Jared Kushner Height, Age, Wife, Family, Biography

Some Lesser Known Facts About Jared Kushner

• His father was friends with Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. He used to attend many dinners with them.

• His paternal grandparents, Reichel and Joseph Kushner, survived the Holocaust and came to the U.S. in 1949 from Navahrudak (now part of Belarus).

• Reichel was the family matriarch. She led an escape from the Navahrudak ghetto by digging a tunnel during the Holocaust. She later joined the Bielski partisans.

• He was raised in a Modern Orthodox Jewish family.
  

  A childhood picture of Jared Kushner

• Journalist Daniel Golden reported that Kushner’s father donated $2.5 million to Harvard in 1998, shortly before Jared was enrolled in the University.

• During his period at Harvard, he joined the Fly Club.

• He supported the campus Chabad house led by Hirschy Zarchi.

• During his college days, he was involved in real estate investing and grew Kushner Companies’ existence in the New York City market.
  

  Jared Kushner during his college days

• After completing his formal education, Jared joined a real estate company named Somerville Building Associates (part of Kushner Companies) as vice president in Somerville, Massachusetts.

• He then worked as an intern at Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau’s office.

• He also interned with the New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

• In 2004, Kushner’s father, Charles, pleaded guilty to tax fraud, election violations, and witness tampering. His sister helped in the case, and Charles retaliated against her.

• After his father was convicted and jailed (from 4 March 2005 to 25 August 2006), he took on a bigger role in the family real estate business.

• He worked to expand the business and acquired nearly $7 billion in property over the next decade mostly in New York City.

• In 2006, Kushner bought the New York Observer for $10 million. He beat a bid by Robert De Niro’s group, Trifecta Enterprises.

• He funded the purchase with money he earned during his college days by investing in residential buildings in Somerville, Massachusetts, with help from his family. He bought them for $8.3 million in 2000 and sold them for $13 million in 2004.

• After buying the New York Observer, Kushner changed it to a tabloid format, expanded its online presence, and grew the Observer Media Group.

• In 2007, Kushner Companies bought the office building at 666 Fifth Avenue for $1.8 billion. It was a record price at the time and was mostly funded by loans.

• In 2008, he started working as the CEO of Kushner Companies.

• After the 2008 property crash, the building’s cash flow could not cover its debt payments.

• Then the Kushners had to sell a controlling stake in the retail space to The Carlyle Group and Stanley Chera.

• Vornado Realty Trust became a 50% equity partner in the building’s ownership.

• Kushner Companies lost over $90 million on the investment.

• Jared led the deal, but his father, Charles Kushner, forced him to do it.

• Jared Kushner was a lifelong Democrat supporter before Donald Trump entered politics.

• He donated over $10,000 to Democratic campaigns, starting at the age of eleven.

• In 2008, he supported Hillary Clinton and had the New York Observer endorse Barack Obama over John McCain.

• After that, he got disappointed with Obama and got registered as an independent in 2009. He then endorsed Mitt Romney in 2012 through the Observer.
  

  Jared Kushner posing with the poster of the New York Observer

• Kushner and his wife Ivanka are both Modern Orthodox Jews. Ivanka converted to Judaism in 2009. They maintain a kosher home and observe the Jewish Shabbat.

• In 2011, Kushner bought a 130,000-square-foot office building at 200 Lafayette Street in Manhattan for $50 million. After two years, he sold it for $150 million.

• In 2013, his company bought the Jehovah’s Witnesses headquarters in Brooklyn Heights for $375 million. They spent $100 million to turn it into an office park and signed Etsy to a 10-year lease.

• That same year, Kushner co-founded a group named WiredScore which provides certification to the digital infrastructure of buildings.

• Kushner’s company bought more than 11,000 properties in New York, New Jersey, and Baltimore between 2013 and 2014.

• Under his leadership, the New York Observer lost popularity among New York’s elite. However, it became profitable and increased its online traffic from 1.3 million to 6 million monthly visitors in 2013.

• In August 2014, Kushner and Aion Partners bought three apartment buildings in Middle River, Maryland, for $38 million. Later, they sold them for $68 million.

• In 2014, Kushner co-founded Cadre (now RealCadre LLC), an online real estate investment platform, with his brother Joshua and Ryan Williams.
  

  Jared Kushner with his brother during a meeting

• In 2014, he continued donating to Democratic groups.

• In 2015, he joined Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign with no prior experience in politics or government.

• Jared Kushner led Donald Trump’s digital, online, and social media strategy during the presidential campaign.

