Charles Kushner

Charles Kushner (born May 16, 1954) is an American real estate developer, diplomat, and former attorney serving since 2025 as the United States ambassador to France and Monaco. He founded Kushner Companies in 1985.

Charles' elder son, Jared is the husband of Ivanka Trump, during whose father's first presidential administration he served as a Senior Adviser from 2017 to 2021. He has three other children, including his younger son Joshua, a venture capitalist who is married to the supermodel Karlie Kloss.

In 2005, Kushner was convicted of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering, and was sentenced to two years' imprisonment, which he served in the Federal Prison Camp, Montgomery. As a convicted felon, he was also disbarred in three states. He later received a pardon issued by his son's father-in-law, President Trump, on December 23, 2020. Kushner has donated significant amounts to Trump's campaigns. Previously, he was a major Democratic party donor. In 2025, he was nominated by President Trump to serve as United States ambassador to France during his second administration. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on May 19, 2025, by a vote of 51–45.

Charles Kushner was born on May 16, 1954 to Joseph Berkowitz and Rae Kushner, Jewish Holocaust survivors born in eastern Poland who went to America from the USSR in 1949. At birth, he was named Chanan, after a maternal uncle who died in a German concentration camp during the Holocaust. He grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, with his elder brother Murray Kushner and sister Esther Schulder. His father worked as a construction worker, builder, and real estate investor. Kushner graduated from the Hofstra University School of Law in 1979.

In 1985, Kushner began managing his father's portfolio of 4,000 New Jersey apartments. He founded Kushner Companies – headquartered in Florham Park, New Jersey – and became its chairman. In 1999, he won the Ernst & Young New Jersey Entrepreneur of the Year award. At the time, Kushner Companies had grown to more than 10,000 residential apartments, a homebuilding business, commercial and industrial properties, and a community bank.

After being released from prison, Kushner shifted his business activities from New Jersey to New York City. In early 2007, Kushner Companies bought the 666 Fifth Avenue building in Manhattan for $1.8 billion. In August 2018, Brookfield Properties signed a 99-year lease for the property, paying $1.286 billion and effectively taking full ownership of the building.

As of the end of 2016, Kushner and his family were estimated to have a net worth of $1.8 billion. He has employed two fellow inmates with whom he became acquainted in prison.

Kushner met personally with Harvard University's president Neil Rudenstine and in 1998 donated $2.5 million to Harvard. His son, Jared, was then beginning his senior year of high school, where he was not a particularly good student with test scores below Ivy League standards. Jared was admitted to the Harvard freshman class of 1999.

Before 2016, Kushner was a donor to the Democratic Party. He is on the boards of Touro College, Stern College for Women, Rabbinical College of America, and the United Jewish Communities. Kushner has made other donations to Harvard, Stern College, and United Cerebral Palsy. He donated to the Seryl and Charles Kushner Maternity Unit at St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey. He contributed to the funding of two schools, Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy and Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School, also in Livingston, and named them after his parents. Kushner Hall is a building that is named after him on the Hofstra University campus. The campus of Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek Medical Center is named the "Seryl and Charles Kushner Campus" in honor of their donation of $20 million.