‘Dirty Money’ Tears Into Jared Kushner in Season 2

It’s time once again to side-eye capitalism. Dirty Money, Netflix and Alex Gibney’s docuseries that explores corporate corruption, is back with six new hourlong episodes. Each is more shocking than the last, but if you want to truly be appalled this March look no further than Dirty Money‘s deep dive into Jared Kushner‘s landlord fraud.

Though the name of Donald Trump’s son-in-law is thrown around a lot, Jared Kushner still remains one of the lesser known figures of the current administration. But Daniel DiMauro and Mogan Pehme’s “Slumlord Millionaire” will turn his name into one you will never forget. The episode opens on footage of one of Jared Kushner’s Westminster Management’s many properties, only this particular apartment has a gaping hole in its ceiling and a waterfall of plumbing issues. As Dirty Money painstakingly details, this tenant hell isn’t an anomaly. For residents of Westminster it’s depressingly common.

The episode serves as a concise explainer on Kushner’s rise to power. It even touches on the many crimes that landed his father, Charles Kushner, in jail. One of those involved soliciting prostitutes to have sex with his brothers and brothers-in-law, recording the encounters, and using that footage to blackmail his own family members to vote in the company the way he wanted. But what this corporate malpractice installment really excels at doing is listing Kushner’s sins as a landlord.

It’s not just that many of Jared Kushner Westminster’s properties have asbestos, rodent infestations, and black mold, though they do. It’s not even that, according to residents, the property manager hired construction workers to work all hours of the night in the hopes their noise would drive out rent-controlled tenants, though that happened as well. No, the company’s history of nickel and diming past residents stands as the most appalling revelation. At some point Jared Kushner Westminster bought several properties and slapped current and former residents with hefty late fees and rent requests. That’s how residents who no longer live in JK Westminster properties have come to be sued for thousands.

This particularly jaw-dropping accusation is primarily told through Kamiia Warren’s story. A single mother of three, Warren used to live in one of the buildings that JK Westminster later purchased. While she was living there she received permission from her landlord at the time to break her lease and move out because a neighbor was making her feel unsafe. Months after she thought she had put this saga behind her, JK Westminster started sending Warren threatening letters, accusing her of owing the company thousands. This was all over breaking a lease she was given permission to break.

Then there are the illegal allegations. Through Aaron Carr, founder of the Housing Rights Initiative, and New York City council member Ritchie Torres the series explains that there have been at least three class action lawsuits filed against JK Westminster, that the company has filed more than 80 false work permit applications, and that many of JK Westminster’s buildings don’t have a certificate of occupancy. That latter crime was revealed by a whistleblower who no longer felt comfortable pretending these buildings were habitable when they legally weren’t. At one point Torres even calls the practice of falsifying building permits the “Kushner loophole.”

There are two dozen other shocking details packed into this tight, hourlong investigation, from the fact that Trump supporter Chris Christie was the one who led the case when it came to imprisoning Charles Kushner to the revelation that many of the residents Jared Kushner Westminster is taking advantage of voted for Trump. But one thing’s for certain. This episode of Dirty Money will never let you forget Jared Kushner’s name.

Watch Dirty Money "Slumlord Millionaire" on Netflix