Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s Washington, D.C., landlord is one step closer to getting permission to mine copper near federally protected land alongside Minnesota’s Boundary Waters refuge.
The Daily Beast says that Trump and Kushner rent a luxury home in the Kalorama neighborhood of D.C. from Chilean billionaire Andrónico Luksic, who also owns the mining company Antofagasta. The Obama administration gave Luksic a firm “no” when he sought to mine in the area, saying that Antofagasta’s request was deemed a potential environmental disaster for the environmentally fragile zone.
But now a Trump Interior Department spokesman says that the Obama administration made “a flawed decision” in their last days and is reexamining Antofagasta’s request. Antofagasta subsidiary Twin Metals Minnesota is allegedly spending big money to lobby Washington and convince those who are still against the mining project.
CNN reports that the Boundary Waters area in Minnesota, which borders Canada, is “a vast landscape of federally protected lakes and forests,” according to the report from the Obama administration, and this possible change is policy is raising eyebrows because of the connection between Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and Luksic.
Trump and Kushner rent the home for $15,000 per month from the Chilean mining company owner.
A watchdog claims that Ivanka Trump has violated a federal ethics law by promoting Donald Trump’s political interests even as she acts in an official capacity for the White House. https://t.co/HUIHrPOWut
— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) June 21, 2019
There seems to be a difference of opinion whether or not the two parties were known to each other before the rental agreement was signed, but Rodrigo Terré, the chairman of Luksic’s family investment office (which handled the purchase of the property initially), says that both sides knew the identity of the other when the rental agreement was signed.
Yet, Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Kushner’s lawyer Abbe Lowell, said that Trump and Kushner “had decided to lease the home before knowing the landlord’s identity.” But when The New York Times contacted Mirijanian to ask if the couple knew the homeowner’s identity before they signed, he did not respond.
Ethics expert Arthur Andrew Lopez, who worked as a government ethics official for 20 years, says he “would have cautioned (the couple) against renting the home, given the Luksic family’s business before the administration.”
“There may be nothing wrong,” Lopez said. “But it doesn’t look good.”
It’s no surprise that Trump and Kushner chose to live in the Kalorama neighborhood, as it was where the Obamas were living after moving out of the White House and is also nearby the Embassy of Oman and the French ambassador’s residence, so the area is used to higher than usual security, reports The Inquisitr . It’s unclear if Trump and Kushner are going to continue to rent or buy a home in Washington if her father is re-elected.