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 WASHINGTON — A real estate company owned by the family of Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law turned senior adviser tasked with leading his Middle East peace initiative, has reportedly entered into new business relationships with Israeli financial institutions during his short time in government. 
 
 
 
 The New York Times reported on Sunday that Kushner’s firm received an investment nearing $30 million from Menora Mivtachim, one of Israel’s largest insurers, in the spring of 2017, shortly before Kushner visited Jerusalem with the president on an official visit. 
 
 
 
 Menora’s injection of cash went to development projects in Maryland in which Kushner still has personal stakes, according to the report, which notes that the specific transaction does not appear to violate the letter of US ethics law. 
 
 Nevertheless, Kushner’s role as leader of the US peace process brings his business ties to Israel under exceptional scrutiny. And Kushner’s business partnerships in Israel are already known to be extensive. He has taken out at least four loans from Bank Hapoalim, Israel’s largest bank currently under criminal investigation in the United States, and has had major dealings with some of the nation’s wealthiest investors, some of whom are also the subject of bribery investigations.Kushner’s family has also donated to pro-settlement groups.“We have tremendous confidence in the job Jared is doing leading our peace efforts and he takes the ethics rules very seriously and would never compromise himself or the administration,” a White House spokesman told The Jerusalem Post. “In consultation with the Office of the White House Counsel, he is fully complying with federal ethics rules.”A lawyer for Kushner, Abbe Lowell, told the Times: “ “Jared Kushner has not been involved in, nor spoken about any Kushner Companies’ activities or project, since shortly before the inauguration. He has an ethics agreement, reviewed by lawyers, with which he is in full compliance. Connecting any of his well-publicized trips to the Middle East to anything to do with Kushner Companies or its businesses is nonsensical and is a stretch to write a story where none actually exists.“Kushner’s ties to Israel are also reportedly a subject of inquiry by Robert Mueller, the US special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, after he discovered that Kushner directed a campaign to combat the Obama administration’s eleventh hour effort in December 2016 to pass an anti-settlement resolution through the UN Security Council.Kushner at that time was a private citizen. 
 
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 ||||| Menora, which is also Israel’s largest manager of pension funds, has done numerous other real estate deals, including several in the United States, said the Menora executive, Ran Markman, who is the company’s head of real estate. He said he had never met Mr. Kushner. In negotiating the deal with Kushner Companies, Mr. Markman said, he worked with Laurent Morali, the firm’s president. 
 
 The deal was “not done because of the so-called connections of Jared Kushner or Donald Trump,” Mr. Markman said. “The connection to the president was not an issue. It didn’t make us do the deal, it didn’t make us not do the deal.” 
 
 Mr. Kushner resigned as chief executive of Kushner Companies when he joined the White House last January. But he remains the beneficiary of a series of trusts that own stakes in Kushner properties and other investments. Those are worth as much as $761 million, according to government ethics filings, and most likely much more: The estimate nets out the significant debt accumulated by the firm, which has done about $7 billion of deals in the past decade. 
 
 The Baltimore-area buildings in which Menora invested were the subject of an article by a ProPublica reporter in the The New York Times Magazine last year that documented the poor living conditions and aggressive tactics used by Kushner Companies, including garnishing the bank accounts of low-income tenants and turning off heat and hot water. 
 
 The White House has said Mr. Kushner would work with his ethics advisers to ensure he recused himself from “any particular matter involving specific parties in which he has a business relationship with a party to the matter.” 
 
 But a White House official also said Mr. Kushner had sold stakes in properties that would present unique complexity. For example, he sold his stake in the company’s headquarters at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, which is seeking new investors around the world. 
 
 It is unclear why Mr. Kushner hasn’t applied that same principle to the buildings in Maryland that received an investment from Menora.
– Jared Kushner's family real estate firm has continued to extend its business ties to Israel despite his role leading the administration's peace efforts in the Middle East, raising concerns that he may be breaking the spirit—though not the letter—of conflict-of-interest laws. The New York Times reports that shortly before President Trump's son-in-law departed on a diplomatic trip to Israel last year, Kushner Companies received a $30 million investment from Israeli insurer Menora Mivtachim; that investment went to Maryland apartment complexes that Kushner still has a stake in despite stepping down from the company after accepting a White House job last year. The company has also taken out large loans from Israeli banks. With Kushner playing such a big role in the peace process, "I think it's reasonable for people to ask whether his business interests are somehow affecting his judgment," government ethics expert Matthew Sanderson, a lawyer who advised Rand Paul's campaign, tells the Times. Kushner's lawyers and White House officials, however, stress that he is in full compliance with ethics rules. We have "tremendous confidence in the job Jared is doing leading our peace efforts, and he takes the ethics rules very seriously and would never compromise himself or the administration," White House spokesman Raj Shah tells the Jerusalem Post.