On Friday, Business Insider reported White House senior adviser and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner created a shell company that secretly paid the president’s family members and spent almost half of the $1.26 billion in the campaign’s coffers. Now, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are asking the FBI to launch an investigation into the matter, according to Insider.
“In a letter to the agencies obtained by Insider, House Democrats Ted Lieu of California and Kathleen Rice of New York wrote late Friday that Trump’s campaign may have violated laws barring the spending of campaign cash for personal use and public disclosure requirements when it spent its money through American Made Media Consultants, ” the news outlet reported.
The lawmakers noted that such violations upward of $25,000 are felonies punishable by up to five years in prison. Trump’s campaign and an affiliated committee regularly spent millions of dollars through American Made Media Consultants, according to FEC records.
“As former prosecutors, we know that this conduct, if true, violates multiple laws,” Lieu and Rice wrote in their letter to the FBI. “We respectfully request that you open investigations into whether or not Mr. Kushner and members of the Trump family violated federal campaign finance or other statutes.”
The Department of Justice, of which the FBI is part, is empowered to investigate “knowing and willful” criminal violations of campaign finance laws.
Citing a source familiar with the operation, The Insider reported that American Made Media Consultants, which Kushner helped create in 2018, received $617 million from the Trump campaign to pay for ads and, in some cases, members of Trump’s family.
Kushner picked Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, Vice President Mike Pence’s nephew John Pence, and Trump campaign Chief Financial Officer Sean Dollman to serve on the board of the shell company, according to a person familiar with the creation of AMMC, who spoke with Insider. Insider was able to independently verify those details with other sources close to the Trump campaign.
The White House declined a request for comment on the report.
