Original subtitles

[rain pattering]

[man] Uh, so, this is my apartment. Um...

Please, come on in.

This is where it was leaking completely for many months,

uh, and this is maybe the fourth, fifth time they've put paint on top of it.

[woman 1] The bathroom,

the entire ceiling just totally collapsed.

All the plaster came down, the wood was gone.

Here are a couple of bricks in the toilet.

[woman 2] While they did construction,

I developed respiratory issues from the dust.

My nose actually still has not recovered fully.

[woman 3] We get a fee for everything.

[man] Literally just, like, last week, we just paid out another $400,

just-- in just random fees.

[woman] I was served this summons. I was very confused.

I had no idea

who JK2 Westminster was and why they were suing me.

But I know what the "JK" in JK2 Westminster stands for now.

[interviewer] What does JK stand for?

Jared Kushner.

-[cameras clicking] -[photographers chattering]

["Lie, Cheat, Steal" by Run the Jewels plays]

♪ Lie, cheat, steal, kill, win ♪

♪ Everybody doing it ♪

♪ Lie, cheat, steal, kill, win ♪

♪ Everybody doing it ♪

♪ Lie, cheat, steal, kill, win ♪

[reporter] Jared Kushner is now the world's most powerful son-in-law.

[Kushner's voice] I was taught if there's a wall, figure out a way to go above it,

figure out a way to go around it, go through it.

Both sides of the aisle say that he is the steady hand.

We try to live in the highway of the extra mile

where we say if there's a way to get it done, we're going to find it.

Jared is such a hidden genius that no one understands.

[Kushner] When people ask me what I do, I could say I do media,

I do real estate, I do technology,

but what I actually do all day is I solve problems.

[reporter 2] Kushner has been tasked with criminal justice reform,

tackling the opioid crisis, Middle East diplomacy,

and cyber-security.

[Kushner's voice] The president trusts me. Every task he's given me,

I've been able to do it quietly, do it effectively.

I've been able to deliver results.

[reporter 3] A Harvard grad, publisher of The New York Observer,

and so rich, he once tried to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers.

[Kushner's voice] We will be doing things that will impact

a lot of people's lives and help their families and their communities.

Wonderful. Thank you very much.

[man] New York City is a one trillion dollar real estate market,

and when there's a lot of money to be made,

if there's not an enforcement system that is providing the right oversight,

there's going to be a lot of fraud.

We started Housing Rights Initiative three years ago.

Some of the tenants that we work with

will invite me over for lunch, for dinner,

families who are being defrauded,

families who are being screwed over.

And there are definitely points where I feel like

I don't just adopt one or two families, but dozens of families

across the city.

We've done dozens of investigations

which, so far, has led to 55 class action lawsuits

against some of the biggest landlords in the city,

three of which were against Kushner Companies.

It is abundantly clear that Kushner Companies

made the lives of its tenants a living hell.

[reporter] The non-profit group Housing Rights Initiative,

along with City Council member Ritchie Torres,

say Jared Kushner's real estate company

filed more than 80 false work permit applications,

which is against the law.

[Carr] My relationship with Council member Torres

effectively started when he became the chair

of the Oversight and Investigation Committee

in the City Council.

What we call the "Kushner Loophole,"

the practice of falsifying building permits

with impunity

because of ineffective enforcement on the part of the city,

has become a systemic problem in our city.

[Torres] When I met Aaron Carr, I immediately came to realize

that he was the most effective housing organizer I've ever met.

A powerful case could be made that Aaron has been more effective

at holding the real estate industry accountable

than the Buildings Department, which has well over a thousand employees.

[Carr] Kushner companies owns over 40 buildings in New York City,

and to know that they should be at the top of your target list,

all you need to do is Google them.

Around the clock construction, rodent infestation,

potential asbestos exposure,

black mold, collapsed buildings.

This isn't a typical company.

This is a tier-one predator.

[man] Kushner Companies started as a family business in New Jersey,

and Charles Kushner is the patriarch of Kushner Companies.

He built it from a small family building company

into a big regional real estate holding company.

Charlie's parents were survivors of the Holocaust

and with a group of other Holocaust Survivors,

started businesses in construction.

They became known as the Holocaust Builders.

[man 2] Jared Kushner grew up in extraordinary circumstances.

His father was very successful.

But if you visit Fawn Drive and see his childhood home,

it's a totally normal home.

I would describe my relationship with the Kushners as a family friend.

They've been incredibly loyal and supportive

and I've tried to do the same with them.

[woman] By the mid '90s,

Charlie Kushner had more than 22,000 apartments.

They were one of the most prominent real estate companies in the country,

and he was worth about a billion dollars.

I want to welcome all of my guests who are here today.

I'm proud to be an American

and feel very fortunate to have the opportunity

to support such great men of leadership,

such great men of character, of conscience and morals.

[Fox] Charlie's influence in the political community

was exploding at the same time.

They gave more than a million dollars to Democratic candidates

in the mid-'90s onwards.

And so, they would have the Clintons roll through town

and have dinner with them.

They would have Benjamin Netanyahu come and stay in their house

and sleep in Jared Kushner's childhood bedroom, and to him...

this was normal.

But most of all I'd like to thank...

the Kushners, Charles and Seryl.

[Fox] These were people who were truly true-blue Democrats,

but it also served them in New Jersey

which, at that time, was a Democratic state.

[man] The real estate industry, for almost any state or local politician,

tends to be among the biggest political donors.

It is about who has power

and who can help me do what I need to get done.

[Kocieniewski] In the Jim McGreevey administration,

Charlie Kushner was the most powerful donor.

People said Charlie got the governor elected.

His allies were named to key positions in the administration.

Charlie was also put on the board of the Port Authority,

which, for a developer, is a great position

because it gives you say over millions of dollars of contracts

and helps you have decision-making power

about where commuter lines are gonna go, where highways are gonna go,

the kind of things that real estate empires rise and fall upon.

Charlie was nominated by McGreevey to be the head of the Port Authority

when the scandal broke, and then it all came tumbling down.

