Tag Archives: Jared Kushner

Another FOIA Lawsuit? I’m Not Sure

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The latest from the Department of State on my outstanding FOIA requests. I’ve written back asking for clarification on an incorrect case control number used here and in previous correspondence.

Way back in October of 2018, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the US Department of State concerning an April 2017 meeting at the US embassy in Chile between Ivan Arriagada, CEO of Antofagasta plc, and Carol Z. Perez, who was then US ambassador to Chile. About a month later, I followed up with a second request for embassy communications regarding Trump’s nomination of Andrew Gellert to be ambassador to Chile.

These documents could help highlight the use of the US embassy in Santiago as a business backchannel for Antofagasta’s Twin Metals project in northeastern Minnesota, and perhaps shed some light on the Trump administration’s (botched) effort to appoint a close Kushner family business associate to be Perez’s successor. With Kushner’s $2 billion deal with the Saudis and the financing of the 666 Fifth Avenue deal under scrutiny, these records might also shed some light on the grey area where Kushner operated, mixing financial and other emoluments with Trump administration policy.

Over four years later, those FOIA requests are still outstanding. After a long delay, several blown deadlines, a denial of my request for expedited processing, then a denial of my appeal of that decision, the Department of State now tells me that I should expect a response to the October 2018 request by November 20, 2023. The November 2018 request is now expected to be completed by May 31, 2024. State complains of a FOIA backlog and setbacks due to the COIVD-19 pandemic, but it’s hard to square those complaints with any reasonable interpretation of the FOIA statute, which stipulates that records will be made “promptly available.” And, of course, these soft deadlines are likely to change again.

A lot has changed in the years since I made these two requests, and with the Republicans now taking the gavel in the House, a lot more changes are coming. The Biden administration restored the status quo ante when it issued a legal opinion saying that Antofagasta’s mineral leases near the Boundary Waters had been improperly renewed; the Forest Service completed the withdrawal study that Sonny Perdue, Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture, abruptly canceled due to political pressure; and the Bureau of Land Management proceeded with the Rainy River Withdrawal.

As Antofagasta and its Twin Metals subsidiary contest these actions in a yet another lawsuit against the federal government, the mining company has stepped up lobbying efforts.

Republicans now say the administration’s actions leave the US vulnerable and over-reliant on supply chains controlled by China. They say the Twin Metals project and other sulfide mining projects in the Lake Superior region will provide American jobs and help prevent human rights abuses abroad.

It’s clear the Twin Metals project will remain a national political flash point in the 118th Congress and in the 2024 election. But so much has changed over the past few years that it’s hard to say whether the records I’m asking for will be of anything more than limited historical interest. What might they contribute to the larger story I am trying to bring into focus, or the current public debate?

That’s weighing on my decision whether to write another complaint, pay the $400 filing fee, and try to force the State Department’s hand. Any case filed in US District Court now would probably take at least until summer or fall to produce responsive records, at which point the State Department promises, sort of, to have its act together. Or they could just put me off again.

What’s Up With the Kalorama Business License?

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As of this morning, it looks as if the lawyers for Chilean mining magnate Andronico Luksic Craig decided not to renew, or simply neglected to renew, the District of Columbia business license for Tracy DC Real Estate, Inc., the company that owns the Kalorama Triangle mansion rented by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. (For some background, see this post.) A search for the license on the District of Columbia’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs site conducted yesterday at 9:43AM — on the day the license was set to expire — showed that it was “ready to renew.”
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Today, the same search yields no records.

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A search for Tracy DC Real Estate’s corporate information on the DC Business Center site shows the same thing: the entity is active, but does not have a Basic Business License or “BBL.”

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So it’s possible that Tracy DC Real Estate is no longer carrying a business license for the Kalorama mansion, and has been unlicensed in DC as of midnight last night. (District of Columbia municipal regulations require all landlords to have a business license. Those without one cannot legally demand that tenants pay their rent and may incur fines.) It seems equally likely that there is something about the way the system processes renewals that accounts for the disappearance of Tracy DC Real Estate licensing information.