• He formed a 100-person social media team called ‘Project Alamo’ with the help of Silicon Valley experts.

• The team tested over 1,00,000 ad combinations weekly and raised over $250 million in small-dollar donations in the last months of the campaign.
  

  Jared Kushner while talking to Donald Trump

• Jared Kushner, along with Paul Manafort and Brad Parscale, hired Steve Bannon’s firm, Cambridge Analytica, to help the Trump campaign.

• He started working as Trump’s de facto campaign manager after Corey Lewandowski was fired in June 2016.

• He organized Trump’s August 2016 visit to Mexico and advised Mike Pence to accompany Trump.

• Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt called Kushner’s leadership in the campaign the biggest surprise. Eric claimed that he handled it with limited resources.

• In May 2015, Kushner bought 50.1% of the Times Square Building for $295 million from Africa Israel Investments Ltd.

• Goldman Sachs and billionaire George Soros, a big Democratic donor, became his business partners.

• In 2015, Soros Fund Management gave RealCadre LLC a $250 million credit line.

• Kushner did not list these business connections in his January 2017 government financial disclosure.

• He did disclose owning BFPS Ventures, the company holding his Cadre stake.

• In 2016, Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigated meetings between Kushner, other Trump associates, and George Nader, an emissary representing the UAE and Saudi crown princes.

• In August 2016, Nader offered help to the Trump campaign.

• In December 2016, Nader attended a meeting in New York between UAE officials, Kushner, Michael Flynn, and Steve Bannon.

• Mueller also investigated Kushner’s possible ties to Qatar, Israel, and China.

• In 2016, the Observer supported Donald Trump in the Republican primary but stayed neutral during the general election.

• On 5 July 2016, Kushner wrote an open letter in the New York Observer and defended Trump’s campaign against accusations of anti-Semitism after a controversial tweet.

• He criticized the careless use of terms such as racist and anti-Semitic.

• His estranged cousin, Marc, disagreed and shared on Facebook that his grandparents’ story taught him to reject hate.

• After Donald Trump was elected as the president, Kushner became one of Donald Trump’s closest advisors, even closer than Trump’s adult children.

• Trump provided top-secret security for Kushner so that he could attend daily briefings with General Mike Flynn.

• In June 2016, an agent of Emin Agalarov offered Donald Trump Jr. a piece of compromising information on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government and wanted a meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer in exchange.

• The meeting took place on 9 June 2016, at Trump Tower and was attended by Donald Trump Jr., Kushner, and Paul Manafort, who was campaign chairman. They met with Natalia Veselnitskaya.
  

  Jared Kushner with Donald Trump Jr.

• According to the Mueller Report, Kushner became frustrated with the meeting and texted Manafort that it was a waste of time. He also emailed assistants to call him, hoping for a reason to leave.

• The Democratic National Committee cyberattacks were disclosed that same week.

• Between April and November 2016, Kushner had two undisclosed phone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

• In December 2016, Kushner met Sergey Gorkov, the head of Vnesheconombank (VEB), a Russian state-owned bank.

• In January 2017, Kushner left the Observer to work in Donald Trump’s administration. His brother-in-law, Joseph Meyer, took over the Observer.

• On 9 January 2017, Jared Kushner was appointed Senior Advisor to the President.

• He stepped down as CEO of Kushner Companies and publisher of the New York Observer.

• After Trump was elected, Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump met with Japan’s prime minister and officials.

• During the same time, Ivanka was negotiating a licensing deal for her clothing brand with Sanei International. The company was partly owned by a government development bank in Japan.

• Ivanka also attended a meeting between Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe.
  

  Jared Kushner, his wife, Ivanka Trump, and Donald Trump while meeting Japan’s Prime Minister

• After that, Kushner helped the American government negotiate a $100+ billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

• During a White House meeting with Saudi officials, he directly called Lockheed Martin’s CEO to request a lower price for a radar system to detect ballistic missiles.

• His business dealings in China raised concerns about mixing government roles with private interests.

• In 2017, Kushner helped start talks with Mexico and Canada to renegotiate NAFTA after Trump became president.

• In April 2017, Trump considered withdrawing from NAFTA, but Kushner convinced him to enter trade negotiations.

• In May 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported that Kushner failed to disclose all required financial details in his security clearance applications, which included $1 billion in loans.

• According to the Washington Post, Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, earned $82 million as an outside income in 2017 while serving as senior White House advisors.

