Sex, Lies and Video Tape: Meet Charlie Kushner, Ex-con & Jared’s Dad. Oh, He’s Also the US Ambassador to France.

Only In Trump’s America Would A Convicted Felon Become A Top Diplomat to One of Our Oldest Allies.

The story of Charles Kushner is one of those American morality tales that ends with the protagonist getting exactly what he wants. Which is to say, it’s not a morality tale at all.

Here was a man who built a New Jersey real estate empire from his father’s modest holdings—4,000 apartments expanding to 10,000 by 1999, when he won Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award. The classic bootstrap narrative, complete with all the right accoutrements: billions in assets, a seat at Democratic Party donor dinners, friendships with Bill and Hillary Clinton. Charles Kushner had mastered the game.

Then came the spectacular implosion, and what an implosion it was. The kind of self-destruction that makes you wonder whether hubris is simply ambition that’s stopped taking its medication.

It began with the sort of white-collar transgression that barely raises eyebrows anymore: illegal campaign contributions. The Federal Election Commission fined him $508,900 in 2004 for contributing to Democratic campaigns using partnership names without authorization. Embarrassing? Certainly. Career-ending? Hardly. Pay the fine, issue the apology, hire better lawyers. That’s the drill.

But Charles Kushner chose a different path entirely. When his brother-in-law William Schulder—married to Charles’s sister Esther and a former Kushner Companies employee—began cooperating with federal prosecutors, Charles didn’t reach for the usual playbook of legal maneuvering and damage control. He reached for something out of a third-rate revenge thriller.

He hired a prostitute. Had her seduce Schulder at the Red Bull Inn in Bridgewater, New Jersey. (Even in vengeance, apparently, one doesn’t splurge on the Ritz.) Installed a hidden camera to record the encounter. And then—this is where the story tips from merely sordid to genuinely deranged—sent the videotape to his own sister.

Not to blackmail Schulder directly, mind you. To destroy his sister’s marriage. To weaponize family devastation against federal investigators. It was witness tampering as domestic terrorism, and it was breathtakingly stupid.

The Schulders, unsurprisingly, handed the tape to authorities. The prostitute, when located and pressured, turned state’s evidence. And Chris Christie—then the swaggering U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, busy making his bones prosecuting Democratic donors—had his trophy case moment.

“One of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes I prosecuted,” Christie would say later, with evident relish. “If a guy hires a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, and videotapes it, and then sends the videotape to his sister to attempt to intimidate her from testifying before a grand jury, do I really need any more justification than that?”

No, one supposes not.

On March 4, 2005, Charles Kushner pleaded guilty to eighteen felony counts: sixteen for tax evasion, one for witness tampering, one for lying to the Federal Election Commission. Judge Jose L. Linares handed down a two-year sentence—the maximum under the plea agreement. Fourteen months at Federal Prison Camp Montgomery in Alabama, followed by a halfway house stint in Newark.

Charles was also disbarred in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. The billionaire real estate developer was now a convicted felon without a law license, watching his empire from a prison cell while his 24-year-old son Jared took the helm.

Here’s where the story gets interesting—not for what happened next, but for what didn’t happen. Charles Kushner didn’t disappear into comfortable retirement, tail between his legs. He didn’t retreat from public life in disgrace. He simply... waited.

After his release, Charles pivoted the family business to New York. By 2007, Jared was making the catastrophically mistimed purchase of 666 Fifth Avenue for $1.8 billion, right before the financial crisis. The Kushners lost millions, scrambled for bailouts, eventually secured rescue financing from Brookfield Asset Management backed by Qatari money. By 2016, the family’s net worth was estimated at $1.8 billion. Crisis averted, empire intact.

But Charles had his eye on a different prize: rehabilitation. And for that, he needed his son’s new connections.

When Jared married Ivanka Trump in 2009, Charles understood immediately what this meant. Not just social elevation—access. Real access. The kind that turns convicted felons back into “businessmen who made mistakes.”

When Trump ran for president in 2015, Charles wrote a $100,000 check to the super PAC and hosted Trump at the family’s Jersey Shore estate. When Trump won, Jared became senior advisor. And Charles Kushner, disbarred felon, suddenly had a direct line to the Oval Office.

He played it perfectly. He kept quiet, stayed off-camera, let Jared be the family face. He waited for his moment. And on December 23, 2020, in one of Trump’s final acts of his first presidency, it came: a full and unconditional pardon for Charles Kushner, citing his “reform” and “charity.”

Eighteen felonies—erased. The sex tape scheme—legally forgiven. The tax evasion—wiped clean. Charles Kushner was no longer a convicted felon. He was, according to the official narrative, a reformed philanthropist who’d paid his debt to society.

Christie, by then long fired from Trump’s orbit—reportedly at Jared’s insistence, a neat bit of revenge—could only watch as the man whose crimes he’d called “loathsome” got his get-out-of-jail-free card.

