Jared Kushner is accused of siphoning more than $600 million in campaign funds, including some used to secretly pay members of Donald Trump’s family in what a legal expert calls the “largest political wire fraud in history.”
Business Insider reported on Friday that the son-in-law of President Trump set up a shell company that secretly paid out close to half of the funds raised in the 2020 presidential race. The report noted that Kushner directed close allies to sit on the board of the shell company, including sister-in-law Lara Trump, Trump campaign CFO Sean Dollman, and John Pence, the nephew of Vice President Mike Pence.
The report claimed that the organization, incorporated as American Made Media Consultants Corporation and American Made Media Consultants LLC, would go on to spend $617 million of the total $1.26 billion raised. A top adviser to Trump’s re-election effort said that Kushner operated near-total control, with all decisions on the spending coming through his approval. Business Insider reported that investigators may already be looking into the spending.
This reportedly led to frustration among some of the campaign staff, who were left in the dark about the organization and how it operated. The report added that little has been publicly disclosed about the company, including how the money was spent.
Seth Abramson, a law professor and political columnist, said the allegations may explain why the re-election outfit abruptly dropped former manager Brad Parscale earlier this year, noting that Parscale was allegedly conducting an audit that Kushner had “secreted in a dodgy shell corp to enrich the family.” Abramson said that Kushner may not end up facing federal charges if his father-in-law issues a pardon, despite the scheme amounting to federal fraud.
“This also appears to render it an absolute certainty that Jared Kushner will receive one of his father’s preemptive pardons—but also that this pardon will be an overt attempt to shield the entire family from criminal liability for the largest political wire fraud in history,” he tweeted .
There have been a number of reports indicating that Trump may be planning to issue pardons to close members of his family to protect them against potential prosecution.
Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump, has reportedly been involved in another investigation into spending from the Trump team. As ABC News reported, she was deposed by the Washington, D.C., Attorney General’s Office as part of a probe into the 2017 Inauguration Committee and whether they overpaid for events at Trump Organization properties.