Kushner undeterred by 'appearance of conflict' in overseas development deal

Let me tell you a story that may seem complicated, but is actually quite simple, as always, all you have to do is follow the money a little over a decade ago, Donald Trump, then a private businessman meets with the prime minister from Serbia and tells him how as much as he would like to build a luxury hotel in the Serbian capital of Belgrade, it doesn't happen, but a few years later, Donald Trump is the president of the United States and President Trump sends a special envoy to help to mediate Serbia's peace process with neighboring Kosovo. The guy Trump sends, this guy named Rick Grenell, doesn't really have any experience in this Arena, but he quickly endeared himself to the Serbian government by basically siding with them on everything they want while he's there.

Mr. Grenell makes many new friends that he likes. partying with the Serbian Finance Minister, for example, seems fun and Rick Grenell also tells his new friends in the Serbian government that they should consider the idea of ​​an American real estate

development

in Belgrade, meanwhile Trump's son-in-law and adviser of the White House, Jared Kushner is spending time making fast friends with Saudi Arabia's autocratic deao ruler as Kushner leaves the White House. Saudi Arabia invests $2 billion in Kushner's new investment fund and now the New York Times reports that Rick Grenell and his Serbian friends and Jared Kush and his Saudi billions are teaming up to finally make Donald's dream come true.

Trump to develop a luxury hotel in Belgrade along with other big real estate projects in the Balkans, according to a draft of the Belgrade

deal

obtained by the New York Times that the Serbian government could convert the land and the entire

development

to Kushner for free , which I think is a very good thing for a foreign government to do to the Trump family as Donald Trump secures the presidential nomination while facing hundreds of millions of dollars in legal judgments against him, joining us now is the investigative journalist of the New York Times, Eric Lipton, who has been covering these

deal

s.

Eric, it's good to see you, thanks for being with us. I tried not to have that drip with too much sarcasm, huh, but it's kind of an Unbelievable, Unbelievable situation when you put it all together and see who the characters involved in this development are. Yes, we were surprised when we learned that, in fact, this was a project that was initially proposed and considered by then-businessman Trump in 2013. that, in fact, some representatives of the Trump organization traveled to Serbia and looked at the site and they met with the Prime Minister and you know, they briefed Trump, but then the project went nowhere because shortly after that.

Trump ran for president and the international agreement stopped, but what really surprised us was that this project, his Providence, had started in 2013 in Trump Tower during a meeting with the Prime Minister of Serbia and the Prime Minister of Serbia himself. so, you know, he was commenting on this today and he is now a member of parliament, he is now foreign minister, but he was commenting on the same project today and before Parliament and defending the proposal now. I want to be clear on the reports, both Kushner and Grenell say that Donald Trump has nothing to do with this.

That's right, I mean, Trump, in fact, is not financially involved in this project at all and Trump, Grenell and Kushner say that's a difficult thing. accept, but they both claim that they didn't know that Donald Trump had considered this site and I told each of them in the conversations that it's a little difficult to imagine that we are talking about not only the same country but the same city but the exact same property which is now proposing to build a hotel, which is what he knows and which is what Trump had proposed in 2013, but he claims that they didn't know that Trump had considered this site for a hotel in 2013. and 2014, this, of course, These business interests tied to the Donald Trump family are interesting right now because we got news this week that Donald Trump has until next week, but he's having trouble raising bail for the fine. has to pay, so we have a little bit clearer picture of Donald Trump's financial situation in the sense that he can't, without liquidating, something that he probably comes up with with half a trillion dollars, uh, makes the idea of ​​big developments around the world. more compelling, yeah, I mean, again, this is not a Trump project, it's a Kushner project and you know, Kushner has been gradually over the last three years building up his investment fund.

Investments and this would be the largest group of investments he has made so far. two in Albania and one in Serbia, it is estimated that Serbia alone has an investment of 500 million dollars, so we are talking about more than a billion dollars in these three investments. What caught our attention when we looked at them is that the projects in both Serbia and Albania require action by the governments there to grant them the right to use federal property and in Albania it is a former military site that would be converted into a complex luxury and, in Serbia it is the former headquarters of the Yugoslav army that was bombed by NATO in 1999 and has been practically empty in both cases because those sites are controlled by the government, so Kushner would need a government law to have access to these sites and you know. so they know that his father-in-law is running for president and that just creates some questions about why these actions might be happening now.

It's not that Serbia hasn't had anything to say about Donald Trump, in fact he is running for president. in um, they, it's been a pretty beneficial government for Trump, uh, yeah, they support him, you know, Rick Grenell had a pretty positive relationship with the president, the prime minister and other ministers there, and um, and you know that they worked to I tried to achieve some reconciliation between Kosovo and Serbia in two in 2020 and they had some success in achieving some reconciliation and, but you know, Trump is quite popular in Serbia, much more popular in Serbia than in Kosovo, uh and So, they like him and they know that they have good working relationships and I think they have expressed the fact that they would be fine with Trump being president again, so the challenge here is that you Jared claims that you know that he knows that the spotlight is on him and that he has to do everything completely honestly and that he's committed to doing it, but the challenge is even like it was when Trump was first running for president when when you have someone that you know potentially in the White House and is extracting concessions from foreign governments, it can create the

appearance

of a

conflict

of interest even if there isn't one, even if it's not a real

conflict

. conflict, can create the

appearance

of one Eric, thanks for letting us know, we reported on this, we appreciate it, New York Times investigative reporter Eric Lipton e