually violated or did Jared Kushner and Donald Trump just gain the system here? Do we know that?
  • Speaker 2
    0:31:18

    Yeah. I don’t say the story that a law was violated. I say that, you know, there are, you know, why and others have these questions about what should laws be changed. So this kind of thing can’t happen for there’s more transparency. And if there wasn’t a law broken, that’s something that is a legal conclusion, for example, for the Department of Justice to alleged that, you know, myself as a reporter.
  • Speaker 2
    0:31:41

    So you know, I tried to write it in a fairway, Kushner Trump declined to speak to me. Kushner folks didn’t give me an on the record statement. Trump person did and the story. So, you know, all that’s laid out. But question like I said earlier, that’s sort of a legal finding there’d have to be some kind of criminal charge in that, you know, in a story like this, you you wanna lay out, well, here’s what we know.
  • Speaker 2
    0:32:04

    It’s raised these questions. You know, there has been an ongoing investigation. You know, maybe there’d be a hearing. There’s still more to know. So while this has been written about, talked about a lot of people have a lot of interest in this topic to be sure given the response that I’ve had to the story, there’s still plenty we don’t know.
  • Speaker 2
    0:32:24

    And that’s often the case when you do investigative stories. Sometimes there’s — Mhmm. — more and more things to know and you, you know, right stories are gonna As soon as I finish talking to you, I’m gonna write another story about this. So, you know, there’s always a little more to know and sometimes, you know, if this is for interest, maybe someone will have more information. So that’s a process and, you
  • Speaker 3
    0:32:44

    know, wanna do it in a way that tells readers what we do know, what we don’t know, and maybe there’s questions here that should be addressed, you know, by a committee. I don’t know if there’s an investigation going on within, for example, Department of Justice. But certainly, there are a lot of people who’ve been involved who said there there should be more of a look at it. And given all that happened here, what happened with the murder of Khashoggi, that the story shouldn’t be forgotten, that there should be
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:11

    more, you know, inquiry into to what’s happened here.
  • Speaker 1
    0:33:15

    So one one more question though, do you have a sense of what role Jared Kushner might prospectively play in a second Trump administration he and Ivanka have gone through the two step of distancing themselves from the Trump administration when it became inconvenient. She notably did not show up at his his announcement, I believe Jared was there. So so does Jared go back to being the the czar of the Middle East in Trump two point o, or has he moved on? Do we know?
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:44

    I think he’s what he said is that he’s not gonna be involved with the campaign the way he was before. So, you know, if Trump’s reelected, I think that we’re ready to be seen. I mean, Ivanka’s always gonna be Trump’s daughter, and unless something happens, Jared Kushner’s always gonna be his son-in-law. So it’s very close part of the family. And know, there’s been a lot of attention on family members of politicians and so forth.
  • Speaker 2
    0:34:06

    Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, they both had, you know, positions in government Jerry Kushner was a senior White House advisor. So he played a very direct role in developing policy. It was very, you know, deeply involved Would he be next
  • Speaker 1
    0:34:19

    time? I mean, that’s we just don’t know. Michael Cranish is national political investigative reporter for the Washington Post and the author of the extraordinary piece that was published earlier this week about the financial relationship between Jared Kushner, Donald Trump, and Saudi Arabia. And Michael, thank you so much for taking time from a very busy day to talk with
  • Speaker 2
    0:34:39

    us. I appreciate it. Really appreciate the time to talk some likes about this story. Thank you. And
  • Speaker 1
    0:34:43

    thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow and we’ll do this all over again. The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, an engineered and edited by Jason Brown.
  • Speaker 2
    0:35:10

    Former Navy SEAL Sean Ryan shares real stories from real people, from all walks of life. On the Sean Ryan show. This
  • Speaker 1
    0:35:18

    one’s about my friend call sign ninja. So there
  • Speaker 2
    0:35:21

    was all these things that I wanted to do in the army. He was like, this is it in army do roads and airfields. And they say, well, they can test and see where you fall. I was like, yeah. But if I could do that and all this stuff too, Drive tanks, jump out of planes.
  • Speaker 2
    0:35:33

    Do you guys have a sampler platter? Right. The Sean Ryan Show on YouTube or wherever you listen?
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