• In June 2017, when Saudi Arabia and the UAE imposed a naval blockade on Qatar and accused it of supporting terrorist groups, then Kushner supported the Saudis and Emiratis in the conflict.

• Kushner diminished the efforts of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to stop the blockade and encouraged President Trump to back the Saudis and Emiratis, which Trump did.

• Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, accepted that Kushner had occasionally used private email for official White House business but clarified that no confidential information was shared.

• In July 2017, Kushner appeared before both the House and Senate intelligence committees in closed sessions regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election. He also released a public statement.

• In October 2017, the Senate Judiciary Committee requested additional documents from Kushner. His lawyers provided many documents in November, but the committee later requested more documents that had not been produced.

• In November 2017, Kushner was interviewed by investigators from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office. He was questioned about the former national security advisor Michael Flynn.

• On 1 December 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI as part of a plea agreement.

• After two months, in February 2017, when the Mueller report was released, Kushner’s top-secret security clearance was permanently changed.

• After Donald Trump’s electoral defeat, Kushner remained active in political activities through a nonprofit organization he founded. He focused on the Gulf states.

• Kushner also tried to raise money for a new investment firm from the Persian Gulf states.

• From 2017 to January 2021, Kushner led the Office of American Innovation, which was created by Trump to bring private-sector solutions to government issues. For example federal IT spending, economic activity, and the opioid crisis.

• Kushner was reportedly a major person in the firing of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as head of the Trump new team. He also advised to remove Christie’s allies from the team.

• Reportedly, it was claimed that Kushner held a grudge against Christie for prosecuting his father, Charles Kushner, for high crimes.

• Kushner denied the claims of being involved in Christie’s dismissal. He stated that they worked together well and that their past differences were put aside for the campaign.

• In his memoir, Christie claimed that Steve Bannon was the one who fired him, but that Kushner ordered it as revenge for his father’s prosecution.
  

  Donald Trump with Chris Christie

• Kushner’s interactions with Russian officials were investigated as part of the federal probe into Russian election interference.

• Ahead of his meeting with the Senate and House intelligence committees, Kushner provided an 11-page document detailing his contacts with Russian officials during the campaign.

• Kushner stated that he had four meetings with Russians.

• In 2017, Trump appointed Kushner in charge of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks when Kushner had no experience in foreign policy or the Middle East.

• Kushner then met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Abbas to restart peace negotiations. Palestinians did not trust him due to his close ties with Netanyahu.
  

  Jared Kushner with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

• In 2017, it was revealed that Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump had assets worth between $240 million and $740 million. They also owned an art collection worth millions, which was initially not mentioned in their financial disclosures, but later entered.

• Jared Kushner strongly supported the First Step Act, a criminal justice reform bill.

• The bill was signed into law by President Trump in December 2018.

• It aimed to make changes to the prison and justice systems in the U.S.

• The law reduced sentences for some non-violent offenders and gave former prisoners a second chance.

• During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kushner played an important role in advising Trump and organising the administration process.

• He created a separate ‘shadow task force’ of young private-sector volunteers. They worked outside the official government team.

• His team focused on finding medical supplies. It also faced criticism for favouring Trump’s associates.

• Kushner also took COVID-19 advice from his brother’s father-in-law, who crowdsourced suggestions from a Facebook group for doctors.

• At the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, Kushner told Trump that the media was exaggerating the virus threat. It led Trump to take its dangers lightly.

• In June 2019, in an interview with HBO/Axios, Kushner denied that President Donald Trump was racist.
  

  Jared Kushner during an interview with HBO Axios

• He defended the Trump administration’s decision to reduce refugee entries to the U.S. to their lowest level in 40 years.

• In 2019, Kushner was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and received treatment during Trump’s time in office. He had a second thyroid surgery in 2022.

• In 2020, his stake in RealCadre LLC was valued between $25 to $50 million.

• A transcript of Kushner’s interview with FBI investigators was not released in January 2020 because it needed a security review by an unnamed intelligence agency. It was edited and released in February 2020.

• Kushner co-wrote Trump’s 11 March 2020 Oval Office speech without consulting health experts The speech contained errors that caused panic and market drops.

• The speech falsely stated that all travel from Europe and the movement of goods would be banned. The statement left European leaders and Americans abroad confused.

• Later, Trump blamed Kushner for the speech’s failure and organizing a Rose Garden event where Trump wrongly claimed that Google was making a nationwide COVID-19 testing website.

• Google later clarified that its COVID-19 website would only serve the Bay Area, not the whole country as Trump claimed.

