Linked to Trump and the FIFA scandal: this is Joshua Kushner, controversial new owner of the Lakers

The Lakers change hands when not even a year has passed since the NBA approved the sale of the Los Angeles franchise to Mark Walterwho paid the Buss family 10 billion dollars in the highest amount ever paid by a team in professional sports. Yesterday, ESPN reported that Walter was selling the Lakers to Joshua Kushner and Bob Iger for $12.5 billion to set a new record for the sale of a team.

Two are the new owners of the historic Los Angeles franchise with the former CEO of Walt Disney 75-year-old Bob Iger and entrepreneur and venture capital investor Joshua Kushner, 41, founder of the venture capital fund Thrive Capital who has invested in Instagram, Spotify and OpenAI and co-founded the health insurance startup Oscar Health. However, Kushner is the one who has monopolized the greatest prominence and intrigue due to the various controversies to which she has been linked. The new owner of the Lakers, born in New Jersey, has a net worth of more than 5 billion of net dollars according to Forbes.

For starters, Joshua Kushner has family ties to the president of the United States, donald trumpsince he is the brother of Jared Kushner, son-in-law of the controversial American politician and part of the US government in Trump’s two terms: in the first he was an advisor, a role he is also carrying out in the current mandate, involved in relations with the Middle East and international relations in general.

Even so, the new owner of the Lakers has always distanced himself from Trump and has publicly defined himself as “liberal.” His wife, the model Karlie Klosshas supported different Democratic candidates in the last three United States presidential elections, Hillary Clinton in 2016, Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024.

However, Kushner has been directly involved in controversies in which either Donald Trump or the brother of the new owner of the Lakers and son-in-law of the president have also been main actors. Jared Kushner.

In 2020, Joshua Kushner would have pulled his family ties with the White House to make a profit through their businesses. As published Atlantichis brother with a role in the government hired his company Oscar Health to develop a website that would help Americans with coronavirus symptoms find places to get tested.

It was a promise from Donald Trump who said that Google would help, although in reality the person behind the project was his son-in-law’s brother’s company. Finally and mysteriously, said project was discarded.

Later, Joshua Kushner was again at the center of the controversy with Jared. Each of the brothers owns 50% of JK2a property management company that has faced legal problems.

In 2021, a judge found that JK2 had committed multiple violations in which it violated Maryland consumer protection laws in the area of Baltimore. The reasons, the collection of debts without the required licenses, the collection of improper charges from tenants and manipulation of the real conditions of the homes. During the pandemic Covid-19JK2 filed several lawsuits against tenants for debt collection and evictions even though there was a moratorium in effect.

In July, the judge sentenced the Kushners to pay more than 4 million to 17,000 tenants to whom he made illegal extra charges. His company already had to pay more than 3 million in 2022 for violation of consumer laws. The case reached the small screen because an episode of the Netflix series ‘Dirty Money’ exposed JK2’s abuses of tenants, including leaving houses in poor condition, humiliating tenants who were late with their payments, and suing tenants who decided to leave the homes.

It is being a busy summer for Joshua Kushner, who after the tenant compensation conviction and before the purchase of the Lakers was behind the recent FIFA scandal after the World Cup.

The president of the highest soccer body, Gianni Infantino, proposed selling 20% ​​of the rights to the World Cup worth $20 billion with Thrive CapitalKushner’s company, as the main investor in a business that was going to bring benefits to the 211 member associations of FIFA according to Infantino.

However, the frontal opposition of UEFA and other confederations with the threat of boycott frustrated the business that the president of FIFA and the new owner of the Lakers were carrying out.

Kushner has already been involved in sports and the NBA before being part of this FIFA plan and acquiring the purple and gold franchise, since in 2019 he became a minority shareholder of the Memphis Grizzlies and in 2024 it acquired a small percentage of shares of the Miami Heat after selling those of the Tennessee franchise. Now he must sell these shares after entering ownership of the Lakers.

The businessman and investor also acquired shares of baseball’s San Francisco Giants in April before setting foot in Los Angeles with Bob Iger, with whom Joshua Kushner planned to bring a team to vegas within the framework of the NBA’s expansion plans. As pointed out by TheAthleticthe irony about Iger is that he is a fan of Clippers for a long time.

The former Disney CEO, a friend of NBA commissioner Adam Silver, has business ties to Kushner, having become his partner at Thrive Capital, then made an investment and then taken an advisory role after leaving Disney. But the biggest spotlight falls on Joshua Kushner, the man of controversy with ties to donald trump -like it or not-, and complicit in Gianni Infantino’s crazy idea for FIFA. There are those who say that the Lakers They will give him the opportunity to clear his name.