For people who don't know the story behind

why Charlie Kushner landed in jail, anytime I tell it, people are like...

"Holy shit!"

[reporter] Sex, lies and videotape.

All describe the case against

fat cat Democratic fundraiser Charles Kushner

in court in Newark today to face numerous federal charges

relating to allegations he tampered with government witnesses.

So there's bad blood in the Kushner family.

Long before everything exploded,

Charlie and his brother were not getting along,

Charlie and his brother-in-law were not getting along,

Charlie and his sister were not getting along,

and a lot had to do with the way they were running the business,

but Charlie was running the show.

[reporter] In 2002, Kushner was being investigated

for improper campaign financing.

There are a whole slew of allegations against Charlie Kushner

that certainly intrigued Chris Christie,

who, at the time, was a US attorney.

[man] Thank you once again, Charles, for all that you have done

for the Democratic Party.

[Fox] It turned out that Charlie was exceeding the legal donation limits

that one individual can give to a candidate

and putting some donations in other people's names,

and one of those names was his sister.

Charlie believed that his sister and brother-in-law

were going to cooperate with Chris Christie and his investigation.

He wanted to do something to stop them.

And what he did was he hired this man

who was going to hire a prostitute

to approach his brother-in-law and proposition him.

Mr. Kushner engaged in a conspiracy

to hire prostitutes to entice witnesses

into engaging in sex acts with those prostitutes

and to have those sex acts then videotaped.

[Fox] The gentleman who Charlie Kushner had hired

hid a camera in an alarm clock in the room,

and captured something personally damaging

and hurtful to any marriage or family.

They then sent that tape to Charlie's sister

with the implication being,

"This is something damaging I caught

and if you cooperate in this investigation,

I will stop at nothing to ruin your family,"

even though that's his family too.

[reporter] Multi-millionaire Charles Kushner stayed cool

as his world was on fire,

moving to meet his fate, drowning in a sea of cameras.

No matter how rich or powerful you are...

[reporter] Chris Christie will take you down.

In just one month, he got a plea deal from the powerful political player.

[reporter 2] Writing to the judge,

Kushner said there was no moral defense for his actions

and that he regrets his behavior.

[Fox] This makes you think differently about your parent, right?

This is not something you want to learn about your father doing.

But the thing about the Kushners, and it's the same with the Trumps,

is a family isn't just family.

Family is business. And your dad is your boss.

[Kurson] He became, at 25 years old,

the leader of this gigantic, sprawling, complex company,

and Jared stepped into that role

and handled it with incredible skill.

[Fox] Jared went to visit his father in prison every weekend.

He's incredibly loyal to Charlie.

No matter what Charlie did, he was going to stand by his side,

but I also think he needed Charlie's guidance at that point.

[reporter] Now sources tell us Kushner may be eligible

to serve just half of his 24 months term

after telling prison officials he had an alcohol abuse problem,

then completing a 12-step drug abuse program

that qualifies for early release.

Convicted New Jersey real estate magnate Charles Kushner

is a free man tonight after being released from a halfway house.

[interviewer] Did what happened to him change your perspective, generally?

My father is an incredible man. We're very, very close.

He's always been a great mentor and friend and I think that, you know,

everything that we experienced

from the situation was something that I think

we all decided that it was going to be an experience

we're going through and we're gonna use it to just make us better,

and, you know, you...

um...

Maybe we'll just cut off on that one. Is that okay?

-[man] Sure. -If we cut off on that one?

[man] We're gonna change tapes anyway.

[Fox] The press around the Kushner family was so bad

that I think Jared understood the power

of being able to control the message.

Having control in what stories were written about you

and what stories were written about competitors of yours

or social friends of yours was something to behold

in the Manhattan world that he wanted to be involved in.

[Kushner] I had no newspaper experience whatsoever.

I had some business experience, whether it be in real estate,

but I just saw it as an amazing opportunity

to buy a New York paper.

[Kurson] In the Observer's early years,

Graydon Carter was its editor-in-chief,

and he went on to be the world-famous editor of Vanity Fair.

Then the great Peter Kaplan came in and made the Observer's brand

what it became in the popular imagination.

Among Peter Kaplan's finds were Candace Bushnell,

and a column they devised together called Sex and the City.

How the hell did we get into this mess?

[Kurson] It was never a large circulation paper,

but it was charming and insider-ish

and chronicled the lives of the most powerful and sophisticated,

and, let's face it, wealthy New Yorkers

who are some of the most powerful, wealthy people in the world.

[man] I've been a reader of The New York Observer

since I came to New York about 20 years ago.

I'm from Texas.

I didn't know a lot about New York City,

and it was kind of my portal into the New York of my imagination.

So I had a lot of fondness for the place and I was thrilled when he called.

[Kushner] When I was 25 years old and I bought a newspaper,

with no experience in media,

I came into a group of people

who were very ingrained in the ways that they did their business.

And I noticed that the industry was changing very rapidly,

and for me, it was very important to try to drive change

and get us to a different place, and so I would push.

[Pope] I mean, I think initially, he was quite excited

about the idea that he was going to save journalism.

And I was excited to be involved

with somebody who was going to save journalism. [chuckles]

But then, it just became so obvious

that you can't do that if you don't care

about any of the stuff that comes out the other end,

if you don't care about any of the content.

That was really his blind spot, I guess.

I think that, as long as you're looking at newspapers

as some kind of marketing service for whatever brands

that want to get to the people,

you'll end up finding that newspapers, over time,

will continue to be a great means through which to reach consumers.

[Pope] It became very clear that he didn't care about ideas.

He didn't care about issues. He didn't care about debates.

What he did care about was

what could the Observer do for him.

[Kurson] Rich people buy media properties

so that they can have a platform for their views,

and I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that,

so long as you observe the long-established norms of publishing,

and Jared did better than any publisher I ever worked for.

[man] I worked for The New York Observer for about 20 years, doing covers.

I never met Jared

until The New York Observer celebrated their anniversary

at the Four Seasons Restaurant.