I wasn’t able to learn much one way or the other when I called the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs this morning and inquired about the lack of search results. The clerk told me the license had probably disappeared from the search because the license simply had not been renewed, but, he added, there is always a chance the paperwork is still “in the mail” and the renewal just hasn’t been processed.

In the mail? The DCRA site offers online renewal services, and it seems odd that Luksic’s attorneys, or Tracy DC Real Estate’s corporation agent, CT Corporation Services, would not have taken advantage of that. These are not people who let things lapse or go about their affairs in a careless or haphazard way. (Public records show, for example, that they have scrupulously kept up with property tax payments, incurring no penalties since taking ownership. The next tax payment on the Kalorama mansion — $22,540 — is due on March 31, 2019.*)

As the Twin Metals timeline indicates, Tracy DC Real Estate was formed on December 15, 2016, the same day as Department of Interior Solicitor Hillary Tompkins issued her M-Opinion denying renewal of the Twin Metals leases in Superior National Forest. Corporate records show that incorporation was done by Jonathan Cohen and Richard J. Snyder of the law firm Duane Morris LLP. (Filings list the Duane Morris LLP offices on 505 9th Street NW in Washington, DC as Tracy DC Real Estate’s business address.) A Robert M. Snyder, who does not appear to work at Duane Morris, but appears to be a relative of attorney Richard J. Snyder, is listed as the “governor” of the corporation.

Richard J. Snyder’s bio on the Duane Morris site makes it clear that setting up the business end of the Kalorama Triangle mansion is just one of several matters he handles for the powerful Luksic family. For this same “Forbes 100 listed South American family and certain Liechtenstein-owned U.S. entities,” Synder also handled a “$50 million unsecured loan and mortgage financing involving 14 properties in three states with attendant U.S. tax advice.”** He advised unnamed “South American investors” and a “related Lichtenstein establishment” on corporate restructuring of $72 million in real estate and other assets in six jurisdictions, including France, Panama, Peru, Massachusetts, Florida, and Colorado.

I can’t say what these loans and restructurings are all about, and whether they have any connection to the Boundary Waters reversal story I’ve been pursuing. The Colorado matter, for instance, might simply have to do with Andronico Luksic’s home in Aspen. But it’s pretty clear that these South American and Lichtensteinian matters are all Luksic Group matters. The Luksic and Fontbona families conduct much of the Luksic Group business, including their control of mining conglomerate Antofagasta, Plc, and Quinenco, S.A., an investment firm, through Lichenstein-based vehicles.

It seems unlikely, but not out of the realm of possibility, that an attorney entrusted with such grave responsibilities would overlook the simple renewal of a business license. Especially not with such high profile tenants in the mix. If this is indeed an oversight or a matter of waiting for the DCRA system to update, it will probably be corrected in the next few days. If not, it could be a signal that the Kalorama property is going to be put on the market, or transferred to some other entity, and that something else is afoot.

Update 7 March 2019. One week on, and no license renewal. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the group behind Tracy DC Real Estate, having gotten what it wanted, or all it’s going to get from this administration, no longer sees any need to keep up appearances, or pretend that the rental ever was a legitimate business arrangement. Non-renewal of the business license strongly suggests that the Kalorama mansion should be looked upon as a foreign emolument.

*Update 26 March, 2019. Still no record online of the Tracy DC Real Estate business license renewal, but the property taxes for the first half of 2019 have been paid. And on 20 March, the corporation filed a biennial report with the District of Columbia Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. These reports are due by April 1st of each second calendar year. They appears to be keeping up with everything except the business license.

**Update 5 May 2019. This financing activity may have included the Kalorama mansion. On April 5th, 2018, Rodrigo Swett signed a Deed of Trust for 2.75M on the property at 2449 Tracy Place NW. On the same day, he signed similar instruments for multiple properties in Miami Beach and at least 7 properties in Boston’s Back Bay. That would seem to cover the “three states” (Florida, Massachusetts, and District of Columbia) to which Synder refers in his bio.

Update 9 June 2019. The business license for the mansion was renewed on 31 May, 2019, a full three months after it was allowed to expire.

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What accounts for the three month lapse? An oversight by Luksic’s lawyers seems the most likely explanation. Or maybe, after borrowing against the property in April 2018, the owners planned to change its status, then decided to stay the course.

