Jared Kushner’s sister promoted the family’s connection with President Trump when advertising an investor visa to wealthy Chinese, according to an Agence France Presse report Sunday.
The EB-5 program allows individuals who invest at least half a million dollars in an American business that creates at least 10 jobs to gain a two-year visa. The vast majority of these visas are given out to Chinese investors.
Nicole Kushner Meyer, sister of White House adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared, pitched Chinese investors in Beijing Saturday and Shanghai Sunday that they could get these visas through investment into a Kushner Companies development in Jersey City, New Jersey. A brochure for the event said: “Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States.”
Jared resigned from his family’s real estate business and divested from the Jersey City project, but his sister’s pitches over the weekend touched on the family’s White House connection.
The New York Times reported that a slide in the presentation identified President Trump as a “key decision maker” in regards to the EB-5 visa program. The Washington Post also reported that a speaker said, “Invest early, and you will invest under the old rules.”
Here’s a slide shown during Kushner Co. event in Beijing identifying @realDonaldTrump as “key decision maker” on EB-5 investor visa program pic.twitter.com/j1M4E7eGtQ
— Javier C. Hernández (@HernandezJavier) May 6, 2017
The Kushner family has previously heavily relied on Chinese investors and EB-5 visas, but a former White House counsel told the Post that the recent pitch is troubling.
“It’s incredibly stupid and highly inappropriate,” Richard Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, said in an interview. “They clearly imply that the Kushners are going to make sure you get your visa. . . . They’re [Chinese applicants] not going to take a chance. Of course they’re going to want to invest.”