Ethics experts say Jared Kushner's 'very, very bad judgment' got him into hot water once again
- White House senior adviser Jared Kushner is under fire over a pair of loans his family business received last year.
- Kushner Companies received the loans after Kushner met with the creditors at the White House.
- Ethics experts explained how Kushner could find himself in hot water.
- Richard Painter, the top ethics official in former President George W. Bush's administration, told Business Insider that the episode shows "very, very bad judgment" on Kushner's behalf.
White House senior adviser Jared Kushner is under fire again, this time for a pair of loans his family business received shortly after Kushner met the creditors in the White House - and ethics experts say he could be in legal jeopardy as a result.
Experts also ridiculed the idea of White House counsel Don McGahn being able to properly investigate the loans for any impropriety, and suggested that the ordeal could even come under the microscope of special counsel Robert Mueller.
"The notion that the counsel to the president has his staff investigating the son-in-law of the president is implausible to the point of being silly," Walter Shaub, the former head of the Office of Government Ethics under Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, told Business Insider. "There's no way OGE's acting director is naive enough to believe they're seriously looking into the matter."
"This is the same counsel to the president who asked [former Deputy Attorney General] Sally Yates why she cared if [former national security adviser] Michael Flynn lied, who tried unsuccessfully to get [Attorney General] Jeff Sessions to commit a crime by participating in the Russia investigation, and whose team rejected findings by two federal agencies that [White House counselor] Kellyanne Conway violated ethics requirements," Shaub, who resigned after serving under Trump for a few months, continued.
A pair of loans come under question
The loan controversy gained new traction after that acting head of OGE, David Apol, told Democratic lawmakers on Monday that the White House counsel was investigating whether the loans, which totaled more than $500 million to Kushner Companies, ran afoul of ethics laws or regulations.
"I have discussed this matter with the White House Counsel's Office in order to ensure that they have begun the process of ascertaining the facts necessary to determine whether any law or regulation has been violated," Apol said in his letter to the Democratic congressmen, adding that the White House informed him they had already begun that process.
News of the loans first broke in February when The New York Times reported that Citigroup lent Kushner Companies and a partner $325 million in early 2017, shortly after the bank's CEO, Michael Corbat, met Kushner in the White House.
A second loan came under scrutiny as well. Joshua Harris, the founder of Apollo, a group advising the administration on infrastructure policy, held several meetings with Kushner before the company lent $184 million to Kushner's family business last year.
Kushner, who is married to the president's daughter, Ivanka Trump, resigned from his family business last year and sold his stake in a family trust in an effort to clear up any conflicts of interest prior to joining the White House.
During Tuesday's press briefing, however, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders refuted what Apol told Democrats, saying that White House counsel Donald McGahn was not probing the Kushner loans.
"The White House indicated to OGE that we are aware of news reports and would proceed as appropriate," she said.
"The White House's track record in enforcing ethics laws has been terrible," Larry Noble, senior director and general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, told Business Insider. "And, regardless of what they conclude, at the very least, there is an appearance that the loans may have an effect on White House decisions."
How Kushner could find himself in hot water
Kushner could be in legal jeopardy in two ways, experts pointed out.
He could be found to have violated bribery statutes, but that would be difficult to prove, as a clear quid-pro-quo arrangement is needed in such a case, for example, if Kushner were to help eliminate a regulation Citigroup wanted killed in exchange for the loan.
The other relevant statute involves financial conflicts of interest. Kushner would have had to use his official position to do something that directly affected him or his business, as Richard Painter, the top ethics official in former President George W. Bush's administration, told Business Insider.
"But you would have to pinpoint a particular official action that had an effect one way or another on a business that he owned," Painter, now a University of Minnesota law professor, said.
He added that, regardless of whether legal statutes were violated, Kushner shouldn't have met with the banks.
"Obviously, if he meets with these big banks and they're giving his family money, it's very, very bad judgment because it certainly creates the appearance there may be a quid-pro-quo," he said. "Certainly it looks terrible. I never would've allowed it if I were the ethics lawyer in the White House."
Would Mueller take a look?
Jordan Libowitz, spokesman for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told Business Insider that it would be best for the Department of Justice to look into the loans, not the White House counsel.
Libowitz additionally pointed to Mueller having looked into some of Trump's and his associates' business dealings as a part of his probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election as evidence that the loans may prove to be of interest to him and his investigators.
"We know that he's looked into a number of business transactions involving the president and his family's businesses," he said. "We have no idea whether he's looked at this or not, but it's certainly a possibility."
Complicating matters is Kushner's place in Trump's family. If wrongdoing was to be found, how would the president react, Libowitz asked.
"This is the risk with giving someone that close to the president positions in the White House," he said. "You have to wonder what kinds of ties are most valued to the president."