Read other posts about the Boundary Waters reversal here. 

A Meeting in Santiago about Mining in Minnesota

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I’d like to focus, in this post, on what is so far a unique entry in the Twin Metals timeline: an April meeting at the US Embassy in Santiago Chile, with Ivan Arriagada, the CEO of Antofagasta Plc, and Carol Z. Perez, the US ambassador to Chile. We know about this meeting only through documents obtained by Freedom of Information Act requests, and specifically from just one email dated 26 April 2017, sent by Briana Collier to Jack Haugrud:

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Intriguing: but for now, the best I can do is provide a little context.

As the timeline shows, the meeting at the US Embassy in Santiago, Chile in the week of April 26th took place during a period of intense activity around the Twin Metals project. It was held just a little over a week after Mr. Arriagada had written directly to then-Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, requesting an in-person meeting in Washington, DC, on either May 2nd or 3rd. (Arriagada would come to Interior for the first time on the 3rd. Internal emails show that he met on that occasion with several officials at the Department of the Interior, but Zinke is not among them, at least not on the calendar entries I have seen; and if Arriagada met with Zinke separately on May 3rd, there is no entry for any such meeting on Zinke’s official calendar.) So perhaps the embassy in Santiago serves as a way station of sorts, a first stop for Arriagada on his American tour.

It was probably here, in Santiago, that Arriagada first started to make the case he would make in Washington, DC. The letter to Ryan Zinke lays out the appeal the mining company would make at Interior, and it also helps us gain an impression of what this meeting at the embassy was about. It opens with Arriagada declaring that he is “proud” to associate himself and his company — which has never operated a mine in the United States — with “the development of strategic minerals in the United States.” Here in the US, Arriagada clearly understands, minerals acquire “strategic” status when mining companies run into permitting delays and other difficulties. It is, as I’ve noted elsewhere, code for overriding and rolling back environmental regulations. (This leads me to suspect that Arriagada’s letter to Zinke was actually written by the lobbyists at WilmerHale. Whether they played a role in arranging the meeting at the US embassy is impossible to say, given the evidence we have.)

Arriagada’s letter goes on to explain that Antofagasta has already spent “upwards of $400 million in investment” on the “exploratory phase” of Twin Metals. The company frequently brandishes this figure, but I’ve never seen it broken down. Interior’s own Kathleen Benedetto will repeat the $400 million figure a week later, on April 25th, when she briefs Zinke in preparation for his 26 April meeting with Representatives Emmer and Nolan; and the number will be repeated in news stories as well. I am not sure what “upwards” means here, but it seems to be doing an awful lot of work. Principal Deputy Solicitor Jorjani seems to believe caution is warranted: near the end of his December 2017 memo, he notes only that the company “has asserted that it has spent over 400 million in exploration activity.”

For what it’s worth, $400 million is not a number Antofagasta uses in its communications with shareholders or in its financial statements. (See, e.g., here, here and here.) The number routinely associated with the Twin Metals project in these communications is black, not red: $150 million — the value PWC, Antofagasta’s auditor, assigns to the project as an “intangible asset.” When it comes to investments, both the 2015 and 2016 Antofagasta annual reports note a decrease in exploration and evaluation costs, reflecting a “general decrease” in exploration activity “at the Centinela District in Chile and the Twin Metals project in the United States.” There is the added minor discrepancy that this letter characterizes Twin Metals as a “mineral development project, currently in the exploratory phase,” while in the 2016 and 2017 annual reports, the project has already advanced from the Exploratory phase to the Evaluation phase. It appears shareholders and US government agencies are being told two different stories about Twin Metals. In any case, the big round $400 million number is the thing that sticks. It’s used to intimidate and spook. A year later, Zinke will tell Representative Betty McCollum that the Obama administration’s decision exposed taxpayers to “hundreds of millions of dollars” in takings litigation. He was probably recalling Arriagada’s number, or Benedetto’s spin on it.