It was a sea of young, white, I assume real estate developers,

and some of the actual staffers from The New York Observer,

a couple of them.

So I walked up to Jared, who was standing by himself,

just sipping champagne, looking out at the crowds, Gatsby-like.

I approached him. I said, "Hey Jared, it's Drew Friedman."

He looked at me, extended his hand, I shook it and he said, "Hi, Drew.

I'd like to talk to you, but there are many

far more important people here for me to talk to right now."

And he said it with a smile on his face.

He wasn't trying to offend me, I didn't think.

He was just being completely honest that he had no interest to talk to me.

That's Jared.

[Pope] There was the main newspaper that was called The New York Observer,

and there was the kind of sister paper

that was called the Commercial Observer,

which was a trade publication

that just covered the commercial real estate business.

Real estate and newspapers, all rolled up into one.

Why? Why now?

Well, I think it's actually a good time to try and innovate.

My main business is real estate and I also own a newspaper,

and some other websites and online media businesses,

and at the end of the day, we're looking at different niches...

[Pope] Every year, they'd produce something called

the Commercial Observer 100 or 50, but it was kind of a power list

of the most important people in that world,

and it was one of the very few things Jared would obsess about.

Maybe this was the only reason he owned the Observer,

because it was a very obvious way

to reward and stroke people he cared about,

and for whatever reason, they cared about it, too.

[man] Real estate developers like to read that stuff.

Sometimes they like to read their name in press,

but I don't think anyone who's very credible

is really worrying about...

where they sit on some Commercial Observer...

publications list.

I got to know Charlie Kushner in the mid-to-late '90s.

He was a good guy to do business with,

and personally, over the years, it's just grown.

I rely on him for advice, and he's been great, he's a friend.

They're a family business,

they're entrepreneurs, they're risk-takers.

And if you're willing to put down big bets

in the real estate business, you end up getting big rewards.

[Melby] 666 5th Avenue is a 1.4 million square foot office building

located along 5th Avenue,

one of the premier shopping corridors in New York.

It's 41 stories, but it's older.

It has this sort of 1950s,

Mad Men-era chic to it.

[Kocieniewski] A lot of people in real estate thought its time had passed

and it was in need of an update,

but the Kushners were looking to buy a big marquee property,

and it was a big name on a big address

and it was a way to make a splash in New York.

[Fox] Jared was the one who really sought to bring Kushner Companies into Manhattan

in a way that Donald Trump sought to bring his father's real estate business

from the outer boroughs into Manhattan as well.

[Melby] In late 2006, early 2007,

everybody believed the bull market is going to last forever.

The value of New York real estate is only ever going to go up.

It's hard for them to find a building to buy for that reason.

Nobody wants to sell, so trying to buy into a market

where everybody's happy to hold

means they really have to push their number up really high.

[reporter] A midtown skyscraper has been sold for a record price.

Tishman Speyer sold the property for 1.8 billion dollars

to New Jersey-based Kushner Companies.

That's the most ever paid

for an office building in the United States.

[Melby] They moved their offices there,

so this really marks in a very serious and clean-cut sort of way

the transition from where they came from

to where they're going.

But they bought at the worst possible time because it was right before the crash.

[bell ringing]

[man 1] The Dow tumbled more than 500 points.

[man 2] The Dow Traders are standing there watching in amazement.

I don't blame them.

This is volatility we haven't seen since way before you and I were born.

The bull market that ran from 2002 to 2007

has been erased.

After the financial crash, 666 turned into a time bomb.

The prices of commercial real estate has fallen by 40 percent in many places.

Vacancy rates are up.

[Melby] Kushner Companies sold between 1.8 or 2 billion dollars of apartments,

Charlie's empire essentially,

to be able to buy 666 5th Avenue,

and when the financial crisis hit,

that put a lot of pressure on them really fast.

[Kocieniewski] Everything was on the line,

and 666 threatened to weigh the company down.

[Carr] Kushner Companies is a gambler

masquerading as a landlord.

They don't actually care about the tenants.

They are just in this for their bottom line.

New York city is in the midst of an affordable housing crisis.

Over half of all tenants are paying

over 30% of their income in rent.

The only safeguard that stands between most New Yorkers

and displacement and human misery is our system of rent regulation.

Rent regulation has two protections:

One, it protects you from excessive rent increases,

and second, it guarantees you a renewal of your lease

so that your landlord cannot remove you at will.

[Carr] Kushner Companies will oftentimes buy out

these rent-stabilized buildings,

and they will try to make tenants' lives a living hell.

Construction harassment is a deliberate technique

that landlords use

to systematically harass tenants out of their apartments,

using illegal, destructive, and hazardous construction.

So the idea is, essentially, "I can't get you out legally,

so I'm going to make your environment so uncomfortable

and so disruptive that you're going to want to leave"?

That's the idea?

That's right. It's a form of physical and psychological torture.

[woman] All of us were going in the hallways,

saying, "What's going on?

Why is this happening?

Just men walking up and down the stairs,

middle of the night, drilling, drilling, all drilling.

And they didn't stop, they just didn't stop.

They kept on going 24/7.

And the only reason, their purpose, was for them to get everybody out.

Kushner will then renovate the apartments

and remove them from the rent stabilization rolls.

The potential rent increase can be enormous in a very hot market.

If a tenant is paying $900 a month, let's say,

they vacate the apartment, the landlord does renovations,

they can actually increase the rent all the way up to $4,000, $5,000 a month.

[woman] I am one of the only remaining

rent-stabilized people in this building.

Maybe three months into the whole construction thing,

a couple of men with suits on came in

and offered me this really cheap amount,

and I didn't even know. I--

For me, it was a lot of money,

but when I tried to talk to somebody else about it, he said, "This is nothing."

What they were offering me to get out of here.

And, uh, so-- and I really had no other place to go.

[man] I've made a home here, I know everybody on this street,

and I don't want to leave.

And if I did leave, I couldn't come back.

-[man] How long have you lived here? -Twenty-three years. Yeah.

