Jared Kushner finalized $285 million 'bad boy' loan with Deutsche Bank a month before Trump's election

Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, secured a $285 million loan from Deutsche Bank, Trump's biggest known lender and at the time under investigation for allegedly allowing Russian money laundering, in October 2016, a month before Trump's election, The Washington Post reports. The Kushner loan was part of a refinancing deal for four retail floors of the former New York Times building off Times Square in Manhattan, and Kushner did not list the loan or his personal guarantee for the debt on his financial disclosure form filed with the Office of Government Ethics; a lawyer for Kushner said he was not obligated to disclose the loan.

Kushner purchased the four retail floors of the building for a reported $296 million in October 2015 from the family of an Uzbek-born Israeli billionaire named Lev Leviev, who is a vocal admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin and once aspired to work with Trump on real estate deals in Moscow. Kushner filled the largely empty floors with retailers, and the October 2016 deal also included an $85 million loan from SL Green Realty, giving Kushner's business $74 million more than he paid for the retail space.

Kushner and his brother, Joshua, are listed as guarantors on the Deutsche Bank loan under what was termed a "nonrecourse carve-out," commonly known as a "bad boy" clause, the Post explains. "The way to look at this is, so long as you're not a 'bad boy' and don't do anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about," James Schwarz, a real estate lawyer who is an expert in such clauses, tells the Post. "To the extent you would do something fraudulent, then you have things to worry about" — namely personally being on the hook for millions of dollars. Separately, Kushner and his mother have a personal line of credit worth up to $25 million from Deutsche Bank, the Post notes.

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In December, Deutsche Bank paid $7.2 billion to settle U.S. charges related to fraud packaging residential mortgages, and in January it paid a $425 million fine to New York State to settle charges that it did not track large money transfers from Russia. The White House told the Post that Kushner "will recuse from any particular matter involving specific parties in which Deutsche Bank is a party." You can read more at The Washington Post.