• Kushner led a volunteer team of private-sector professionals with little experience. The team struggled to secure PPE and was criticized for favouring personal connections over expertise.

• New York awarded an $86 million contract for ventilators to a Silicon Valley engineer who was recommended by Kushner’s team, but no ventilators were delivered.

• In March 2020, it was reported that Kushner sold stakes in a firm that had benefited from Opportunity Zone tax breaks, which he had supported as a senior White House advisor.

• Kushner ignored the risk of a second COVID-19 wave in May 2020. The cases increased by June 2020, and his family’s businesses received pandemic relief funds, which raised conflict-of-interest concerns.

• In August 2020, with 170,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S., Kushner claimed that the administration’s response was a success.
  

  Jared Kushner while speaking at The White House during the Covid 19 period

• The same year, Kushner kept himself away from Trump’s election overturn efforts and focused on Middle East diplomacy and talks with Biden’s team.

• In 2020, reports revealed that Trump privately regretted following Kushner’s advice to pass the First Step Act.

• In 2020, Trump announced Kushner’s peace plan. It was supported by Israel but rejected by Palestinians for being too favourable to Israel. The Arab states gave mixed reactions.

• The plan allowed Israel to add West Bank settlements, but both Israeli and Palestinian leaders opposed it for different reasons.

• In June 2020, UAE Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba warned that Israel’s addition of West Bank settlements could harm relations with Arab countries.

• Kushner took this as an opportunity and helped facilitate talks between Israel and the UAE.

• In August 2020, the UAE and Israel officially established diplomatic ties. It became the first such agreement between Israel and an Arab country since 1994.

• However, Netanyahu stopped some plans as a part of the deal and the first commercial flight from Israel to the UAE which carried a U.S.-Israeli delegation led by Kushner.

• After Israel and the UAE announced their peace deal on 13 August 2020, Bahrain expressed interest in joining the deal.

• Kushner and his team negotiated the deal for 29 days. It finalized the Bahrain-Israel agreement on 11 September. It was followed by the official signing of the Abraham Accords on 15 September at the White House.

• During the same time, Kosovo, a Muslim-majority country, agreed to normalize relations with Israel as part of a U.S.-led economic deal with Serbia.

• On 23 October 2020, Sudan became the third Arab country in two months to establish diplomatic ties with Israel. Reportedly, Kushner played a key role in the negotiations.

• On 10 December 2020, Trump announced a peace deal between Israel and Morocco. It was negotiated by Kushner and Berkowitz.

• In late 2020, Kushner and Berkowitz negotiated talks to resolve the Qatar diplomatic crisis. It led to an agreement signed at the GCC Summit on 5 January 2021.

• In 2021, Kushner was invited to Harvard to discuss the Abraham Accords, where he controversially advised Gaza civilians to relocate to Israel’s Negev desert.

• Kushner then received Mexico’s highest honour for a non-citizen, the Order of the Aztec Eagle, for his role in the deal.
  

  Jared Kushner while receiving Mexico’s highest honour for a non-citizen, the Order of the Aztec Eagle

• During the 6 January Capitol attack in 2021, Kushner was returning from a diplomatic trip. Later, he arranged a meeting between Trump and Pence to fix their relationship.

• During the Trump administration, Kushner supported Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman. He later started an investment firm, Affinity Partners, and received funds from Gulf countries.

• Six months after leaving the White House, Kushner’s firm received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund. It promoted economic ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

• The House Oversight Committee launched an investigation to find whether he used his government position for the deal.

• In August 2022, he released a memoir titled Breaking History: A White House Memoir.
  

  Jared Kushner on the cover of the book Breaking History A White House Memoir

• In 2023, Republican Chris Christie criticized the deal and accused Kushner of using his White House position for personal gain and called it a “family grift.”

• Kushner received funding years ago but had not made any investments. He earned millions in fees each year.

• Norm Eisen believed that the payments were meant to gain favour with Trump’s family in case he won the 2024 election.

• James Comer, a Republican, claimed that Kushner acted unethically by taking money from Saudi Arabia.

• He has been featured on the cover of many noted magazines and tabloids.
  

  Jared Kushner on the cover of Time magazine

• He is often spotted enjoying alcoholic beverages on various occasions.
  

  Jared Kushner while enjoying beer

• He is an animal lover and has pet dogs.
  

  Jared Kushner with his family and pets

• He likes travelling to distant places in his free time.
  

  Jared Kushner during a trip