Jared Kushner’s tangled web of Russian contacts and business dealings may prove his undoing. It also imperils the global balance of power.

Billionaire boys were all the rage at the start of this decade. Young men with last names like Zuckerberg, Thiel, Dorsey and Kushner became instant moguls in an era of free-flowing capital, unicorn dreams and billion dollar IPOs.

Against this backdrop, in 2014, Joshua and Jared Kushner and their friend, Ryan Williams, created Cadre. Williams was the public face of the operation while the Kushner boys worked investors through their V.C. fund,  Thrive Capital Partners. They raised $18 million in an initial funding round which included tech mega-stars like Sun Microsystems founder Vinod Khosla, David Yu, George Soros and PayPal founder, Peter Thiel.

Cadre was conceived as a data-driven real estate platform. A private club whose super-wealthy members gained access to the type of premium real estate deals the rest of us would have only learned about, if we happened to drive by the construction sites.

Cadre is estimated to be worth $800 million today and is attracting the attention of Trump-Russia investigators. As with many scandals, it was the cover-up which tipped off investigators to the underlying potential crime. Jared Kushner failed to disclose his $25 million stake in Cadre on his financial disclosure forms when he was appointed White House special adviser by Donald Trump, his father-in-law.

Kushner “inadvertently” left off a total of 70 investment holdings from the forms, an act which may constitute a felony and also begs the question: Is there something about Cadre – and Kushner’s other holdings – which made him risk five years in jail by forgetting to disclose them on a mandatory form?

The Paradise Papers link Jared Kushner to Kremlin cash.

“I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector,” Kushner told reporters in July, while standing behind a White House podium placed in the driveway of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Kushner had just testified before a congressional committee denying any collusion with Russian officials in the 2016 election and dismissing any notion he had business ties to Russia.

Last month, a leaked trove of documents revealing the origins of major global investments, the Paradise Papers, put lie to Kushner’s denials. They exposed a Russian tech billionaire as an investor in Cadre. Digital Sky Technologies CEO Yuri Milner had invested $850,000 in Kushner’s company via a family trust, the Paradise Papers revealed.

DST is a Russian-owned private global investment firm with holdings in some of the world’s biggest brands in tech.  While the company’s funding origins have raised suspicion before, the Paradise Papers revealed DST was operating as an investment front for sanctioned Kremlin companies investing in U.S. firms.

In 2011, two sanctioned Russian government firms, VTB Bank and Gazprom, gave Milner’s DST $191 million to buy large stakes in Twitter and Facebook. The Facebook investment was made just before the social network went public and its value mushroomed to $1 Bn after the listing.

“It was a different time,” Milner said in an interview with The New York Times. “It never even occurred to me back then that VTB Bank was not just another investor for us.”

Milner may shrug off the investment as a remnant of a different age, but it’s given Special Counsel Robert Mueller hard evidence the Kremlin was a business partner of Facebook, Twitter and Kushner’s Cadre.

The Kushner boys’ V.C. firm, Thrive Capital Partners, is also indirectly linked to a major Russian bank with deep ties to Trump-Russia. Thrive’s investment custodian is Silicon Valley Bank which partnered with sanctioned Russian Sberbank to invest in the U.S. tech sector in 2012.

Sberbank is the same bank which sponsored Donald Trump’s 2013 Moscow Miss Universe and VTB Bank was involved in funding the proposed Trump Tower in Moscow.  There are many questions about whether the Kremlin used Sberbank to launder money through Cyprus, Trump properties and the tech sector.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller now has a financial trail linking Kushner’s businesses to Kremlin cash via DST’s Yuri Milner and Russia’s Sberbank via Silicon Valley Bank. That’s aside from Kushner’s December meeting with Sergey Gorkov of Vnesheconombank and a recently revealed campaign overture from former Russian central banker Aleksander Torshin. Jared Kushner’s denials about his business ties to Russia do not hold up.

