Jared Kushner, Special Advisor and son-in-law to President Donald Trump, has divested his shares in Cadre, the real estate investment company he co-founded in 2014.
Kushner transferred his shares, reported by Bloomberg News Friday to be valued between $25 and $50 million, to a blind trust which then sold it back to Cadre.
The sale comes after a November 2019 investigation uncovered that the Japanese investment fund SoftBank sought to acquire Cadre back in 2018. Kushner refused SoftBank’s buyout offer, which eventually scuttled the acquisition, over fears selling his shares to a foreign firm would give the appearance of leveraging a White House position to enrich himself, persons familiar with the sale tell Daily Caller. (RELATED: Kushner Spearheads Trump’s Israel-Palestinian Peace Deal Proposal)
(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
One source added that selling just as Trump’s re-election campaign kicks into full gear shows that Kushner fully intends to remain in the White House as long as Trump does.
Though Trump has received some criticism for not totally divesting himself from his various business ventures, Kushner’s lawyer Abbe Lowell told Bloomberg he has divested his assets “when appropriate.”
“When Cadre, with which Mr. Kushner has not been involved for over 3 years, decided to pursue opportunities that could unknowingly to Mr. Kushner become future conflicts, he took the guidance of White House Counsel and the Office of Government Ethics and put in place a blind divestment process,” Lowell said. “This is the latest example of how seriously he takes this responsibility.”