Israel Firster Cory Booker Votes To Confirm Jared's Gangster Father

Booker is such a phony

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker just voted to confirm one of the most morally repugnant figures in recent political memory to America’s plummiest diplomatic post. Charles Kushner, convicted felon, blackmailer of his own family, and one of the two patriarchs of the Trump-Kushner crime family, is now the United States ambassador to France — thanks, in part, to Booker’s decision to cross the aisle alone. Alone.

Kushner isn’t just any felon. In 2005, he pleaded guilty to 16 federal charges: tax fraud, making false statements to the Federal Election Commission, and witness retaliation. That last charge? He hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, secretly recorded the encounter, and mailed the tape to his own sister in a crude attempt at blackmail. This wasn’t some youthful lapse or technical violation — this was mafia-level vindictiveness carried out against his own blood.

Yet Booker, who built his brand on moral righteousness, cast the lone Democratic vote to confirm Kushner as ambassador to France. The final tally was 51-45. Every other Democrat — and even a few Republicans — had the sense to say no. But not Booker.

His justification? In a statement to The Daily Beast, Booker claimed he "has passionate differences and disagreements with Charlie Kushner," but supported the nomination because of Kushner’s role in helping pass the First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill. According to Booker, Kushner — a man who once used the justice system like a personal hit squad — has “substantively helped achieve the liberation of thousands of people from unjust incarceration.”

Yes, the First Step Act was a rare bright spot in a deeply dysfunctional era. But reformers don’t hand out ambassadorships to criminals as thank-you gifts. Especially not ones who weaponized the justice system for their own twisted purposes.

Booker’s vote may not be bad politics — he’ll be rewarded, no doubt — it’s a betrayal of principle, if Booker still has any. (Given his support for the Gaza genocide and his decades-long defender of the occupation, I don’t think he does.)

But it does hand a stamp of moral legitimacy to a man who the US attorney who prosecuted him called one of the most “loathsome, disgusting” criminals he’d ever encountered.

And what exactly qualifies Kushner to represent the U.S. in France, beyond being Jared Kushner’s father and Ivanka Trump’s father-in-law? Is this diplomacy or a mafia wedding? The French must be thrilled.

Booker, meanwhile, wants to have it both ways. He wants to be the senator of second chances — a champion of redemption narratives — while also positioning himself as a serious moral voice. But there’s a difference between criminal justice reform and rewarding deeply unethical people with positions of national prestige.

Redemption doesn’t require a diplomatic post in Paris. It requires accountability, humility, and a long road of service — not an express flight to a mansion on the Seine. Booker’s vote gives the Trump machine exactly what it wants: legitimacy cloaked in bipartisan respectability. It reminds the world that like virtually all Republicans, some Democrats will kneel if the political calculus seems right.

Booker made a choice. He chose to stand alone — not in courage, but in compliance with corruption. And for what? To thank a man who once blackmailed his own sister? To please his AIPAC pals whose friendship he shares with Kushner.

There’s no justice in that. Only shame. New Jersey needs a new senator. It has one, the utterly ethical Andy Kim. There must be others like him in the so-called Garden State. Booker is worthless.

PS. A reminder on the guy Booker voted to confirm as ambassador to France.

Charles Kushner, a wealthy real estate developer and prominent political donor, committed one of the most sordid and personally vindictive crimes in modern American white-collar history.

At the center of the scandal was a brutal act of witness tampering. Kushner, enraged that his sister, Esther Schulder, was cooperating with federal investigators against him, orchestrated a plan to humiliate and intimidate her. He hired a prostitute to seduce her husband, William Schulder, who was also cooperating with prosecutors. Kushner arranged for the encounter to be secretly recorded—then he had the sex tape sent to his sister in an effort to silence her and halt her cooperation with the FBI.

The move backfired spectacularly. Instead of cowing his sister, the stunt disgusted prosecutors and added fuel to their case. It transformed Kushner from a typical financial criminal into a tabloid-ready villain. It was an act so brazen and petty that even seasoned legal observers were stunned. This wasn't just about money or influence—it was a calculated attempt to destroy a sibling’s life and marriage to save his own skin.

Kushner served 14 months in prison before being released to a halfway house. In a final twist, he was later pardoned by President Donald Trump—whose son Jared is Charles’s son-in-law—raising eyebrows over the grotesque mixture of power, nepotism, and immunity that so often shields the wealthy and well-connected.

He was confirmed yesterday as Ambassador to France.