“Donald Trump can evade legal responsibility even if the conflicts of interest remain,” said Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal nonprofit group. “His daughter and son-in-law don’t have that escape hatch.”
Mr. Kushner did resign from more than 200 positions in the partnerships and limited liability companies that make up the family-run multibillion-dollar real estate business. But the financial disclosure report shows that Mr. Kushner will remain a beneficiary of most of those same entities.
.. the Kushner Companies’ deals have become a magnet for opaque foreign money — often from parts of the world that present thorny policy questions, such as China, where Mr. Kushner’s company has actively sought investors, as well as the Middle East and Russia.
.. Mr. Kushner, by contrast, continues to hold multimillion-dollar lines of credit from institutions such as Citigroup and Deutsche Bank, while companies he is still a beneficiary of have billions of dollars in additional loans from heavily regulated institutions.
.. “The one thing Jared really ought to stay completely away from is anything having to do with Dodd-Frank,”
.. Even Mr. Bannon’s aide Julia Hahn, who is 25, reported investments worth between $1 million and $2.1 million
.. Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, had assets worth between $11 million and $44 million.
How Should You Pay for Financial Advice?
MR. ODEAN: With mutual funds, there’s sometimes a compensation structure where a fund company gives money to a broker. This can create a significant conflict of interest, because a fund might be charging a high management fee and paying a significant commission back to the adviser or broker who sold the fund.
.. Every model can have conflicts of interest.
.. I think there is a need for fees to come down. If the market were to return 5% and you were paying an adviser 1% [of assets under management] a year, that’s like giving the adviser 20% of your returns. When you invest in the market, you are taking on a lot of risk, while the adviser gets paid for sure.
.. Many people think the market is moving toward a blended model, robo advice combined with personal advice.
Eric Trump will share business updates with father ‘probably quarterly’
In an interview with Forbes published Friday, Eric Trump described the setup as “kind of a clear separation of church and state that we maintain.”
“I am deadly serious about that exercise,” he said. “I do not talk about the government with him, and he does not talk about the business with us. That’s kind of a steadfast pact we made, and it’s something that we honor.”
But nearly two minutes later, Trump admitted that he will keep his father up to speed on some aspects of the business.
“Yeah, on the bottom line, profitability reports and stuff like that, but you know, that’s about it,” he said, adding that the updates will be “probably quarterly.”
“My father and I are very close,” he said. “I talk to him a lot. We’re pretty inseparable.”
.. “He is breaking down one of the few barriers he claimed to be establishing between him and his businesses, and those barriers themselves were weak to begin with. But if he is now going to get reports from his son about the businesses, then he really isn’t separate in any real way.”
.. “From a business standpoint, is the presidency beneficial?
.. “I would say that we also made great sacrifices and that the business made great sacrifices in that when you limit an international business to only domestic properties, when you put hundreds of millions of dollars of cash into a campaign, when you run with very, very tight and strict rules and the things that we do every single day in terms of compliance — I don’t know. You could look at it either way.”
Jared Kushner’s White House Role Complicates Skyscraper Deal
The project would entail stripping the 60-year-old building to its steel structure and adding about 40 floors. It could take until 2025 to complete.
.. Anbang Insurance Group, a big Chinese insurer with strong political and family connections to the government in Beijing, is in advanced talks to provide as much as half of the $2.5 billion in equity for the planned redevelopment.. Mr. Trump and Jared Kushner have taken steps to insulate themselves from potential conflicts of interest. For example, Mr. Kushner has sold his personal stake in 666 Fifth Ave. and dozens of other properties to a trust controlled by other family members... But some ethics experts have said these measures have fallen short.. Kushner Cos. is trying to change the fortunes of a property that looked at one point like a disastrous investment. The company purchased it for $1.8 billion in 2007, just before the real-estate crash. By 2011, the company was struggling to make mortgage payments, raising the possibility of a default.
.. Negotiations with Anbang began after the Chinese company reached out to Jared Kushner, according to people familiar with the negotiations. Since then Mr. Wu has met in New York with Charles Kushner multiple times, according to the people.