WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday he wants real estate developer Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, to serve as ambassador to France.
Trump made the announcement in a Truth Social post, calling Charles Kushner “a great business leader, philanthropist and dealmaker.”
Kushner is the founder of Kushner Companies, a real estate company. Jared Kushner is a former senior Trump adviser who is married to Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka.
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The elder Kushner was pardoned by Trump in December 2020 after pleading guilty years earlier to tax evasion and making illegal campaign donations.
Prosecutors alleged that after Charles Kushner discovered his brother-in-law was cooperating with federal authorities in an investigation, he devised a plan for revenge and intimidation.
Kushner hired a prostitute to lure his brother-in-law and then arranged to have the encounter in a New Jersey motel room recorded on a hidden camera and the recording sent to his own sister, the man’s wife, prosecutors said.
Kushner ultimately pleaded guilty to 18 charges, including tax evasion and witness tampering. He was sentenced in 2005 to two years in prison — the most he could receive under a plea deal, but less than what Chris Christie, then the U.S. attorney for New Jersey and later governor and Republican presidential candidate, had sought.
Christie has blamed Jared Kushner for his dismissal from Trump’s transition team in 2016, calling Charles Kushner’s transgressions “among the most abhorrent and abhorrent crimes I prosecuted while I was a U.S. attorney.”
Trump and the elder Kushner knew each other from real estate circles and their children married in 2009.
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Tucker reported from Newtown, Pennsylvania.
