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Jared Kushner Discloses Dozens More Assets in Revised Financial Filing

Ivanka Trump disclosed $2.5 million in salary and severance from her father’s businesses

By Rebecca Ballhaus and Richard Rubin Updated July 21, 2017 9:49 p.m. ET 202 COMMENTS
https://www.wsj.com/articles/jared-kushner-discloses-dozens-more-assets-in-revised-financial-filing-1500678017

WASHINGTON— Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a senior White House adviser, on Friday released a revised version of his personal financial disclosure showing his initial filing omitted dozens of assets, including commercial real estate, bonds issued by the New York water and sewer authority, a personal art collection and a New Jersey liquor license.

According to the disclosure, 77 assets were “inadvertently omitted” from Mr. Kushner’s earlier form and were added during what the form’s footnotes describe as the “ordinary review” process with the government ethics office. Some 60 of those were related to one collection of bonds. The updated form also provides additional information about 77 other assets, offering more detail about the structure of Mr. Kushner’s real estate assets. Mr. Kushner’s initial disclosure, released in March, hadn’t then been certified by the Office of Government Ethics.

Ivanka Trump, who is the president’s daughter, a senior White House aide and Mr. Kushner’s wife, also disclosed her finances for the first time on Friday, including some details that had been previously disclosed on her husband’s form. Ms. Trump didn’t become an official White House employee until late March, so she had later deadlines. Unlike Mr. Kushner’s, her form hasn’t yet been certified by the ethics office, as required by law.

“Jared and Ivanka have followed each of the required steps in their transition from private citizens to federal officials,” Jamie Gorelick, a lawyer for the couple, said in a statement.

The new disclosure shows Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump collectively hold between $206 million and $760 million in assets. Mr. Kushner’s initial disclosure put the value of their assets between $240 million and $740 million. The changes in values may reflect divestments since the last filing and the broad range of valuation for assets.

The concentration of wealth in Mr. Trump’s White House and cabinet has meant that his appointees have faced a more complex and costly divestment and disclosure process than in previous administrations. Appointees are required to disclose their financial holdings and divest themselves of any assets that could present a potential conflict of interest with their new posts.

Don Fox, who served as the ethics office’s general counsel from 2008 to 2013 and as acting director from 2011 until 2013, said the number of omissions on Mr. Kushner’s initial form was unusually high. “That strikes me as a lot,” he said. But Mr. Fox, who was tapped to serve as general counsel by a Bush appointee, said it isn’t “terribly unusual” for wealthy individuals, particularly those who lack previous government experience, to need to revise their forms.

Ms. Gorelick said earlier this year that it was “very normal” for a financial disclosure form to be revised and that Mr. Kushner’s lawyers had prepared the form on his behalf. The Office of Government Ethics, which is charged with reviewing and certifying administration officials’ financial disclosure forms, didn’t respond to a question about whether it was customary to revise the form to the extent Mr. Kushner did.

The disclosures show Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump will both continue to be passive investors in each of their family’s real-estate businesses, receiving income from those holdings but not playing a role in decision-making. They will recuse themselves from government decisions that present conflicts of interest, a lawyer for Mr. Kushner said, though the White House isn’t releasing the ethics agreements that detail that process.

To enter the White House, Mr. Kushner resigned from 266 outside positions and Ms. Trump resigned from 292, their lawyer said, largely at subsidiaries of their families’ multilayered real-estate businesses.

In his initial disclosure, Mr. Kushner didn’t identify business relationships with Goldman Sachs Group and billionaires George Soros and Peter Thiel through a real-estate tech startup called Cadre that Mr. Kushner co-founded and currently partly owns, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year. An investment in Cadre valued at between $5 million and $25 million was included on the new disclosure, which showed Mr. Kushner resigned from his position with Cadre in January.

The lawyer for Mr. Kushner declined to comment on the delay. The filing says the Cadre investment was previously included under another umbrella investment and not specifically disclosed. The filing also shows Mr. Kushner reduced his ownership share in Cadre.

Also among the omitted assets is an art collection valued at between $5 million and $25 million. The attorney said he hadn’t initially included the collection because it was for “personal enjoyment,” not held for investment purposes, but ultimately decided on disclosure.

A Wall Street Journal analysis of securities and other filings earlier this year found Mr. Kushner also didn’t disclose loans totaling at least $1 billion, from more than 20 lenders, to properties and companies he partly owned. He also has provided personal guarantees on more than $300 million of the debt, according to the analysis. A lawyer advising Mr. Kushner said Friday he isn’t legally required to disclose those loans and they weren’t included in the latest disclosure.

Mr. Kushner has also filed revisions to a form required to obtain a security clearance that, in its initial form, didn’t list contacts between him and foreign government officials. He subsequently submitted information about “over 100 calls or meetings with representatives of more than 20 countries,” Ms. Gorelick has said in a statement. Those contacts weren’t made public.

Ms. Trump received $2.5 million in “salary and severance” from her father’s business operations, according to Friday’s disclosure. She also received a $787,500 advance for her book, “Women Who Work.”

According to the form, she is at least a part owner of T International Realty LLC, TTT Consulting LLC and TTTT Venture LLC, assets she valued at between $11 million and $55 million in total. Those entities are affiliated with the Trump Organization through which Ms. Trump and her siblings receive consulting and management fees, the lawyer said.

Instead of getting those fees, Ms. Trump now has an agreement with those entities to get guaranteed annual payments totaling $1.5 million, which means that the income is tied less directly to the success of the family business.

Separately, Ms. Trump has her own clothing, accessories and lifestyle business, which she valued at more than $50 million. That business, which has been placed in a trust, generated more than $5 million from January 2016 through March 8, 2017 and another $1 million to $5 million since then. She is no longer involved in decision-making there.

The disclosure also shows Ms. Trump earned $50,000 for her work overseeing a trust for some of the children of Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of both 21st Century Fox and News Corp . Ms. Trump resigned at the end of last year as a trustee. 21st Century Fox and News Corp, which owns The Wall Street Journal, share common ownership.

Ms. Trump held positions, typically vice president or executive vice president, with more than 200 entities that are part of her father’s real-estate business.

She has equity interests in relatively few of the entities. She owns part of the company’s hotel in Washington, a stake valued at between $5 million and $25 million that generated $2.4 million in revenue from January 2016 to May 2017, including a period when the hotel wasn’t yet open. She remains a passive investor in the Washington hotel and receives income from it.

Walter Shaub, who resigned as Office of Government Ethics director earlier this month after clashing repeatedly with the White House and who has called for overhauling federal ethics rules, on Friday criticized the White House for installing the agency’s general counsel, David Apol, as acting head of the agency.

Protocol calls for the post to automatically go to the agency’s chief of staff until the president officially appoints a new director. Mr. Shaub said Friday said the move suggested the White House “may be hoping to engineer looser oversight.”

The ethics office and the White House didn’t respond to requests for comment on Mr. Shaub’s complaint.

—Coulter Jones contributed to this article.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jared-kushner-discloses-dozens-more-assets-in-revised-financial-filing-1500678017