There is also the albatross around Kushner’s neck known as 666 Fifth Avenue. He bought the Manhattan trophy building in 2007 for an inflated $1.8 Bn and is now facing a $1.2 Bn mortgage bill he cannot repay. Kushner has been seeking a bailout from anyone who’ll listen including the Qataris, Chinese and Russians.

Data is the global weapon of choice for nation states trying to tip the balance of power.

Russian President Vladimir Putin knows data is the future of power.  “[Artificial intelligence is] the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind,”  Putin asserted on state-funded RT recently.  “Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”

Cadre, Facebook and Twitter, like many data-driven tech behemoths are all cast from the same dye:  They use data to control the price and pace of commerce based on who you are, what you like, how much you’re worth and with whom you are friends.

This data becomes even more significant in an era of Artificial Intelligence. A.I. is accelerating at such a pace that it’s hard to overstate how much machine-thinking will change every aspect of our lives in the coming years.  A.I. will control your existence and whomever controls A.I., will rule the world.

In this context, Putin’s multi-year campaign to invest in the U.S. tech sector was both cunning and shrewd. He was able to use his social network investments to exploit the social media landscape and elect a president with his own compromising Russian business interests. And now we know Trump’s son-in-law is also connected to Kremlin cash.

Make no mistake though, Trump’s election was only a means to an end in Putin’s strategic game. What he really seeks is nothing less than a shift in global power.

Saudi Arabia, Syria, Russia and Jared Kushner. Why global power is literally shifting beneath your feet.

In October, Saudi Arabia held a conference which many dubbed “Davos in the Desert”.  The Kingdom used the conference to announce it intends to invest its vast liquid assets from fossil fuels into the tech sector. They plan to grow their Public Investment Fund from a current $65 Bn to $400 Bn, in just two years.

Like Russia, Saudi Arabia is a country which flagrantly flouts human rights norms. Still, 3,000 delegates from around the world attended the Riyadh conference.  Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde and Blackrock CEO Larry Fink were all there. So was Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin.

Newly installed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, made a rare appearance at the conference with a message: ‘We are open for business’.

Prince Salman also announced the kingdom would return to “a more moderate Islam and destroy extremist ideologies.  He announced women would be allowed to drive and also made a humanoid a citizen of the kingdom.

“We want to lead normal lives, lives where our religion and our traditions translate into tolerance, so that we coexist with the world and become part of the development of the world,” Prince Salman said.

Prince Salman presents himself as a grand reformer but his actions seem to be more authoritarian than liberal. He has aggressively consolidated power and arrested Saudi Arabia’s richest and most powerful men in an ‘anti-corruption’ drive.  He started a massive blockade of neighboring Qatar, is committing genocide in Yemen, forced the Lebanese Prime Minister to resign and is igniting the flames of war with Iran.

And at the center of the crown prince’s draconian crackdown is none other than Jared Kushner, who has developed an intriguing friendship with Prince Salman, according to Foreign Policy Magazine:

“Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, was in Riyadh again only recently. It was his third trip to Saudi Arabia since Trump took office. He again met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with whom he appears to have established a close personal relationship. It should therefore come as no surprise that Trump, who shares the young crown prince’s antipathy toward Iran, has commented favorably on the recent developments in Riyadh.”

Kushner has given Prince Salman carte blanche to reshape the Middle East using any means necessary. Laura Rozen quotes a former U.S. admin official as warning the situation could turn into chaos. “There is no one who has that camaraderie with the crown prince and has the instinctive desire to find common ground that Jared does. If something happens to Jared — he gets distracted or is no longer on the scene — what happens to [their] critical relationship with the White House?”

The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have been U.S. allies for the better part of a century as foes of Shiite-controlled Iran. Prince Salman however, has shifted his foreign policy eastward. He recently signed a $3 Bn arms deal with the Kremlin. The deal was described by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as “an historical moment”.  Putin called it a “landmark event”.  Add to this, Russia’s military and political control over Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and it’s easy to see how Russia may have used its influence over the Trump White House as cover to shift the balance of Middle East power.

