Report: Saudi Arabia Concluded Jared Kushner’s Investment Firm Was a Joke, Gave Him $2 Billion Anyway – Vanity Fair

Jared Kushner did a famously bad job as a senior adviser to the president of the United States, so much so that the “Controversies” section on his Wikipedia page should be titled “F-ckups You’ve Probably Heard About.” From the prolonged government shutdown and a Middle East peace plan that involved calling Palestinians “hysterical and stupid,” to the initial dismissal of COVID-19 as not actually being a public health emergency and the scrapping of nationwide testing because the virus was primarily affecting Democratic states, all of young Kush’s hits would be there, and the takeaway would be that on a near daily basis, he screwed up big time.

As we’ve noted a number of times around these parts, though, the one exception to the “Jared Kushner is bad at this” rule was when it came to the task of cultivating friendships with some of the world’s worst human-rights abusers. Specifically, Kushner was a huge fan of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, with whom he texted via WhatsApp and built a relationship that one congressman told Vanity Fair’s Abigail Tracy “stunned” him, saying, “It looks bad. It smells bad. It is bad.” In addition to seemingly having no problem with the prince’s decision to jail his own family members, or the disastrous Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, Kushner defended MBS amid the murder of Saudi dissident (and U.S. resident) Jamal Khashoggi, and he reportedly urged Donald Trump to support the prince, arguing that the whole situation—wherein a man was kidnapped, killed, and dismembered via bone saw—would blow over. And while that level of of ass-kissing and murder-excusing would keep a person with a functioning moral compass up at night, for Kushner it has paid off—literally.

On Sunday, The New York Times reported that just six months after leaving the White House, the former first son-in-law’s newly formed private equity firm, Affinity Partners, was awarded a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which is led by MBS. That the kingdom would fork over that kind of cash to Kushner is obviously ridiculously shady and, as Nick Penniman, the founder and chief executive of good-government organization Issue One, told The Times, “swampy and seemingly hypocritical.” But the cash alone is not even the funniest part, and by funniest we mean insanely unethical and wildly corrupt. No, the unethical and corrupt part is that the people who perform due diligence for the Saudis’ Public Investment Fund concluded Kushner’s firm was a joke and that he might make them look bad…and then the board, headed by MBS, gave him the money anyway. Because…y’know.

Per The Times:

A panel that screens investments for the main Saudi sovereign wealth fund cited concerns about the proposed deal with Mr. Kushner’s newly formed private equity firm, Affinity Partners, previously undisclosed documents show.

Those objections included: “the inexperience of the Affinity Fund management”; the possibility that the kingdom would be responsible for “the bulk of the investment and risk”; due diligence on the fledgling firm’s operations that found them “unsatisfactory in all aspects”; a proposed asset management fee that “seems excessive”; and “public relations risks” from Mr. Kushner’s prior role as a senior adviser to his father-in-law, former President Donald J. Trump, according to minutes of the panel’s meeting last June 30.

According to The Times, every member of the panel who was present at the meeting “stated that they [were] not in favor” of investing with Kushner. But it seems a powerful friend intervened on his behalf:

The panel’s rules require the votes of a majority of those present to pass a resolution, the minutes note. Mr. al-Rumayyan, in this case, suggested raising the panel’s “views and decision” to the fund’s board, led by the crown prince…within days, the board had passed a resolution approving the deal, documents show.

To give you an idea of how undeserving of the money Kushner was, it appears the Saudi panel may not have been the only one with grave reservations about investing in his firm; according to The Times, the Boy Prince of New Jersey planned to raise a total of $7 billion but “so far he appears to have signed up few other major investors.” As of March 31, the main fund had just $2.5 billion under management, meaning the $2 billion from Saudi Arabia makes up the vast majority of the assets. If only some of the other would-be investors had approved a plan to chop a man to pieces, and Kushner had defended them on the world stage!

