St. Martins Press. - Kushner, Inc.: greed, ambition, corruption: the extraordinary story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump

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For my newly adopted country, the United States of America

January 20, 2017

On almost any other Friday night, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner would have been at home with their three children, celebrating Shabbat. But this Friday night was different: the couple had received a rabbinical dispensation to attend the inaugural balls in Washington, D.C.

This night was also different for them because Donald TrumpIvankas father and Jareds father-in-lawwas celebrating being sworn in as President of the United States. And the whole world knew that his daughter and son-in-law were his most trusted advisers, ambassadors, and coconspirators. They were an attractive coupleextremely wealthy and, now, extraordinarily powerful.

Ivanka looked like Cinderella, her blond hair in a loose updo that drew attention to her diamond drop earrings and the low neckline of a crystal-encrusted champagne evening gown by designer Carolina Herrera. After only a few minutes of watching Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, shuffle awkwardly about the podium at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center for their first dance as president and First Lady, Ivanka and her husband swept onto the stage, deftly deflecting attention from Donald Trumps clumsy moves, as she had so often done over the past twenty years. The crowd roared in approval, and the couple waved to their rapturous admirers. They were now Americas prince and princess.

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A mile or so away, Jareds father, Charlie Kushner, and his mother, Seryl Kushner, were celebrating Shabbat with the rest of the Kushner family in D.C.s Trump International Hotel. As the sun set, the family and some of their friendsforty or so peoplehad gathered in a meeting room on the hotels lower level to pray. At the dinner that followed, Charlie turned nasty toward Jareds brother, Josh Kushner, a tall, dark-haired thirty-three-year-old.

Josh, we expect you to do the right thing, Charlie told his youngest son, according to one source. The person you are with is not the right person.

Josh absorbed his fathers abuse in silence. Everyone there knew that Charlie was talking about Joshs long relationship with Victorias Secret model Karlie Kloss. According to multiple sources, Charlie and Seryl believed Kloss was an unsuitable match for their son, and not only because she wasnt Jewish. (Jared had supported his parents on this point.) If any of Charlies friends dared suggest that this seemed harsh, and even hypocritical, given how the couple had eventually welcomed Ivanka, a convert, into their family, Charlie and Seryl strongly disagreed. Ivanka, they explained, was different. She was a Trump. She was also, like Jared, real estate royalty. And shed attended an Ivy League school, the University of Pennsylvania. Kloss grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and hadnt even been to college when she and Josh began dating.

That evening, Charlie kept needling Josh about his girlfriend, even after family friends joined the group. Joshs close friend, oil heir Michael Mikey Hess, stood up and performed the opening number from Hamilton, a rap song: How does a bastard, orphan son of a whore and a Scotsman dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by Providence impoverished in squalor grow up to be a hero and a scholar? Rupert Murdochs ex-wife, Wendi Deng Murdoch, dressed in a yellow and white floral dress, read a passage from a Jewish prayer book.

After dinner, many of the attendees went upstairs to join investment banker Aryeh Bourkoff at his table in the main atrium, where other prominent guests, such as Greg Maffei, president and CEO of Liberty Media, and Beau Ferrari, then an executive vice president at Univision, also stopped by.

As the clock ticked toward midnight, hotel guests returned from the many inaugural balls and waited for champagne corks to pop and balloons to drop from the ceiling in the hotels atrium. Among them were Baltimore real estate heir Reed Cordish and his wife, Maggie, both friends of Jared and Ivanka, and both hired to work in Trumps administration. And in came Trumps pick for treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and his fiance, Louise Linton, along with Mnuchins brother, Alan, and his wife, Alessandra.

Everyone seemed elated, especially Charlie. The Kushners, it seemed, would finally get the recognition Charlie felt they had long deserved. Maybe, thanks to the ascension of Jared and Ivanka into the White House, Charlie would even get a presidential pardon and exorcise the demons from his past. It was truly an auspicious night for the Kushners. The family was kissing, recalled one person who was there that night. Everyone was happy. Anything seemed possible for the Kushners on this evening, perhaps even forgiveness for the familys many sins.

A lot of these children who are brought up with a survivor mode, where the parents had survived, they dont trust a lot of people. ALAN HAMMER, FAMILY FRIEND AND FORMER COLLEAGUE OF CHARLIE KUSHNER

In 1949, Jared Kushners grandparents, Joseph and Rae Kushner, arrived by ship in New York City, along with their infant daughter, Linda. After fleeing Poland and spending three years in a refugee camp in Italy, the Kushners were finally about to begin their new lives in America. Yet the scars the couple bore from World War II were visible in every aspect of their livesand would also be seen in the lives of their children and grandchildren. Everything we did was against the relief of the Holocaust, one family member explained. Surviving, growing, getting rich, power, politics this was all to spite the Nazis, to spite what they did to us.

What the Nazis did to Rae and Joseph Kushner is a familiar but harrowing story, one Rae, a striking, dark-haired woman with brown eyes, recounted matter-of-factly in 1982 in a long interview with sociologist Sidney Langer at the Holocaust Resource Center at Kean University. Rae, who died in 2004, was born in 1923 in the small Polish town of Novogrudok. Her father was a successful furrier, but in the 1930s, her relatively comfortable existence was shattered by the escalation of anti-Semitism in Poland. About half of her town was Jewish, and with the ascent of the Nazis in Germany, some of them, including her family, wanted to escape to British-controlled Palestine. But because of byzantine laws, it was difficult for them to leave Europe, and by the time German and Soviet troops invaded Poland in 1939, at the start of World War II, the Kushners were trapped. The doors of the world were closed to us, Rae said.

In 1941, after the German army pushed Soviet troops out of Poland, the Nazis forced Rae and her family into a walled-off ghetto, where roughly thirty thousand Jews were required to wear a yellow Star of David. She soon realized the Nazis were systematically destroying the Jews. The doctors, lawyers, and teachers were murdered in the beginning. The Germans were afraid that the intellectuals would organize a rebellion. The next victims were the elderly and sick and even the children, as the Nazis only wanted Jews who could work. In 1943, Raes mother and one of her sisters were shot dead. We couldnt hide anyone. There was no time, Rae said. The Germans threw the bodies into a grave that was a half mile from the ghetto. We saw it with our own eyes.

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