This plan appears to have originated as early as last December when Kushner, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, mercenary Erik Prince and Stephen Bannon met Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan in secret in New York. Abu Dhabi is the capital of Saudi’s regional ally, United Arab Emirates.

Prince Zayed acted as an intermediary between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin since then. He met with Putin twice in 2016 and facilitated a meeting between Erik Prince and a Russian emissary in the Seychelles in December.  According to reports, the meeting revolved around isolating Iran in exchange for a dropping of U.S. sanctions.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is also investigating Kushner’s communication with Israeli officials in December to help veto a U.N. resolution condemning Israeli construction in disputed territories.  Kushner also met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and discussed a back-door communication channel with the Russians in the same month.

Does any of this connect to Kushner’s financial woes? Perhaps. In 2015 and 2016, Kushner and his father, Charles, negotiated a financial bail-out of 666 Fifth Avenue with a Qatari sheikh. The $500 million deal failed in July this year.  Soon after, Saudi Arabia launched its blockade against Qatar with Trump’s support. Kushner visited Saudi Arabia three times since. Are the Saudi’s helping bail out the Kushners in exchange for looking the other way on Prince Salman’s crackdown?

Kushner’s business history shows no allegiance to conscience. He has ties to Kremlin insiders and sanctioned Russian entities, his deliberate obfuscation on his disclosure forms and an obstruction of justice investigation suggest Kushner cannot be viewed as an honest broker. He remains a singular focus of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and it seems evident the billionaire boy should not be trusted to handle our mid-east policy, until Mueller has completed his job.

The post The Billionaire Boys Club appeared first on Narativ.

Vladimir Putin personally ordered an interference campaign to disrupt the 2016 U.S. elections. History will judge him harshly.

It wasn’t always like this. Not always. For a couple of years towards the end of the Second World War. The US and Russia were partners against the Third Reich. In the early 1940’s, as the world raged with war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Josef Stalin made a pact to defeat Adolf Hitler.

Roosevelt’s affection for Stalin was so heartfelt he dubbed the Russian leader, “Uncle Joe”. Roosevelt penned a letter to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in March, 1942. ‘I think I can personally handle Stalin better than your Foreign Office or my State Department,’ boasted FDR. “Stalin hates the guts of all your people. He thinks he likes me better,” Roosevelt wrote.

The partnership briefly flourished and Hitler was defeated after a post-war alliance was negotiated involving Britain, the U.S. and the Soviets at Yalta. Things quickly changed after the war. A month before Roosevelt’s death in 1945, the president expressed his growing weariness of “Uncle Joe”. “We can’t do business with Stalin,” Roosevelt said. “He has broken every one of the promises he made at Yalta.” After Roosevelt’s death, Harry Truman quickly distanced himself from the Russian tyrant.

To hear director Oliver Stone tell it, the US, not Stalin, reneged on a plan to set up 5 nation post-war alliance to check the rise of another tyrant like Hitler. Keep in mind, Stone is now so thoroughly soaked in Kremlin Kool-aid, he could serve as Putin’s chief propagandist. On Charlie Rose recently, Stone gave us a window into Putin’s warped view of history.

“America should — was very grate — should have been even more grateful but because Mr. Roosevelt died. Mr. Truman didn’t have the same attitude toward the Soviets as Roosevelt did. Roosevelt saw a grand alliance between the Soviet Union, Britain, China, and the United States. That grand alliance never materialized,” says the Putin Interviews director.

Putin – through Stone – seems to be re-litigating history while at the same time, whitewashing Josef Stalin’s bloody regime, which oversaw the imprisonment and death of millions of opponents. Roosevelt and Stalin’s partnership was borne out of expediency and a shared interest in defeating Hitler even though the president wrongly believed that he could turn Stalin into a “Christian gentleman”. In reality,  US values and strategic interests could never really coalesce with the Soviet’s, considering Stalin’s iron grip.