I wanted to take a documentary account on it

to make sure that everyone knows, and so I took a picture,

maybe three times a week,

of the hole, and it was a waterfall.

I mean, it really was just dripping.

Good. Thanks, guys.

Ivanka's Instagram is actually open to the public, still,

so it's like you can comment on it, anything you want.

And she posted a picture of her and Jared next to a waterfall,

and it said "Chasing waterfalls."

And I wrote "There's still one in my apartment, Ivanka.

come by whenever you want to chase my waterfall.

We've been told by the Housing Department a couple of times that it's just business.

That's how they feel about it, is they're just doing business.

Jared Kushner's family business is facing a lawsuit,

accused of pushing out tenants

from a rent-stabilized building by creating unlivable conditions.

Many residents moved out

as the apartments were converted into luxury condos,

complaining of unbearable construction noise and toxic dust.

[Carr] At 184 Kent Avenue,

there was a lawsuit that we organized,

and in that building we found

that Kushner Companies exposed tenants to lead,

lung carcinogens, and crystalline silica.

There were many families who left

because they didn't want their children to get lead poisoning.

That is construction harassment in its worst form.

[reporter] More than 250 rent-stabilized apartments

were either emptied or sold.

Those sales have totaled more than 155 million dollars so far.

The firm was run for much of that time

by President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

[Carr] The Kushners like to deny their involvement in these schemes

by hiding behind these shell companies, these LLCs.

But we've audited mortgages

with Jared Kushner's signature all over them.

So there's no question to me that they are culpable here.

[man] In a place like New York, where rents are always going up,

the whole game is to try to get rid of the tenants you have,

get new tenants in, charge them more.

Here in Baltimore, which is a much more depressed market,

you're not trying to drive the tenant out of the unit.

You want to keep the tenant

because he may not have someone else to come into it.

You want to squeeze as much money out of that tenant as you possibly can.

What first caught my attention about all this

was a reference I saw in a couple of articles

to Kushner owning some apartments in Baltimore.

Out of curiosity, I ran the name of his real estate company

in the state court database,

and it was as if the computer blew up.

There were so many results that came back,

and I saw that there was one case after another

of Jared Kushner's company

going after tenants in these complexes.

I had lived in Baltimore for eight or nine years

before I realized that these complexes even existed.

They're all kind of on the edge of town, they're along highways

and they're huge. They're-- they're hundreds of units each.

Once I started coming to the complexes, I spent several weeks

just going to one complex after another

and trying to really understand what life was like here.

The complexes have these incredibly idyllic names.

One's called Whispering Woods.

Another one is Riverview Apartments, Cove Village.

They sound really quite lovely.

Um, they're not.

[man] So, down here,

as you can see, there's still mold growing

from where the old water tank had been leaking,

and they had pulled the countertops off.

They never even put the countertop back on.

Literally.

[countertop squeaks]

The countertop's just sitting there.

[MacGillis] The maintenance was so shoddy

that it really seems to be by design.

You can make this business work

if you spend as little money as possible on the upkeep.

And if you're just a few days late with your rent,

you will immediately get hit with late fees.

If your rent is $800, let's say,

and you're a few days late one month

and they hit you with a 50 dollar late fee,

and maybe on top of that, also a 50 dollar, quote, "court fee."

You then, the next month, pay your 800 dollar rent,

but they take 50 dollars of that

and put it toward that late fee from the month before.

Take another 50,

and put it toward the so-called court fee from the month before.

So only 700 dollars is going toward your rent for that month.

So they can claim that you were once again late on your rent,

hit you with another late fee, another court fee,

and it snowballs on from there.

So you never catch up. You're always getting hit with fees.

It's called "churning," is the industry term for it.

As this is going on, tenants have no idea what's actually being done to them,

they're just mystified, and they end up just paying far above their actual rent.

You know, every couple months, we're paying out extra.

So the little bit of money that we could be saving...

Goes toward the fee.

...goes right to them, and literally,

we don't have the money, because we go check by check, pretty much.

One of the things that jumped out at me when I first came to the complex

is that a lot of the doors would have these bright yellow or pink...

notices slapped on them,

and those were the late rent notices.

And you just see them every three or four doors.

It was meant to shame people, really. It was kind of a scarlet letter.

They would just slap them right on there,

so everyone could see

that this mom or that mom was once again late on her rent.

The goal is not really to evict people.

You want to squeeze as much money out of them as you possibly can

through the threat of eviction.

This one says,

"As you know, we're pursuing an eviction regard to the above captioned,"

which the outstanding right here

is $372.

And that was a lot of them late fees that were just...

coming up from God knows where.

[interviewer] And you folks are Trump supporters, right?

-Yeah. -I am.

-[interviewer] Why did you vote for Trump? -Because he takes care of business.

[MacGillis] The complexes are very diverse.

You have a lot of working-class African-Americans,

some Hispanics, but then also quite a few working class white people,

and a lot of them were Trump voters, without realizing that their landlord,

the person that they were having so many troubles with,

was his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

[Fox] Jared and Ivanka met through a business connection, actually,

a real estate connection,

and it was someone who said, "You two should meet.

You would like each other. You may do business together."

[reporter] Both of you, I was interested to learn, work on Sundays.

We do. We work two blocks away from each other on Sundays too,

so I can actually look out my window

and see into his window.

That's romantic.

-Yes, I see-- I see it now. -We both, um...

I guess own the buildings

we work in on 5th Avenue.

[Fox] They come from very rich, public-facing families.

They're both the favorite children in those families,

and them coming together was sort of like

the two gods from each individual chosen family were brought together,

and they were going to be

this ultimate power couple in New York real estate.

[Kurson] I think I was the first of anybody,

on Jared's side, to meet her,

because it was controversial that, you know, they were different religions,

and I think Jared sensed that I would like her

and probably sensed that I would say good things about her

to the rest of the family, and I did.

[Fox] As one person who knows both of them and knows them as a couple very well

described to me, they use the Yiddish word bashert,

which means they're fated for one another, and I believe that.

Look at this, read all about it.

Wedding bells ringing this weekend for Ivanka Trump.