But the pardon was merely prologue. The real reward came four years later.

On November 30, 2024, President-elect Trump announced he would nominate Charles Kushner as U.S. Ambassador to France and Monaco. A man disbarred in three states, imprisoned for witness tampering involving a sex tape sent to his own sister, would now represent American interests at one of our most prestigious diplomatic posts.

Trump’s statement was perfectly Trumpian in its brazen rewriting of reality: “He is a tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker, who will be a strong advocate representing our Country & its interests.”

The Senate confirmed him 51-45 on May 19, 2025. Only one Democrat, New Jersey’s Cory Booker, voted yes—a curious choice from the senator representing the state where Kushner committed his crimes. But that’s Washington. Memory is selective, and deals are deals.

Charles Kushner was sworn in as ambassador on July 11, 2025. Twenty years from federal prison to diplomatic posting. It’s almost poetic, if you squint.

But Charles couldn’t resist the urge to be Charles. On August 25, barely six weeks into his tenure, he published an open letter excoriating France for its “lack of action” on rising anti-Semitism. Whatever the merits of his concerns, there’s a rather basic principle of diplomacy: you don’t publicly humiliate your host government in the press. You work through channels. You have quiet conversations. You don’t issue grandstanding statements that make the French foreign ministry summon you for a dressing-down.

Which they did. And Charles Kushner refused to attend.

Think about that for a moment. The U.S. Ambassador to France, in post for six weeks, refuses to meet with the French foreign ministry after publicly attacking the French government. It’s either stunning diplomatic incompetence or the arrogance of a man who has learned, through lived experience, that rules don’t apply to him.

Why would he think otherwise? He committed eighteen felonies and served fourteen months. He was disbarred and simply moved his business to New York. He was pardoned by his son’s father-in-law. He was confirmed as ambassador despite all of it. At every turn, the system bent to accommodate him, protect him, reward him.

This is what’s so fascinating about the Charles Kushner story. It’s not a tale of redemption—there’s been no real reckoning, no genuine contrition, no transformation that would justify the arc from felon to ambassador. It’s a tale of the triumph of connections over consequences, of power over accountability.

Charles’s son Jared learned the lesson well. While serving in the White House, Jared shaped policy for Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. Six months after leaving office, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund invested $2 billion in his private equity firm Affinity Partners. The Saudis’ own advisors said it was a terrible investment—Affinity’s operations were “unsatisfactory in all aspects.” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman overruled them. Between 2021 and 2024, Affinity collected $157 million in management fees while generating zero returns for investors. Jared’s net worth went from $320 million to over $900 million.

Like father, like son. The Kushner method: do what you want, wait for the heat to die down, cash in through your connections. It works every time, apparently.

What’s most striking about Charles Kushner isn’t the original crimes—those were garden-variety corruption elevated by sexual grotesquerie. It’s the complete absence of any real price paid. He went to minimum-security prison and came out to rebuild his empire. He was pardoned and made ambassador. He antagonized the French government and faced no consequences.

The prostitute he hired cooperated with prosecutors. The brother-in-law he filmed testified against him. The sister whose marriage he tried to destroy contributed to his conviction. The U.S. Attorney who prosecuted him called it one of the most loathsome crimes he’d seen. And twenty years later, Charles Kushner is Ambassador Charles Kushner, representing the United States in Paris, having been pardoned by a president his son helped elect.

This is the story we tell ourselves about American second chances and redemption. But strip away the gauzy narrative and you’re left with something much uglier: a system where wealth and connections can erase almost anything, where eighteen felonies are merely inconvenient obstacles on the path to an ambassadorship, where sending a sex tape to your sister becomes a biographical footnote rather than a disqualifying character revelation.

Christie said it was one of the most disgusting crimes he prosecuted. Trump said Charles was a tremendous business leader. The Senate said close enough, 51-45. France said his behavior was unacceptable. Charles Kushner said nothing—he simply didn’t show up for the meeting.

And why should he? He’s gotten away with everything else. His son certainly has—$2 billion from the Saudis, $1.5 billion from Qatar and the UAE, all while continuing to advise on Middle East policy in Trump’s second term. The Kushners have perfected the art of monetizing access while maintaining plausible deniability. Charles taught Jared well: rules are suggestions, consequences are temporary, and power—real power—means never having to say you’re sorry.

Sorry Preppie.

From sex tape to State Department in twenty years. From federal prison to French embassy. From eighteen felony convictions to ambassadorial confirmation. It’s the most American Trump story imaginable.

Charles Kushner isn’t a cautionary tale. He’s a how-to manual. And judging by his son’s trajectory—and his own diplomatic posting—it’s a manual that works spectacularly well.

Welcome to America.

Please check your sense of shame at the door.

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