27 June, 2017
The Kushner conflict is the senior White House official held positions as an adviser to the Trump campaign and employee at his real estate company when the firm received the loan from Deutsche Bank.
The Deutsche loan helped Kushner's company purchase four retail floors in the former New York Times building in Midtown Manhattan, and get $74 million more than it originally paid for the property.
The Trump family has also received loans from Deutsche Bank.
Deutsche Bank loans to Trump and his family members have come under scrutiny.
Deutsche Bank is one of the few banks that is still willing to lend to the president, whose businesses have filed for bankruptcy six times.
Bloomberg reports that the Justice Department has requested records connected to money laundering from Deutsche Bank as part of the investigation.
Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee previously asked the bank to disclose the results of an internal investigation it carried out into whether Trump benefited from improper Russian money transfers.
Deutsche Bank refused to disclose any information, citing privacy laws.
The same letter raised the possibility that Kushner had been subjected to a similar investigation, though did not mention him by name.
The Democrats wrote that it was important to learn more about Deutsche Bank loans to Trump and family members to determine whether they were "in any way connected to Russian Federation".
It came with a so-called "bad boy" clause, which allows the bank to hold guarantors responsible for debt in case there is fraud or misuse of the funds. "The way to look at this is, so long as you're not a "bad boy" and don't do anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about", James Schwarz, a real estate lawyer who is an expert in such clauses, tells the Post. "To the extent you would do something fraudulent, then you have things to worry about".
Trump's financial disclosure, released by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics this month, shows liabilities for Trump of at least $130 million to Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, The New York Times notes, including at least $50 million for the Old Post Office that houses Trump's Washington, D.C. hotel. But Kushner's lawyer Dan Fox told the Post he would have advised Kushner to disclose the loan in his government ethics reports.
A former ethics official said he would have recommended that Kushner include the loan on the disclosure because of how large it is and the implications of being the guarantor of the loan. "It's extremely important, and I don't care where it comes from".
Read the full Washington Post report here.
Jared Kushner did disclose with the OGE that he and his mother did have a personal line of credit with the German bank up to $25 million.