The entrepreneur and daughter of Donald Trump

married Jared Kushner at her father's golf course

in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Dozens of politicians and celebrities were among the 500 attendees.

The bride wore a Vera Wang gown

inspired by Grace Kelly.

[applause]

Thank you Jared,

and thank you, Ivanka,

for marrying Jared and giving someone else a chance

-to win Bachelor this year. -[audience laughs]

[Fox] Jared Kushner became a name that people knew,

and when you become a name that people know,

you get invited to parties, you get on different media lists,

you're suddenly ranked in all these rankings

that people care about,

and so he sort of elevated himself to what he wanted to be

and amongst the people he wanted to socialize with.

And 666 was, at least publicly,

Jared and the Kushner Companies' trophy,

until it almost became their undoing.

[Kocieniewski] They had to find financing, they were losing money on it,

and all the while, Jared's climbing the social ladder, appearing in public.

Behind the scenes, they're desperate.

They're trying to find ways to get other investors in.

Other investors weren't willing to go in without taking a huge stake.

[Fox] And that was the whole pressure cooker

that the Kushner Companies was under

as President Trump was running for election in 2016.

We need somebody that can take the brand of the United States

and make it great again.

It's not great again.

I did not plan my life to go into to politics.

But I actually think he likes politics more than he likes real estate.

I'm excited and he's very good at politics, so...

[Kushner] He didn't have all the traditional entourage

that came with a politician.

And so, I kept getting called on to do more and more in the campaign.

Come on up here, Jared.

Stand up, Jared. Say hello to the crowd.

Jared has been amazing and it's been just great.

[Kushner] I got the chance to travel with my father-in-law

and to really see the country and to see what he was fighting for--

[man] What did you see?

Um, I saw a lot of people who felt like they didn't have a voice,

and who felt like the people in Washington

had left them behind and weren't representing their interests.

[Carr] This latest investigation

was prompted by a tip from an insider.

And once we conducted a comprehensive analysis

to determine whether what we were being told was true,

it actually turned out to be much worse than we thought.

[distorted voice] Kushner Companies takes capitalism to an extreme.

So I decided to become a whistle-blower

because I really feel guilty about taking part in that.

And you'll see, if you look across the Kushner portfolio,

that in a lot of places, they took the easy way out

instead of taking the safe way out.

[Carr] He mentioned to me that Kushner Companies,

in a number of his buildings, doesn't have certificates of occupancy.

Think of it as like a driver's license for landlords,

and just like you and I would have to pass a driver's exam,

a landlord like Kushner Companies

would need to pass a series of building inspections, right,

in order to get a certificate of occupancy.

I cannot think of a more important document

than this one.

And I think we should literally look into every single one of his properties

and look for patterns.

[woman] My ordeal with Kushner Companies began in 2013.

Construction had started in the apartments above me.

I come home one day and I hear a weird noise.

I come towards the kitchen

and suddenly, all hell breaks loose.

Water comes gushing

into the kitchen through the ceiling,

like out of a water hydrant.

The kitchen was destroyed.

It was complete mayhem.

Two weeks later, I come in,

and my whole bedroom ceiling

had collapsed onto my bed.

If I had been at home,

I could have gotten really hurt, if not worse,

because large chunks of brick

and also some cement type, but very heavy,

came down from the ceiling.

[Carr] Tenants like Uta are in danger.

Our analysis found

that Kushner Companies has been performing illegal electrical work

and illegal gas work in her building.

And the reason

that a certificate of occupancy issue is so important

is that it's there to ensure

that buildings that have residential tenants

are safe to live in.

We know how important this is.

I mean, I think a block and a half away in 2015,

-there was a building that exploded. -That's exactly right. Yes.

-Uh, it was a gas explosion. -Yes.

And that was during the time

when there was construction in the building,

and it was on everybody's mind. Night and day.

A grim discovery at the scene of that horrific explosion and fire.

Two bodies found beneath the wreckage of the building

that collapsed in the inferno.

[reporter] Investigators now pursuing reports from tenants

who say, in the hours before the explosion,

they were told, if they smelled gas,

not to call 9-1-1 or Con Ed,

but to let the landlord know.

[Carr] And one of those contractors that performed the gas work

in that building that was owned by another landlord

had done work in the past for Kushner Companies.

That is downright frightening.

[distorted voice] If you run a bio on several buildings in the portfolio,

you'll find that they have been cited for violations,

particularly for fire safety.

They chop up apartments

and renovate them into smaller apartments

and don't care to make sure that they're up to fire code,

and that leads to their inability

to legalize their certificate of occupancy.

All of the management, from property managers

right up to Charles Kushner,

know that there are illegal things going on,

and they're more concerned with the exposure than the safety.

[Carr's voice] These are documents that list out all of the violations

and the fines that Kushner Companies has received over time.

We're seeking to establish a pattern of practice,

so we can understand why Kushner Companies

hasn't been obtaining these certificates of occupancy.

Illegal construction without a permit.

The most dangerous violation we found are fire code violations.

In one of their buildings, they were hit with a criminal summons

for ignoring a fire commissioner's order

to make their buildings habitable.

[distorted voice] The real deal breaker for me was the fire safety.

It's not supposed to be an arbitrary issue,

it's not supposed to be subjective.

The code is very clear.

And my biggest fear was to wake up and find out

that some college kid fell asleep smoking a cigarette

and accidentally started a fire that killed him and his roommates

or half the building, and they couldn't get out

because no one checked to make sure that the building was up to fire code.

[Carr] One-seventy, electric.

This was a $16,000 violation.

The government is not proactively enforcing the laws.

When they do enforce and they do fine a landlord,

they are then oftentimes failing to collect those fines.

So when landlords like Kushner Companies are committing these violations,

there's essentially no deterrent.

The Kushner Foundation had made a considerable contribution

to Governor Cuomo.

There was also a article showing

that Jared Kushner and Mayor de Blasio

had a close e-mail relationship going on.

And I think that explains why

our organization, which has such a tiny budget

compared to our enforcement agencies,

have had to take the lead on this.

