Here come those New York state charges against Jared Kushner that Donald Trump can’t pardon
There are probably a few reasons why Donald Trump hasn’t even bothered to try pardoning his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Trump’s pardons of his co-conspirators might get struck down by the courts, and Trump doesn’t care that much about Manafort anyway. But even if he did, there would be little point, as New York State would simply file similar charges against Manafort, which can’t be pardoned. That brings us to today’s big news about Jared Kushner.
We’ve still seen no evidence that Trump cares enough about his son-in-law Kushner to try pardoning him. For that matter, Trump wasn’t even willing to grant Kushner a permanent security clearance yesterday, instead allowing John Kelly to strip Kushner of his temporary security clearance. But even if Trump were tempted to try pardoning Kushner in order to keep Ivanka Trump happy, a whole new monkey wrench just got thrown into the works, and it once again comes from New York.
New York State has now revealed that it’s investigating the suspicious loans that Deutsche Bank made to Jared Kushner, according to a new Bloomberg report (link). This means, in essence, that New York is running a parallel investigation into Kushner’s finances which mirrors the federal investigation that Robert Mueller is running. If Mueller finds evidence to charge Kushner with financial crimes, New York will find the same thing. Trump will be boxed out of pardoning Kushner, because even if the federal charges are pardoned, the state charges would kick in.
Deutsche Bank was busted by U.S. and European regulators in early 2017 for years of facilitating the laundering of billions of dollars of Russian money into the hands of clients in places like New York City. Deutsche has also made suspiciously large loans to Donald Trump at a time when few other banks would touch him. Deutsche has since begun loaning money to Jared Kushner in suspicious fashion.
