President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday he intends to nominate developer Charles Kushnerfather of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, for ambassador to France.
Trump made the announcement in a post on Truth Social, calling Charles Kushner a “great business leader, philanthropist and businessman.”
Kushner is the founder of Kushner Companies, a real estate company. Jared Kushner is a former Trump senior White House adviser who is married to Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka.
The elder Kushner was pardoned by Trump in December 2020 after pleading guilty years earlier to tax evasion and making illegal campaign donations.
Prosecutors stated that Charles Kushner, after discovering that his brother-in-law was cooperating with federal authorities in the investigation, hatched a plan for revenge and intimidation.
Kushner hired a prostitute to lure his brother-in-law, then arranged for the encounter in a New Jersey motel room to be recorded on a hidden camera and sent to his own sister, the man’s wife, prosecutors said.
Kushner eventually pleaded guilty to 18 counts, including tax evasion and witness tampering. He was sentenced in 2005 to two years in prison — the most he could have received under a plea deal, but less than what Chris Christie, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey at the time and later governor and Republican presidential candidate, had sought.
Christie blamed Jared Kushner for his firing from Trump’s transition team in 2016, calling Charles Kushner’s transgressions “one of the most heinous, heinous crimes that I prosecuted while I was US attorney general.”
Trump and the elder Kushner knew each other in real estate circles, and their children married in 2009.
