Trump picks son-in-law’s dad, Charles Kushner, to be ambassador to France

President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday that he wants real estate developer Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and long a controversial figure in New Jersey politics, to serve as U.S. ambassador to France.
Trump made the announcement in a Truth Social post, calling Charles Kushner “a tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker.”
Kushner is the founder of Kushner Companies, a real estate firm now based in New York City but established decades ago in Florham Park. He grew up in Elizabeth and was the son of Holocaust survivors who built a sizable real estate empire, with more than $3 billion in property in New Jersey and beyond.
His son, Jared Kushner, is a former senior Trump adviser who is married to the incoming president’s eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump.
Charles 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 hatched a scheme for revenge and intimidation.
Kushner hired a prostitute to lure his brother-in-law, then arranged to have the encounter in a New Jersey motel room recorded with a hidden camera and the recording sent to his own sister, the man’s wife, prosecutors said.
Kushner eventually pleaded guilty to 18 counts 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, had sought.
Christie, later New Jersey’s governor and a Republican presidential candidate, has blamed Jared Kushner for his firing from Trump’s transition team in 2016, and has called Charles Kushner’s offenses “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that I prosecuted when I was U.S. attorney.”
Still, at the time of his guilty plea, Christie declared in a press conference: “No matter how rich and powerful you are or poor and un-powerful, if you have violated the federal law in the district of New Jersey or if you are corrupting our political system, this office will bring you to justice. Today, Charles Kushner was brought to justice.”
A player in state and national politics, Charles Kushner hosted fundraising events for President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, and U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who all paid calls at his offices in Florham Park, or his home in Livingston. As the single largest campaign contributor to Gov. James McGreevey when he ran in 2001, Kushner was later named by the governor to become the powerful chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Trump and the elder Kushner knew each other from real estate circles, and their children were married in 2009.
Among those reacting to the news Saturday social media, was Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University.
”Charlie Kushner? This is madness,” wrote Rasmussen, formerly McGreevey’s press secretary. “And we always get the government we deserve.”
NJ Advance Media staff writers Brent Johnson, Steven Rodas, and Ted Sherman contributed to this report.