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 ca…