Fast forward 77 years and another Russian tyrant, Vladimir Putin, has a grand vision of building a US-Russia alliance which could “make the world great again – together”, as billboards lining Russian highways want us to believe. What made the Roosevelt-Stalin bromance succeed, and will doom this one to failure, was their shared enemy: Hitler’s Third Reich.

Putin is well aware he needs the same type of motivating factor to build an alliance with the US.

Enter ISIS. I’ve written before that ISIS was, and likely still is, funded and armed by the Kremlin. It should surprise no-one that big countries fund insurgencies in other countries as proxies. The United States has done it, and so does Russia. For Russia, it’s Bashar al-Assad, ISIS and Hezbollah. Absent another foe, Putin now wants to help the United States defeat a monster of his own making. This isn’t just theory, it’s right out Putin’s playbook.

Gen. Valery Gerasimov is the architect of what’s dubbed “Gerasimov’s Doctrine” which is often cited as the underpinning of Russia’s asymmetrical war against the US. Put simply, it involves creating a pretext for military action, through cyber warfare, proxy insurgency and propaganda. By supporting ISIS, Putin believes he’s created the perfect nemesis for a US-Russia alliance to defeat. ‘The enemy of your enemy is your friend’, as it were.

Putin’s strategy to stoke ISIS failed with the Obama administration, so he decided to install a president with whom he could work. The Washington Post now reports, Putin personally ordered a cyber and influence attack to hack our democracy.  The effort may have elected a puppet president, but the strategy is doomed to failure. Putin is a good tactician to be sure, but like Stalin before him, he lacks a basic understanding of the most important factor of a successful partnership: shared values.

If Vladimir Putin wants Russia to be a part of the civilized world of nations, he needs to stop supporting tyrants like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and ISIS, pull out of the Ukraine and Crimea and stop inciting global tension and terrorism. If Russia is to be considered a trusted partner, she needs to look inward, modernize a struggling economy (per capita GDP has plummeted 41% from US$15,543 in 2013 to $9,057 a year in 2015) and return legitimate democracy to her people.

The world stands on the threshold of incredible promise, innovation which will cure humanity’s greatest ills, from cancer to climate change, global hunger to poverty, terrorism to warmongering. Vladimir Putin is a singular figure standing in the way of human progress at a time of vital need. He should step aside. If he doesn’t, he’ll go down as one of history’s most reviled leaders.

The post A Monster Of His Own Making appeared first on Narativ.

Opinion: Democrats could retake the White House in next year’s mid-term elections and Joe Biden could become the next President. 

In the heat of the 2012 Presidential election campaign, senior White House chief political strategist David Axelrod approached his boss, then President Barack Obama, with a sobering message.  Democratic enthusiasm for Obama had begun to wane. Axelrod offered a suggestion to turn the tide. The President needed to call in former President Bill Clinton to reinforce his re-election campaign effort.

To be clear, there is no love lost between the two former presidents. “Bill Clinton’s animosity toward Obama is legendary.” The New York Post reported in June 2013. Just a year earlier, Clinton was urging his wife to oppose Obama’s re-election. Hillary deferred, citing loyalty, but her husband was offended by what he perceived was Obama’s slight against him. According to sources quoted in Edward Klein’s book “The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House”, Clinton fumed:

“I’ve heard more from Bush, asking for my advice, than I’ve heard from Obama. I have no relationship with the president — none whatsoever. Obama doesn’t know how to be president. He doesn’t know how the world works. He’s incompetent. He’s an amateur!”- Bill Clinton, as quoted in “The Amateur”

As the 2012 campaign took its toll on Obama’s approval ratings (mainly due to the IRS scandal and, ironically, Hillary’s Benghazi and e-mail scandal), Obama was left no choice but to reach out to Bill. Clinton proposed a deal.

