President-elect Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he plans to nominate real estate developer Charles Kushner, the father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, to serve as ambassador to France.
Trump announced the news in a Truth Social post, describing Charles Kushner as “a tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker.”
Kushner founded Kushner Companies, a real estate corporation. Jared Kushner, Trump’s former White House senior adviser, is married to the president’s eldest daughter, Ivanka.
Trump pardoned the elder Kushner in December 2020 after pleading guilty years earlier to tax evasion and unlawful campaign contributions.
Prosecutors claimed that when Charles Kushner discovered his brother-in-law was collaborating with federal investigators, he devised a revenge and intimidation operation.
Kushner hired a prostitute to entice his brother-in-law, then planned to have the encounter in a New Jersey hotel room filmed with a hidden camera and forwarded to his own sister, the man’s wife, according to prosecutors.
Kushner eventually pleaded guilty to 18 charges, including tax evasion and witness tampering. In 2005, he was sentenced to two years in prison, the maximum allowed under a plea deal but less than what Chris Christie, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey at the time and subsequently governor and Republican presidential contender, had requested.
Christie blamed Jared Kushner for his dismissal from Trump’s transition team in 2016, and referred to Charles Kushner’s misdeeds as “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that I prosecuted when I was U.S. attorney.”
Trump and the elder Kushner knew each other through real estate circles, and their children married in 2009.