-[Torres] Hey. How are you? Doing well? -Hey.

-How's everything going? -Very good. Thank you.

[Torres] I was born in poverty.

I was raised by a single mother who had to raise three children,

often on little more than minimum wage.

The one constant that I had growing up

was a stable, affordable home.

And when I became an elected official

at age 25 in 2014,

I went in there with a sense of mission

that we have to preserve affordable housing

as a safety net for all New Yorkers.

If you look at the violation data, you realize what the motive is, right?

They don't want to legalize their buildings

because that would cost them a fortune and they would lose money long-term.

[Torres] It's rare for an owner to receive a criminal summons

for ignoring an order from the fire commissioner.

[Carr] Yeah.

[Torres] How you run your company

speaks volumes about the kind of person you are,

especially when you're responsible

for the lives of tenants

who want nothing more than a fighting chance at a better life.

[MacGillis] A lot of the tenants they were going after

were people who didn't even live in the complexes anymore.

They were going back into the files

from before they even owned the complexes, looking for people

they could conceivably bring lawsuits against.

So you had people who had moved on, who were living

in completely different parts of town, completely different cities,

suddenly getting letters in the mail from some entity they've never heard of.

People had no idea what it was for.

They didn't realize that Jared Kushner had bought this complex

that they used to live in, and was now coming after them

for as much money as he could possibly get from them.

This is where Kamiia lived. Number ten, High Seas Court, Cove Village.

[woman] When I moved to Essex, Maryland,

it was very peaceful, it was very quiet.

It was much different than when I grew up in East Baltimore.

My experience changed

when a neighbor of mine

started to display some erratic behavior

and it became very uncomfortable for me.

I asked that I could vacate the property

and I was given permission to do so.

[MacGillis] Couple years later,

she starts getting threatening letters in the mail

from something she's never heard of:

JK2 Westminster LLC.

Threatening her, saying that she owed, at the time,

about $3,000 or $4,000 in unpaid rent

for having broken her lease at Cove Village.

[Warren] At the time when I received the summons, I had three children.

I was a single mom.

I was working full time

and going to school full-time to better myself,

and I knew, at that time, I could not afford a lawyer.

[MacGillis] There's no kind of legal aid

that steps in to help people at this point in the process.

And the attorney's fees that they're being assessed

are the fees for the attorneys being used by the Kushner Companies.

That's one reason why

this aggressive pursuit made financial sense.

You think, "Why would you go through all this hassle

to nickel and dime people, and have to pay your lawyers

to go after people like this?"

Well, it's because the tenants end up having to pay your lawyers.

I felt hopeless...

because...

I was in an environment that I was not familiar with,

being in a courtroom.

I told the judge that I did not owe this money

and that I was given permission to vacate the property at the time.

The property manager had signed this paper.

But,

when JK2 Westminster came after me,

it was years later, I had moved,

and I no longer had the paper.

[MacGillis] So the court hits her with a judgment that's close to $5,000

with all these fees piled on.

At the request of the Kushner Companies,

the court garnishes her wages, garnishes her bank account.

I had about $900 in my bank account.

It was payday.

I was going to the bank and all of my money was gone.

Every single penny. I was left with zero.

And I was devastated.

[MacGillis] Her court pleadings are heartbreaking.

One of her pleadings went like this.

"I am a single mom of three..."

[MacGillis, Warren] "...and my bank account was wiped clean by the plaintiff.

"I cannot take care of my kids

when they snatch all of my money out of my account.

I do not feel I owe this money.

Please have mercy on my family and I."

I asked her what the response was

from the Kushners' lawyer when she made this pleading in court,

and she said his response was,

"This is not going to go away. You will pay us."

[breathing shakily]

[sniffling]

[whispers] Sorry.

[man] Digging into Jared Kushner's companies in Maryland,

I found that they are financing case after case after case after case...

in court, trying to get their money.

It's kind of like a Goodfellas element for collection. Like, you lost your job.

Fuck you, pay me. Your wife got sick, fuck you, pay me.

[man] Business is bad? Fuck you, pay me.

Oh, you had a fire? Fuck you, pay me.

Place got hit by lightning, huh? Fuck you, pay me.

Kushner Companies went so far as to take the most extreme step

in Maryland to collect,

which is something called a body attachment.

A body attachment is essentially a civil arrest warrant.

The sheriff will be able to detain this person

and put them in jail for debt they owe you and have not paid.

Even if they haven't met all the parameters required

to actually prove that that amount is actually owed to them.

That is a modern-day debtors prison.

You have to prove that you've given them notice

that they owe you this money,

and a lot of tenants said-- I've spoken to who have dealt with this process--

They either don't get the notice

or they say they didn't get the notice.

So they don't even know to show up to court.

[Warren] "Show cause. Defendant not present.

Request body attachment."

They wanted me in jail.

Over money I did not owe.

That's sad.

[Donovan] It's rare in Maryland

for companies to go to that extent.

The Kushner Companies does it more aggressively

than any other apartment company in Maryland.

[MacGillis] Jared Kushner's company was highly leveraged.

They were buying all these big, fancy buildings in Manhattan and elsewhere.

So you needed to have some cash flow coming in

as ballast for that real estate empire.

That's what these units provide.

Every month, you're getting just millions and millions of dollars

in rent checks from people.

The rent's not a lot by Manhattan standards,

it's $800-$900 a month that people are paying.

But you multiply that across 15 complexes here in the Baltimore area.

Eight thousand units total. That adds up.

And on top of that, if you can squeeze a lot of money out of people

in late fees and court fees and all the rest,

then it really starts to adds up.

Jared Kushner, in his own disclosure form,

said that he had collected 1.5 million dollars in 2016 alone

from these apartment complexes.

The company, as a whole, collected 30 million dollars in 2016.

I, of course, approached the Kushner Companies

to ask them about the way they were treating these tenants.

They basically said,

"Yes, we're being very aggressive in going after tenants,

but we're doing so because we have a fiduciary duty

to our ownership partners to collect as much money as we possibly can."