Clinton agreed to give the nominating address at the Convention. In exchange, he demanded Obama endorse Hillary Clinton as his successor. Bill held up his side of the agreement stumping on Obama’s behalf on the campaign trail and giving a rousing speech at the convention. Obama was re-elected but once back at the White House, he began to have second thoughts, sending signals he preferred to stay neutral in the next election, as is tradition with sitting Presidents.

When word of this reached Bill Clinton, he insisted Obama go on 60 Minutes with Secretary Clinton, to publicly affirm his support for Hillary. The result was a hastily organized and somewhat uncomfortable interview with Hillary and Obama on CBS’s 60 Minutes.

What made Obama’s deal with Bill Clinton personally heartbreaking for the sitting President, was it meant his Vice President and good friend, Joseph Biden, would have to go it alone in the 2016 election, should he run. After all, Vice Presidents Gore, Bush and Mondale all secured their party’s nomination after serving as deputies to successful sitting presidents.

Biden briefly toyed with a 2016 run against Hillary, but the death of his son, Beau, wore heavily on him, emotionally and financially.  At one point, he told President Obama that he and Jill would have to sell their home, to care for Beau’s family. As Biden recalls it, “[Obama] said, ‘I’ll give you the money. Whatever you need, I’ll give you the money. Don’t, Joe — promise me. Promise me.’ I said, ‘I don’t think we’re going to have to anyway.’ He said, ‘promise me'”.

Biden enjoys a close relationship with Hillary and was acutely aware of the historic potential for a first female President. Since Clinton’s loss to Trump in November last year, Biden has been frank in his assessment of her Presidential campaign. “You didn’t hear a word about that husband and wife working, making 100,000 bucks a year, two kids, struggling and scared to death. They used to be our constituency,” Biden told the LA Times. “I don’t think she ever really figured it out, and by the way, I think it was really hard for her to decide to run,” the former VP says.

Instead of launching his own Presidential run, Biden campaigned tirelessly for his friend, Hillary Clinton, appearing at no less than 83 campaign events, all while mourning the loss of Beau.

Last week, Biden announced he’s launching a Political Action Committee as a way to ‘stay involved’ in politics, but many are speculating the move will lead to a Presidential run in 2020. There is a scenario, which could see Biden in the White House two years earlier. The following is my opinion and is based solely on what is publicly known about the investigation of the Trump-Russia affair.

As I’ve previously explained, in my post on the seriousness of the investigation into Donald Trump’s involvement with Russia, impeachment would be the likely course of events in more ordinary times. These, however, are not ordinary times. Far from it.

Even after FBI Director James Comey lays out the case for obstruction of justice against Trump before senate committee on Thursday this week, Republicans are unlikely to launch impeachment proceedings. This is based on political expediency but also because it’s now suspected House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) both accepted Russian money for the their part’s 2016 election season. (I wrote about it in my post “What America Needs Now”.) They are not only beholden to Trump, but they may be owned by Russian President Vladimir Putin and very possibly complicit in the entire affair.

This could mean voters have to wait until the 2018 mid-term elections to exercise their vote in opposition to Donald J. Trump. In so doing, they will also have a chance to elect the next President of the US. If Democrats win the house (which would mean flipping 22 Republican house seats) and launch impeachment proceedings, they could put a new President in the White House before 2020.

Should Joe Biden run for one of those House seats and win, he could become the House Speaker. The House could then impeach President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Michael Pence, paving the way for Biden to become the 46th President of the United States. Biden will be 74 on mid-term Election Day in November 2018 and 75 when the new Congress takes office in January 2019. The next presidential election will still happen in November 2020.

