“We’re living in a sensitive age, Cuke, and I’m not altogether sure you’re fully attuned to it.”

—Mayor Frank Skeffington, The Last Hurrah

I cut my teeth doing political reporting in and around the State House on Beacon Hill in Boston. I have a healthy inbred respect for the many and varied forms of political grift, graft, brigandage, and chicanery. My gob is not easily smacked. My flabber is not easily gasted. That said, this latest news out of Camp Runamuck, as brought to us by The New York Times, is both beyond my comprehension and completely off the damn hook.

Joshua Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, was advising Trump administration officials on infrastructure policy. During that period, he met on multiple occasions with Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, said three people familiar with the meetings. Among other things, the two men discussed a possible White House job for Mr. Harris. The job never materialized, but in November, Apollo lent $184 million to Mr. Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies. The loan was to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper.

Even by the standards of Apollo, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, the previously unreported transaction with the Kushners was a big deal: It was triple the size of the average property loan made by Apollo’s real estate lending arm, securities filings show. It was one of the largest loans Kushner Companies received last year. An even larger loan came from Citigroup, which lent the firm and one of its partners $325 million to help finance a group of office buildings in Brooklyn. That loan was made in the spring of 2017, shortly after Mr. Kushner met in the White House with Citigroup’s chief executive, Michael L. Corbat, according to people briefed on the meeting. The two men talked about financial and trade policy and did not discuss Mr. Kushner’s family business, one person said.

It has not been a good week for the Dauphin-in-Law. First, he gets his security clearance pulled, at least in part because oligarchs from foreign lands considered him the biggest sucker on the planet. Now, he’s at the center of a steaming pile of corruption so blatant that it would have embarrassed Ferdinand Marcos. If he’s at all smart, he’s spending hours in front of a mirror, repeating the phrase, “To the best of my recollection,” over and over until he can appear sincere.

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It is important to note for the historical record that this story broke at around quarter-to-Maddow on a Wednesday night on which the news had been dominated by the departure of source-to-the-stars Hope Hicks from the highly temporary job of White House communications director. (I hear veteran rock drummer Stumpy Pepys already has submitted a resume.) Meanwhile, elsewhere in the plague-riddled business empire that bears the president*’s name, in Panama, the employees in one of his properties are in the middle of an armed standoff with police over their paychecks. From the LA Times:

Many had been at the hotel since its opening in 2011 and said they had been drawn to work there because of Trump brand — which the building's new owner says has become a huge drawback…Led by Miami-based private equity fund Ithaca Capital, the owners of the hotel units voted to remove Trump's name from the building and fire his hotel management company. Ithaca's manager, Orestes Fintiklis, has alleged financial misconduct by Trump Hotels dating back years and has said Trump's statements on immigration have rendered his brand toxic in Latin America. Trump Hotels has refused to acknowledge its termination, citing a commitment by Fintiklis not to challenge Trump's contract when he bought 202 of the 369 hotel units at the property last year. When Fintiklis, who is also head of the hotel owners' association, invited a team of Marriott hotel executives to tour the property last year, Trump Hotel staff ran them off.

So, as I see it, he shouldn’t still be a businessman because he’s the president*, and because he’s president, he’s an even worse businessman. None of this is the way anything is supposed to work.

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But, returning to young Jared, it’s pretty plain that a spit is being prepared for him at Bob Mueller’s House of BBQ, right next to the one on which Paul Manafort is currently revolving. The only way truly to judge what Mueller is doing is to see what’s leaking out, likely from defense attorneys and witnesses with nothing to lose. What’s plain is that nothing is out of bounds.

He’s looking into every dark corner of the family business, and the family business is nothing but dark corners. The family business is the context in which young Jared thought he could have an equity billionaire in for lunch, discuss a White House job, and then take a loan from the billionaire’s company to bail out his doomed real-estate business, and in which young Jared not only believed nobody would notice, but also that nobody would care. It’s all about money, ain’t a damn thing funny.

You got to have a con in the land of milk and honey.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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