Jared Kushner’s Dad, A Convicted Felon Who Trump Pardoned, Donates A Million To Trump PAC

Thankfully, most of us have not had to think about Jared Kushner much over the past couple years. I’ll refresh your memory in case you’re lucky enough to have forgotten the essential details of his foray into federal leadership.

Jared Kushner is Donald Trump’s son-in-law (married to Ivanka). As a senior aide in the Trump administration without any previous government experience, Jared Kushner was tasked with a ridiculously ambitious portfolio that included, among other things, achieving peace in the Middle East. He’s now abusing the clout and connections he gained as a nepotism hire in the Trump administration to funnel billions into his new private equity fund.

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While we all have the distinctly American misfortune of having to live in a country where “Jared Kushner” has become a household name, “Charles Kushner” is likely to draw a blank stare even from fairly well-informed voters. There is just too much political news to keep up on. That being said, Charles Kushner just did something fairly noteworthy for those of us concerned with keeping this whole democracy thing intact.

Charles Kushner is Jared Kushner’s father. Prosecuted by none other than GOP presidential hopeful Chris Christie, Charles Kushner went to prison some years back after pleading guilty to an array of crimes, from assisting in the filing of false tax returns to making false statements to the Federal Election Commission. One of the more salacious things Charles Kushner admitted to was retaliating against a cooperating witness — his own sister — by hiring a prostitute to seduce and have sex with her husband. Charles Kushner had this sexual encounter recorded, then sent the videotape to his sister. So, you know, not exactly sibling of the year.

In addition to serving his time, Charles Kushner certainly suffered some personal embarrassments as a result of his crimes. For instance, he had been licensed to practice law in multiple jurisdictions, then was disbarred when he became a convicted felon. Despite the blows to his pride, Kushner’s extremely successful real estate business, Kushner Companies, hardly missed a beat. Kushner Companies was making billion-dollar deals just months after its founder stopped wearing a compulsory jumpsuit.

As part of a bevy of controversial pardons issued days before he sent a mob of lunatics to storm the U.S. Capitol, Donald Trump gave Charles Kushner a full pardon. Though good taste and a rational electorate helped prevent previous presidents from doing something as crass as pardoning their son-in-law’s felon father, such things have never been a concern to Donald Trump.

As if this pardon wasn’t gross enough when it was issued, Charles Kushner just did something that propelled it from a run-of-the-mill Trump-style abuse of power to outright bribery in everything but name. At a time when Donald Trump’s campaign is bleeding cash to pay legal fees, Kushner made a $1 million donation to Trump’s leading super PAC.

There might not be any law directly prohibiting the recipient of a pardon from making a huge political contribution to benefit the politician who issued the pardon. It could be argued that since technically, and theoretically, a super PAC is not directly controlled by the candidate himself, a donation to that isn’t the same as scratching the back of the person who pardoned you. But come on. The message here is clear. This sort of horseshit is the reason only about one in five Americans trust the government in Washington to mostly do the right thing.

The Constitution itself provides scant guidance on what limitations, if any, should be imposed on the president’s pardon power. Seemingly, though, a less legally thorny issue would be limitations on the political contributions of pardon recipients. I get that, according to a recurringly befuddled and hopelessly partisan Supreme Court, money is speech and corporations are people. But wouldn’t banning pardon recipients from contributing to the campaigns of and super PACs supporting the candidate who pardoned them be an acceptable limitation on moneyspeech?

To anyone who is not a legal gymnast or a fervent partisan, giving a million bucks to the super PAC of the person who pardoned you looks an awful lot like paying for a pardon. Though the people involved here are smart enough not to have left a paper trail showing an overt quid pro quo, the subtext is inescapably clear to anyone else who would like to purchase a pardon in the future. It’s not good to allow this sort of thing to continue unabated.

Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at [email protected].