Long Branch, New Jersey, just minutes from Bruce Springsteen’s hometown of Asbury Park and a 10-minute speedboat trip from Fire Island, New York, maybe isn’t exactly on your radar because its name is so well-known. In fact, maybe you would rather just call it the “Jersey Shore,” like the show that captivated so many a few years back.
Either way, it’s about to be home to a new property being built by Jared Kushner — well, mostly by Kushner. It’s also got the backing of local officials, who have pledged more than $20 million in bonds. That’s, uh… taxpayer money. Building a Kushner property. Anyway, that’s not the bombshell in this piece, although it deserves a look on its own.
No, the big story here is who Jared is pairing with to manage one of the hotels being built on the property. I’ll give you a hint: It rhymes with ‘dump’ and was most recently seen being pried off the side of a hotel in Panama with a crowbar.
That’s right, despite the fact that Donald Trump announced his intentions long since to “divest” himself from his companies so that he could ethically work in the White House without being seen as making a profit off the presidency, it turns out that the Trump Organization is still swinging his name like a hammer to make a buck where it can. Kushner has been in talks to have the Trump Organization manage a hotel located at the very center of “Pier Village,” the oceanfront development that Kushner has been building for more than two years.
The ethics involved here are, to say the very least, murky. Neither Trump nor Kushner should still have personal financial stakes in properties that could profit from American taxes — let alone be subsidized by them — yet both do, and have no intention of stopping anytime soon.
Although the deal isn’t inherently illegal, it certainly looks bad for both Trump and Kushner. And it’s hard to even believe that either man would want to give Robert Mueller yet another business venture to scour for misdeeds. Surely there are t’s uncrossed and i’s undotted.
Originally Published on oppositionreport