We now know that Zinke and the Department of Interior were doing Arriagada’s bidding all along, and they’d gotten started well before this letter was written. (And if WilmerHale did in fact draft this letter, then it’s really just some stage business, to create a paper trail for a meeting to discuss an ongoing effort coordinated by WilmerHale.) Interior officials appear to have been less concerned about the exposure of US taxpayers than about the risk the mining company had taken on: “our past and future investment now hangs in the balance,” Arriagada writes in April of 2017. He asks to meet with Zinke to discuss “a viable path forward” for the Twin Metals project. The letter lists three obstacles the Obama administration put in Antofagasta’s way: the M-opinion issued by solicitor Hilary Tompkins; the decision by the Bureau of Land Management to rescind the Twin Metals leases, based on the M opinion; and the withdrawal of thousands of acres of Superior National Forest from mineral development initiated by BLM and the US Forest Service. Remarkably, before Zinke resigned in disgrace, he, Deputy Solicitor Daniel Jorjani, and other officials at the Department of the Interior (and the Department of Agriculture) came through for the Chilean mining company on all three counts.

How any of this work on the mining company’s behalf at Interior bears on the meeting in Santiago, Chile, and what any of it has to do with Carol Z. Perez, the US ambassador to Chile, is hard to say. It’s still not clear why Arriagada thought he should stop first at the embassy in Santiago. A courtesy? An opportunity to get some pointers on how to deal with the new administration? Or something even more specific? To get a better idea, I’ve filed two FOIA requests with the Department of State for communications and documents that will help illustrate the meeting Perez had with Arriagada, but the State Department has labeled the requests “complex,” and I have yet to receive any responsive documents.

We know that Briana Collier briefed Perez, so Perez was looking at the Twin Metals project through the lens of the briefing document Interior provided. And if this briefing was anything like the one page briefing prepared around the same time for Zinke by Kathleen Benedetto — if that April 25 briefing represents the general position of Interior at that point in time — we can observe one thing at least. By April, the US government had completely set aside the previous findings of the US Forest Service and any consideration of the serious environmental risks posed by sulfide mining operations on lands adjacent to the Boundary Waters. The Benedetto briefing makes no mention whatsoever of these concerns. In fact, when Doug Domenech took a briefing on the Twin Metals project for the White House a little over a month later, on June 1, 2017, he apparently read what Benedetto sent him and needed some clarification on this point. That much is clear from Benedetto’s reply:

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Sic. And with that sloppily written gesture, which barely manages to disguise its contemptuous disregard, Benedetto relegates all science and science-based policy that would caution against permitting sulfide mining in this region to what “people opposed to the project believe.” (The only risk Benedetto appears to consider worth mentioning is the exposure of the American Taxpayer — the initial capitals are hers — to takings litigation, adding that BLM values the Twin Metals deposit at $49.48 billion. The figure is based on a 2014 BLM report that assumes a 44% rate of return. That $400 million investment sure has grown.)

The meeting at the embassy in Santiago needs to be seen in the context of this coordinated push to overturn Obama era decisions, sideline science and environmental protections, and turn Antofagasta’s much-touted investment to a tangible asset — a working mine. Without some response to the Department of State FOIA requests, context will have to substitute for content. Why should the State Department have been asked to intervene in the Twin Metals matter?

Perhaps the aim of this meeting was not to involve the State Department at all. That may not make a whole lot of sense, on the face of it. Perez made her career in the State Department, serving in various posts around the world since the 1980s. She worked for Condoleezza Rice, did a brief stint in Italy, and coordinated State Department anti-drug trafficking efforts before President Obama appointed her US Ambassador to Chile in 2016. She appears to enjoy no special favor with the Trump administration, and she was slated to be replaced by a Trump nominee: Andrew Gellert, who was nominated to the post on January 4th, 2018. And Gellert would be much more closely aligned with the White House than with foreign service officials in the State Department.

