Jared Kushner Tried to Get Billionaire Executive White House Job Before Receiving Massive Loan for Family Business: Report
President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, allegedly tried to put a billionaire executive in line for a job as White House budget director a year before the executive's company loaned Kushner’s family-owned real estate business tens of millions of dollars.
Kushner, a senior White House adviser, supported Apollo Global Management co-founder Joshua Harris as he began a financial disclosure process shortly after the 2016 election to be considered for the position of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director, two sources familiar with the situation told The Guardian in a report published Monday. Harris, a senior private equity executive, later withdrew his candidacy because it was too difficult to disclose his holdings within the short time frame allotted, the sources reportedly said.
In 2017, Harris’s investment firm loaned Kushner Cos. $184 million, The New York Times reported in February.
Spokespeople for Harris, Kushner and Kushner Cos. did not immediately respond to Newsweek's requests for comment on Monday.
A spokesman for Harris told The Guardian that he “never applied for, was offered or accepted any position at OMB.”
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Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, told the newspaper that Kushner “did not discuss any business concerning his former company in any meetings after he entered government, and he did not discuss the OMB or any position with him and did not (and could not) offer Josh Harris or anyone else the OMB position.”
The Office of Government Ethics last month informed Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that the White House had started an investigation into more than $500 million in loans Apollo and investment bank Citigroup made to Kushner Cos. after their respective executives met with Kushner in his official capacity.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders denied the probe. Lowell previously told Newsweek in an email that “the White House counsel concluded there was were no issues involving Jared.” Kushner Cos. spokeswoman Chris Taylor referenced Sanders’s comment that the White House “said they weren’t investigating.”