Jared Kushner, hoist on his own petard

Of course you know what a petard is. A fart.

(Not to my prissy Compact Oxford English Dictionary, however. [Maybe that “Compact” is to blame, but anyway…] Its definition is much more boring: “a small bomb made of a metal or wooden box filled with powder.” Yeah, right, but then if you look way down at the bottom you will see, “ORIGIN French, from péter “break wind.” Which means: fart.)

OK, back to Jared Kushner and his petard.

Today ProPublica gave me an article on the petard hoisting Kushner in his defense of outrageous landlord practices in Baltimore.

This is an enraging case previously reported on by a joint venture of ProPublica and the New York Times.

See, the case right now is in a Baltimore city court. But Kushner’s defense team says it should be moved to federal court (where it will not face a Baltimore city jury) because a number of Kushner’s unnamed partners in this real estate venture are foreign.

Kushner wants to keep the names of the partners secret.

But in order to get the case moved to federal court, he’ll have to expose the precise derivations and names of his partners — you know, in order to prove they are indeed foreign and that this case does indeed belong in federal court, not a city court with a Baltimore, heavily African-American, jury.

So his team is asking that the partners’ names be sealed, i.e., kept from the view of the plaintiffs.

Did I say Kushner wants to keep the names of the partners secret? Gee, I already wrote that. But why? Could this have anything to do with money laundering? Hm.

The federal judge is apparently not persuaded by the keep-the-partners-secret argument:

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.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t and there’s no way out.

This is so adorable.

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