This is one last piece of context to consider. We don’t know why Arriagada brought the US embassy in Santiago into the loop on the Twin Metals project. It seems tolerably clear, however, that the US embassy in Santiago would have remained in the loop, and in much closer communication with the Trump White House, had Andrew Gellert been confirmed as US ambassador to Chile. As was noted at the time of his nomination, Andrew is the son of George Gellert, a longtime business associate of Charles Kushner. The Gellerts and the Kushners have done business together for decades, often by nothing more than a handshake — no contracts. Andrew is President of the Gellert Global Group, a food importing conglomerate that does some dried fruit and nut business in Chile, and also counts among its holdings and investments “numerous real estate ventures” with the Kushner Companies. After Charles Kushner’s conviction and imprisonment a decade ago, George Gellert started working closely with Jared Kushner on a number of deals, including the disastrous 666 Fifth Avenue deal. It seems worth noting — even if it’s hard to figure out whether it amounts to anything at all — that back in August of 2018, just a couple of weeks after Brookfield Asset Management paid $1.3 billion to rescue Jared Kushner and George Gellert from 666 Fifth Avenue, Andrew’s nomination to be ambassador to Chile was quietly withdrawn.

What Scott Pruitt’s Troubles Tell Us About Corruption in Kalorama

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It’s tempting to draw parallels between the situation at 2449 Tracy Place NW, where Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump rent a mansion owned by Chilean mining billionaire Andronico Luksic Craig, and Scott Pruitt’s sweetheart deal to rent a bedroom in a Washington DC condo owned by the wife of powerful lobbyist Steven Hart, chairman of Williams & Jensen, for fifty dollars a night. But that will not get us very far, and it’s best not to conflate the two cases.

To begin with, Jared and Ivanka are reportedly paying market rate for their place: $15,000 / month. While no one, to my knowledge, has seen records of those monthly payments in the form of cancelled checks or electronic transfer receipts, it seems pretty safe to assume that rent is actually being collected. Doesn’t it? The corporation that owns the property, Tracy DC Real Estate, Inc., was formed by Luksic’s lawyers at Duane Morris LLP in Boston, and the deal was put together by one of the Washington DC’s “top-producing” real estate agents: Cynthia Howar, who is herself a member of the bar. The lawyers, one would like to think, took care of the details.

Not so in Scott Pruitt’s case. Despite the friendly terms, Pruitt fell behind on his rental payments, according to Politico, “forcing his lobbyist landlord to pester him for payment.” Pruitt’s landlord, Vicki Hart, did not have the appropriate business license to rent out a room in her Washington, DC condo, and now faces fines of up to $2000.

In Kalorama, Tracy DC Real Estate, Inc. had obtained the business license for a one family rental from the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs in the District of Columbia by March of 2017. That license is good for two years, until February 28, 2019. Who can say where the first family tenants will be by then?

Of course, there is one important parallel to draw between the Pruitt case and the situation at Tracy Place. It doesn’t have to do with licenses or rental agreements or payments. It has to do with ethics — or an apparent lack of concern with ethics.

Scott Pruitt rushed an ethics review of his bedroom rental only after news stories about the deal started to appear. The review was botched, or its conclusions were forced; it’s unclear which. The EPA’s top ethics official now says he needs to revisit the matter, because he was not in full possession of the facts when he retroactively approved the arrangement. This only serves to highlight that the right time for Scott Pruitt to ask whether the rental was permissible or appropriate was before entering into it.

Much the same could be said of Jared and Ivanka’s rental of the Kalorama mansion: the lawyers may have left nothing undone, but there is still the question whether this rental agreement ought to have been struck in the first place, given the fact that the mansion’s owner — or the mining conglomerate his family controls — was suing the U.S. government over the renewal of mining leases.

Twin Metals Minnesota had already sued the United States government back in September of 2016 over lack of action on the Superior National Forest leases. When the Obama administration did act in December of 2016, denying renewal of the leases, and launching a study of a 20-year ban on sulfide mining near the Boundary Waters, it was clear Twin Metals would sue again.

This second suit was filed by Antofagasta’s subsidiaries, Twin Metals Minnesota and Franconia Minerals, on February 21, 2017, just about a week before Tracy DC Real Estate obtained its license to rent the Kalorama mansion as a one family unit. A review of the rental agreement should obviously have been undertaken by the Office of the White House Counsel, with these and other facts in view, if only to preempt scandal-mongering and dispel any appearance of impropriety.

One of the earliest reports of the rental agreement in the Wall Street Journal quotes Rob Walker, a lawyer in private practice who specializes in election law and government ethics, to the effect that “there might not be an ethics problem” as long as the mansion is being rented at fair market value. Maybe not. But I’ve been unable to find any indication that a formal ethics review of the Kalorama rental agreement was ever requested or conducted.

