As Senior Advisor, presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner holds an unprecedented spot in the Trump White House. Years before, however, the husband of Trump's oldest daughter Ivanka played another key role, this time as the leading defender of his father after he was sent to a federal prison in Alabama.
Charles Kushner, now 63, is the New Jersey-born son of Holocaust survivors. A law school graduate, the elder Kushner helped his father grow their New Jersey real estate company in the 1980s, eventually forming Kushner Companies and adding properties in New York City.
Charles Kushner
Kushner's business continued to grow throughout the '90s and early 2000s, until 2004 when he ran afoul of election laws. Kushner was fined more than $500,000 by the Federal Election Commission for contributing to political campaigns in the name of his partnership despite lacking authorization to do so. Now on the federal radar, the U.S. Attorney's Office of the District of New Jersey - headed by current governor and former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie - began investigating Kushner's political activities.
Jared Kushner - then an undergraduate at Harvard University - saw his name improperly put on some $90,000 of his father's donations as well. He stood by his father during the investigation, however, and afterwards when Charles Kushner pleaded guilty to 18 counts of making illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering. The last charge involved a particularly nasty incident where Charles Kushner send his sister Esther a tape showing her husband William Schulder with a prostitute hired by Kushner to discredit his brother-in-law, who was cooperating with federal authorities.
Charles Kushner was sentenced to two years in prison and sent to the Federal Prison Camp in Montgomery. His son, according to the Washington Post, flew to Alabama to visit his father almost every weekend, publicly insisting his father had been unfairly prosecuted.
The minimum-security prison camp, populated by as many as 800 white collar criminals, is located next to Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery. Maxwell is one of only two military installations in the country to house a prison, with the other being Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
In later interviews, Kushner said the most difficult part of being in the Montgomery facility was being away from his family.
"I'm an adaptable person, so living in a bunk bed was not a great sacrifice; living out of a locker was not a great sacrifice; having one pair of pants was not a sacrifice," he said in 2007. "The biggest hardship that I experienced was being separated from my wife and children and my grandchildren. They'd visit me once a week."
Kushner wasn't the prison's first or last high-profile inmate.
In the early 1980s, New York nightlife kings Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager spent a year behind bars there after being convicted of tax evasion in connection to their Studio 54 disco. In 2014, former Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. arrived at the Montgomery prison to serve out his sentence for wire and mail fraud. Jeffrey Skilling, the high-profile former CEO of Enron, is being housed at the federal prison on charges related to securities fraud and conspiracy. He's set to be released in 2019.
Charles Kushner was released from the prison camp in April 2006 after serving 14 months. He spent out the rest of his term at a halfway house in New Jersey before being released in August 2006, three years before Jared Kushner wed Ivanka Trump and a decade before Donald Trump would win the presidency.
After prison, Charles Kushner returned to his real estate development firm, amassing a fortune worth about $1.8 billion. The family had traditionally supported Democratic candidates but he gave $100,000 to Donald Trump's presidential campaign and hosted a reception for him at his New Jersey mansion.
There are reminders of Alabama that later joined Charles Kushner back north. Avram Lebor and Richard Goettlich - both of whom were imprisoned with Kushner - now work for the family's real estate company. Lebor, who served a seven-year sentence for a mortgage scheme, is Kushner's direction of acquisition; Goettlich serves as a leasing consultant. In 1998, Goettlich was sentenced to 10 years for securities fraud, money laundering and tax evasion.
Kushner's company said the two were hired under it hired as part of its second-chance program, which offers employment for felons.