And if that doesn’t strike you as shady enough, know that not only did the Saudi fund overcome its hesitations and write a very large check to Kushner, it also invested, per The Times, “twice as much and on more generous terms…than it did at about the same time with former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin—who was also starting a new fund—even though Mr. Mnuchin had a record as a successful investor before entering government.” Documents viewed by The Times show the Saudis “agreed to pay Mr. Mnuchin’s firm only a 1 percent asset management fee, compared to 1.25 percent for Mr. Kushner’s,” meaning that on a $2 billion investment, Kushner’s Affinity would be paid at least $25 million a year regardless of profits.

Is any of this illegal? No, not that we know of (thus far). Is it slippery as hell? Should it make non-compromised people’s stomachs turn? Yes and yes! Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, told The Times Kushner’s relationship with the Saudis is “extremely troubling,” saying the investment looks like a “reward” for Kushner’s helpfulness while Trump was in office, and “an investment in Kushner,” should Trump win a second term. 

A spokesman for the Saudi fund declined to detail its investment process to The Times. In a statement, Kushner’s firm told the paper: “Affinity, like many other top investment firms, is proud to have PIF and other leading organizations that have careful screening criteria, as investors.”

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Elon Musk was apparently just kidding about joining Twitter board

When Twitter announced last week that Elon Musk was joining its board after amassing a 9.2% stake in the company, a lot of people became extremely freaked out about all the terrible things the Tesla founder and billionaire might do to the social network, given that he is arguably its biggest troll. Those worried weren’t just, like, random users of the site who don’t like the idea of an edit button, or global citizens concerned that he would let Donald Trump back on and hasten the downfall of democracy, but actual Twitter employees, who reportedly “raged on internal message boards, expressing fears Musk [would] sabotage their culture and make it hard to do their jobs.” So the news that the guy—who previously used his account to suggest that Justin Trudeau is worse than Hitler, refer to one of Thai cave divers who helped rescue a bunch of children as “pedo guy,” and compare Twitter’s current CEO to Joseph Stalin—is not, in fact, joining the board should come as a huge relief, right? Wrong!

Per CNBC:

Musk’s reversal of his decision to join Twitter’s board opens the door to a hostile takeover and could lead to additional volatility in the stock, according to analysts. Musk’s decision not to join Twitter’s board means he’s no longer limited to owning just 14.9% of the company. Now, many analysts suggest the Tesla CEO could bolster his stake and eventually try and establish control.

″[T]his weekend’s change-up spares the company from having to deal with a renegade director tweeting about board-level discussions. That would have been untenable,” Gordon Haskett Research Advisors’ Don Bilson wrote in a note Monday. “The flip side to this is TWTR must deal with a wild-card investor that already owns 9% of the company and has the resources to buy the remaining 91%. As volatile as Musk is, we could see a move like that made shortly. Or we could never see it all. This overhang that TWTR now lives beneath certainly qualifies as a distraction.”

There’s a word for that and it’s called purgatory. Which, if we know Musk, and we think we do, is somehow all part of his plan just to fuck with everyone for his own, very expensive* amusement.

*Expensive to people who didn’t reportedly make $13,812,785.38 per hour last year. To him, it’s literally chump change.

Domestic assault accusations and years of fact-checkable lies are apparently extremely appealing to Georgia voters

Report: Vladimir Putin might use Biden’s support of Ukraine as a pretext to do thing he’s been doing since 2016

Elsewhere!

Russia’s oligarchs and their long record of masking fortunes (Washington Post)

Champion boxer turned Kyiv mayor becomes a rousing wartime leader (Washington Post)

Philadelphia becomes first major U.S. city to reinstate its indoor mask mandate as cases rise (CNN)

The January 6 Committee Prepares to Go Public (Intelligencer)

With Biden’s voting rights push stalled, Georgia activists regroup (Washington Post)

Paul Gosar, Far-Right Incumbent, Faces GOP Challengers in Arizona (NYT)

U.S. Weighs Shift to Support Hague Court as It Investigates Russian Atrocities (NYT)

Cat Used as Weapon In Domestic Battery (TSG)

Spain probes private taxidermy museum with 1,000 animals (AP)

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