Judge: Kushner Company Must Reveal Identities of Real Estate Partners

Jared Kushner

The ruling comes in a class-action lawsuit filed by tenants of Kushner-managed apartment complexes in the Baltimore area.

by Alec MacGillis

A federal judge in Maryland ruled Friday that Jared Kushner’s family real estate company could not keep secret the identities of its partners in Baltimore-area apartment complexes that are the subject of a class-action lawsuit by tenants.

The class-action lawsuit was filed in September, following a May article co-published by ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine that described how Kushner Companies have used highly aggressive tactics in pursuing payments from tenants and former tenants of 15 large apartment complexes it owns and manages in the Baltimore area.

The lawsuit, filed in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, alleges that the Kushner Companies’ real estate management arm and related corporate entities have been improperly inflating payments owed by tenants by charging them late fees that are often baseless and in excess of state limits and court fees that are not actually approved by any court. The suit alleges that the late fees and court fees set in motion a vicious cycle in which rent payments are partly put toward the fees instead of the actual rent owed, thus deeming the tenant once again “late” on his or her rent payment, leading to yet more late fees and court fees. Tenants are pressured to pay the snowballing bills with immediate threat of eviction, the suit alleges.

Kushner Companies and its co-defendants sought to have the case transferred from state court to federal court, which would spare it from having to face an all-Baltimore City jury. To have this transfer approved, the defendants needed to show that none of their ownership partners were residents of Maryland. The defendants requested that their submission of the list of partners be sealed from public view, citing the high degree of media interest in Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser.

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Source: ProPublica