From Caval to Kalorama

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Kalorama

The Washington, D.C. mansion rented by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

We know this much. In December of 2016, just after the election, Chilean billionaire Andronico Luksic Craig bought the Kalorama Triangle mansion that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump now rent in Washington, D.C.. Just about six months later*, records show, the Department of Interior began drafting the December 22nd, 2017 memo that would reverse Obama-era protections for the Boundary Waters and renew the lease of lands in Superior National Forest held by Twin Metals, a wholly owned subsidiary of Antofagasta Plc, the mining conglomerate controlled by the Luksic family. Headlines have hinted at corrupt dealings, as I’ve noted in previous posts, but no hard evidence has come to light.

Maybe it’s all just a happy coincidence of the kind that frequently befalls the world of billionaires, mansions, and yachts. In any case, Andronico Luksic Craig, Jared and Ivanka’s landlord, is clearly a master of such coincidences. Journalist Horacio Brum dubs him “el gran titiritero de Chile,” the great puppetmaster of Chile. He is “a man who does not need to do politics,” writes Brum, “because he makes politicians.” The role Andronico Luksic Craig played in the scandal known in Chile as “el Caso Caval” — The Caval Affair — is illustrative.

The Caval Affair involved a $10 million loan for a shady real estate scheme undertaken in late 2013 by Natalia Compagnon, the daughter-in-law of Chile’s president, Michelle Bachelet, and 50 percent owner of a company called Sociedad Exportadora y de Gestión Caval Limitada. El Caso Caval was a drawn out and complicated affair, and charges of corruption and influence peddling would dog Compagnon and the Bachelet family for years.** Just one feature of the scandal needs to concern us at the moment, and that’s the timing of the loan itself.

In the months immediately preceding Bachelet’s election, Compagnon had been trying to secure a line of credit for her company to purchase three plots of land in Machalí, in the O’Higgins Region in central Chile. Compagnon and her husband, Sebastian Davalos Michelet, met with the Vice President of Banco de Chile to discuss the project on November 6th, 2013. This was about ten days before the elections, which were scheduled for November 17th. The loan was approved on December 16th, 2013, just a month after Michelle Bachelet was elected to the presidency. The Vice President of the Banco de Chile who made these timely financial arrangements for the daughter-in-law of the new president elect was none other than Andronico Luksic Craig.

This time-lapse illustration produced for the news organization 24 Horas lays out the whole scandal in less than three minutes. Even if your Spanish is rusty, you can follow the story. Luksic first appears around 1:26.

The pattern looks familiar. When questioned about the loan, Luksic Craig at first denied meeting the young couple more than once. (This is classic Luksic, who claims never to have met his first family tenants, and only to have said hello to Trump himself once, at a Patriots’ football game in 2012.) Only later did he admit to various meetings and contacts between him and Compagnon, including one the day after Bachelet won the election. As the scandal grew, Andronico Luksic Craig managed to retreat back into the shadows and to keep himself and the Luksic family out of the headlines.

So far, the almost daily revelations of Jared Kushner’s far-flung attempts to bail out his family’s foundering real estate empire have not turned up anything that connects Kushner’s business troubles to Chile’s Grupo Luksic or the Luksic family. But it would not be terribly surprising to learn that there is more to the Kushner story and that Kalorama mansion than Luksic Craig claims. The president’s son-in-law is a quo looking for a quid, and when it comes to making that sort of delicate arrangement, Andronico Luksic Craig appears to be a real pro.

*Since writing this post, I have reviewed documents obtained through FOIA request that show the Department of the Interior working on the reversal of Obama administration protections for the Boundary Waters as early as February, 2017, just weeks after the inauguration.

**The affair assumed such importance in Chile that it derailed the Bachelet constitutional reform project, notes political scientist Claudia Heiss: “La amplia agenda reformista del segundo gobierno de la Presidente Bachelet enfrentó una serie de dificultades, lo que sumado al denominando ‘caso Caval,’ terminó relegando la propuesta de cambio constitucional al segundo plano.” (¿Por Que Necesitamos Una Nueva Constitución?, p. 48)