[Donovan] At the root of his business

is this imbalance of power, this landlord versus tenant.

This landed gentry class,

this powerful rich class,

pretty much against everybody else that's in my life,

working class people who are just getting by.

[Fox] This is a guy who has been handed every single opportunity.

But I think the general impression about Jared's job

at the helm of Kushner Companies was that he wasn't very effective.

Under his watch, they bought 666,

which has been an unmitigated disaster for the Kushner Companies.

-[dial tone sounds] -[numbers beeping]

[man] My firm, Iron Hound, and myself,

we were part of a team that helped the Kushners

figure out a way to restructure 666 debt.

Never once did anyone seem panicked that somehow, the Kushner family

was going to topple over if we didn't work it out.

It was an issue, but my feeling--

It was a very, very small percentage of the Kushner Companies' net worth.

[Melby] We don't have access to Kushner Companies' books.

But what we do know is it's the biggest thing they've ever bought

and we talked to one person

who described it as kind of like the piece of the Jenga tower

that can send the whole empire tumbling.

[Fox] In the beginning of the administration,

the debt that they had taken out on the building

was about to come due.

And if they did not find an investor to come in

and bail them out,

it would have been catastrophic.

Kushner Companies, as we know it,

wouldn't exist.

[man] Kushner has acknowledged

meeting with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak in December.

Kislyak then arranged for Kushner to meet

with the head of Russian-owned VEB Bank, Sergey Gorkov.

Jake, you might as well just call him Putin's banker.

Well-connected to the Kremlin, to the oligarchs in Russia.

[reporter] At the time, Kushner was still CEO of Kushner Companies,

which was trying to attract financing

for a building project in Manhattan.

[reporter 2] Just what Kushner and Gorkov discussed isn't clear.

The Russian bank says it was real estate business.

The White House says no, it was actually government business.

[reporter 3] His contacts with Russia are now making headlines,

but he's also been a main point of contact

with other foreign officials in Mexico, China, and Canada.

[man] American intelligence officials were picking up intercepted communications

that show that the leaders of these other countries,

Mexico, Israel, the UAE,

were deliberately seeking to have contact with Jared Kushner

because they wanted to try to use his business commitments,

debts, obligations, his need for investment,

as a way to try to manipulate him on policy points.

[Kocieniewski] During the presidential transition,

they looked around the world to try to save 666.

All of a sudden, doors opened that had been closed

and people who were reluctant to meet with them

all of a sudden wanted to meet with them.

It was clear that Jared's ascendance in the political firmament

had given him a kind of access that other developers couldn't dream of.

[Verrone] The loan was maturing, so...

meetings and trying to figure out how to resolve the debt

was going to happen whether Donald became president or not.

It just so happened to correspond with the administration.

A four billion dollar investment deal from a Chinese firm

is raising concerns over a potential conflict of interest

for the president's top adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

[Kocieniewski] To bail out 666,

Jared met with Anbang, which is the Chinese insurance company

owned by people very close to the Chinese government.

[reporter] As an expert in Chinese politics and corruption told the Times,

the chairman of Anbang insurance company is, quote,

"Purchasing political prestige,

and that is a priceless asset for somebody like him."

[Kocieniewski] It was a huge boon to the Kushners.

It would've given them like 400 million dollars in cash.

Now a business deal between the real estate business

of Jared Kushner's family and a Chinese company

to redevelop a Manhattan skyscraper has been scrapped.

This after some members of Congress raised a red flag over ethics concerns.

[Melby] And after that deal falls through,

there's just panic within the company,

and they are losing anywhere from 15 to 40 million dollars a year

on this building.

[Kocieniewski] But, in the end, 666 was bailed out by Brookfield,

which is a company that the majority shareholder

is the Qatari Sovereign Wealth fund, 25 percent.

It works out well for the Kushners.

The fact that their biggest investor is the Qatari government

raises eyebrows and raises questions.

This is why you don't typically have government employees

who have these sort of business entanglements,

and this is why there were legitimate concerns

raised about him getting a security clearance

in the White House.

I can just tell you very definitively.

There have been no actions I've taken that have benefited me financially.

[stammering]

To the contrary, you know, I've had to divest of a lot of things

and avoid a lot of things, but I think I've been fully vetted now...

Jared did divest himself of some of his business interests,

or most of his business interests, but he them in a trust.

And the trust is controlled by his mother.

[Kocieniewski] And within the Kushner family and within the company,

it's widely known that Jared

begins and ends every day by talking to his dad.

[Melby] He was reared in this company,

and the Kushners' financial lives

are still inextricably linked to it in every single conceivable way.

[Kocieniewski] So if you have someone who's the senior advisor

in the White House,

who has a virtual unlimited portfolio

-of issues in which you can weigh in... -[clock ticking]

...the potential for conflict is almost limitless.

If you don't want conflicts, go in your apartment,

stay there and lock the door and don't go to work, don't do anything.

There are new questions tonight about conflicts of interest.

...conflicts of interest...

[man] ...controversial EB-5 visas in China...

[man 2] Kushner is keeping parts of his family's real estate empire.

[man 3] Kushner revised his financial disclosures yet again...

...these holdings...

...still the beneficiary of trusts...

Opportunity zones. This program could actually benefit

the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

[man 4] ...Cadre, while Kushner worked as an international envoy...

[man 5] ...with foreign countries is not good thinking...

[woman] Jamal Khashoggi died during his interrogation.

[man 6] ...influencing their participation in a cover-up because...

[man 7] Deutsche Bank employees reported suspicious activity

involving President Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

[woman 2] What exactly is he doing?

[man 8] ...black hole where we don't know what all these entanglements are.

Again, there's been numerous front page stories

talking about potential areas where there could be conflicts,

but I think that we want people who have been successful

in different areas going into government.

And so that's why you have Office of Government Ethics,

you have compliance and you have to adhere to that compliance,

and I think I've done a perfect job in doing that.

In an interview last month, Kushner's father defended him

against these claims of conflict of interest.