Obvioulsy, this scenario holds for whomever is House Speaker in the event of a Democratic win. Hillary Clinton and even Barack Obama could run for the House (the U.S. Constitution doesn’t allow for a President to be elected for a third term, but it doesn’t prohibit a third term, through succession) but Clinton and Obama would both receive serious opposition from the Trump base, at a time of considerable division in the country. Biden’s blue collar appeal, hopeful vision, impeccable credentials and no ties to a corruptable money machine will appeal across the board as the man to lead America out of the gloom in which we find ourselves. “Joe always says, ‘If you’re not on your way up, you’re on your way down,” the New York Times quoted someone close to Biden as saying in 2013. Sometimes, you’re down so much, the only way to go is back up.

The post How Joe Biden Could Be President By January 2019 appeared first on Narativ.

Jared Kushner and his father-in-law, President Donald J. Trump, have more connecting them than Ivanka Trump. 

On April 19 last year, Donald J. Trump was taking a victory lap after winning the Republican Party nomination. In his speech, he mentioned by name a number of bold-named businessmen who were there to hear him crow. Carl Icahn, Howard Lorber and Steven Roth, the CEO of Vornado Trust.

“The great Steven Roth,” Trump extolled. “Steve’s building a big building on Central Park South, it’s a tremendous success.”

“I said, ‘Steve, congratulations on the building,'” The newly-minted Republican presidential nominee said.

“He said, ‘Donald, it’s nothing compared to what’s happening with you.’ Is that right? My man!”

Trump and Roth have been friends (and sometimes business foes) for over 30 years.  They jointly own the 1290 Sixth Avenue office tower. Trump and Roth became business partners after Trump threatened to sue his former partners for trying to sell it to another party without his permission. 1290 Sixth Avenue became the second largest in Vornado’s portfolio but by no means the only marquee property in Roth’s sprawling Manhattan empire.

One other is 666 Fifth Avenue, which Roth’s Vornado Trust co-owns with Jared Kushner’s family. Jared made news in Manhattan’s real estate circles when he purchased the trophy building for $1.8 billion, using mostly borrowed money. By all accounts, Kushner overpaid for the building by paying twice as much per-square-foot than any other Manhattan building sale before it, according to the New York Post. Tellingly, the deal closed on Jared’s 26th birthday, Jan. 10, 2007.

It was an expensive birthday gift by any measure but for the young real estate scion it represented a giant statement to Manhattan. Two years earlier, his father, Charles Kushner, was imprisoned for 14 months after pleading guilty for tax evasion charges and for making illegal campaign contributions. Before exiting prison, Charles turned over his holdings to his eldest son to manage a business free of an ex-convict CEO. Jared was just 25. If his father’s prison sentence wasn’t enough for the young heir to handle, the circumstances that led to it, tore the Kushner clan apart.

Before being charged in 2005, Charles Kushner heard his brother-in-law was talking to investigators about his misdeeds. To gain leverage over him, Kushner paid a “very attractive, high-end call girl $10,000 to lure his brother-in-law to a Bridgewater, NJ, motel after she pretended to need a ride when her car broke down,” according to the Post. Jared’s father had the whole motel encounter taped and sent it to his sister, Esther. She turned the tape into the feds. Classic kompromat.

Now it seems, Kushner family history could be repeating itself. Investigators want to know if Jared has kompromat all of his own. Only this time, the disparaging evidence is financial in nature and it’s the Russians who could be holding it over him.

666 Fifth Avenue, The trophy building Jared bought for $1.8 Bn in 2007 has proved to be a financial noose around him and the family. By 2008, the building was generating just 70 cents on every dollar it owed.  Under pressure, Jared was forced to sell the pricey store space for $525 million to a partnership in 2008 and a 49 percent stake in the office portion to Stephen Ross’ Vornado in 2011. Yes, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump share more than wife and daughter, they share a business partner. A $1.2 Bn mortgage on Jared’s trophy building is due in just two years which unpaid, could destroy the family fortune.

Congressional investigators and the FBI are now probing a secret meeting Jared had with Vladimir Putin’s banker at Trump Tower in New York in December last year. The White House and the Russian bank have offered conflicting explanations for the meeting between Kushner and Sergei Gorkov.

The post Ties That Bind appeared first on Narativ.