He described ethics watchdogs as, quote, "jerks"

who, quote, "can't get real jobs."

Because the Kushner Companies is a privately held company,

disclosure is not something that comes natural.

So, I think when Jared went to government,

the concept of doing that was slightly foreign to him.

You can trace it all back to the problems

Charlie had with the tabloids around that time.

[Melby] With Jared, there's just a distrust

and a guardedness there that is learned from past experience.

[Kurson] I don't think Jared puts a ton of emphasis

on how he's perceived.

He thinks that doing good work

will eventually dictate how he's viewed,

and the people whose opinion he really cares about,

they know what he's about.

[Friedman] I had done a sketch of Jared as Dorian Gray.

You know, he's a handsome guy

and I always thought he looked like the actor who played Dorian Gray

in the 1940s film Hurd Hatfield.

As I grow old, this picture will remain always young.

If it were only the other way,

if it were I who was always to be young,

and a picture that was to grow old.

[Friedman] And the Dorian Gray analogy is something that I just clung on to.

[man] Every vile thought and act, every criminal deed

left its mark upon the painted canvas

that was to bear the burden of his shame.

[Friedman] But it needed a twist.

So the painting of Jared's soul

is Donald Trump.

[Fox] Jared is not in the White House,

and he was not on the campaign,

because he truly believed in the politics of it.

He was there to win.

And now he's there to capitalize on that win.

[Kurson] This assumption that Jared has supported his father-in-law

out of self-interest is belied by the fact

that he happens to share a great deal of the president's worldview.

[Pope] Jared and Trump share a view of the press.

They share the sense that

if reporters aren't gonna do something that's good for you,

what's the point?

[Warren] Alec's story brought so much positive attention

to my story and others.

I don't think I really understood initially

how much of an impact it would make.

[MacGillis] After the article came out,

she got a lot of support from readers

who were so appalled at what happened to her

that they wanted to support her with small donations.

And then on top of that, she got an offer

from a local law firm,

which offered to do pro bono representation

and try to get this huge $5,000 judgment

against her cleared off the record.

"This is a tenant notice to vacate and terminate tenancy."

This was my permission to vacate the property.

This was a paper that...

would have changed everything from the beginning

if I would have had it in my possession.

I had to put in a written request,

then I went to pick it up at Baltimore County Housing

when they called me and told me it was available.

I felt like it was my golden ticket.

[laughs]

[MacGillis] When these pro bono lawyers reached out

to the Kushner Companies' law firm

to challenge this judgment, that firm immediately said,

"Okay. We'll get rid of it."

They knew just how bogus it was.

And all it took all along

was for someone to stick up for Kamiia Warren.

And life is just so good.

I am just really-- I am so grateful for you.

Because I probably would still be on Section 8,

because I had this thing on my credit.

You know, so I don't know if you really understand

what you've done for us.

[Donovan] After the reporting that ProPublica did,

the reporting that the Baltimore Sun did,

you saw tenants get activated.

They filed a class-action lawsuit

against Kushner Companies and their practices.

The attorney general started an investigation

into Kushner Companies that's still ongoing

and you know, we may be called "the enemy of the people,"

but in my mind,

if that means I'm the enemy of powerful people,

that's fine, if those powerful people are abusing their power.

[Warren] I'm very nervous

that Jared Kushner is someone that is making decisions for our country.

I, firsthand, know how he conducts business.

[Fox] In his first interview in the White House,

it was in March 2017,

he described the American people as the government's customers.

The American people are his boss.

He works for the American people.

That that's the way he saw his job

and the world,

and the way the government works,

was the most telling thing to me about his personality.

He's only ever been the boss or a son of a boss.

Everyone's his customer.

Rules and laws don't apply to him because he is the boss.

[Carr] There's a growing inequality problem in our country.

As landlords like Kushner Companies are getting richer

through corruption and through fraud,

its tenants are growing poor.

So there's a larger picture here.

We're looking at the big picture, not just in New York,

but across the country,

and I think now is the time to do this.

When people are losing faith in our democratic system,

someone has to step in,

someone has to sound the alarm,

and someone has to tell the government that things have to change.

[Torres] When we announced our investigation in March of 2018,

it prompted the Buildings Department to finally conduct

an overdue investigation of its own,

resulting in more than $200,000 in fines against Kushner Companies.

So we hope to achieve the same result when it comes to certificate of occupancy.

When we create transparency around the abuses of Kushner Companies,

we are pressuring the Buildings Department

to take action to ensure

that residents are safe here in New York City.

[Carr] Kushner Companies has been duping the public

by renting out apartments in buildings that are illegal.

Kushner's failure to obtain certificates of occupancy

makes it unlawful for them to collect rent in those buildings,

and most importantly,

and most urgently,

it is endangering the lives of residents.

[Torres] We cannot afford to stand by passively

while Kushner Companies profits from the destruction of affordable housing

or profits from the weaponization of construction.

No owner is above the law,

not even the family of the president of the United States.

And no owner, including Kushner Companies,

should be allowed to play Russian Roulette

with the two things that matter most to New Yorkers:

our lives and our homes.

Thank you very much, we'll take whatever questions you have.

[Carr] This is the culmination of our investigation

into Kushner Companies.

We've exposed so many things over the past two years,

and I think this is the biggest thing that we have exposed to date.

[reporter] Kushner Companies once again finds itself

in the crosshairs of City Councilmember Ritchie Torres...

[reporter 2] ...may have been operating illegal apartment buildings

across New York City.

[reporter 3] ...accuses the Companies of putting tenants in danger

by allowing...

[reporter 4] ...the new law.

Regulators will now check tax records to make sure landlords are being honest.

[Carr] We've succeeded in holding Kushner Companies accountable.

They're now scaling back their residential portfolio

in New York City.

The pressure that has been brought from organizations like ours has worked.

The public pressure, the added scrutiny,

the enhanced enforcement, it made a difference.

Jared Kushner is the ultimate Goliath

because he has the raw power of the presidency behind him.

But if we can hold Jared Kushner accountable,

we can hold anyone accountable.