Michael Boulos was an aspiring businessman, just a few years out of college, when he knelt in the White House Rose Garden in January 2021 and asked President Trump’s daughter Tiffany Trump to marry him.
Almost immediately after she said yes, Mr. Boulos, his family and their associates were benefiting financially from his proximity to his soon-to-be in-laws.
The first deal was a family affair. Mr. Boulos, working for his cousin’s international yacht brokerage, sold his future brother-in-law Jared Kushner on an investment in a roughly 50-meter superyacht. Unbeknown to Mr. Kushner, the firm overcharged him and worked to conceal the true price from him, contemporaneous text messages show. The exact amount is unclear but the messages and a lawyer’s written description of the deal say the overcharge was $2.5 million.
The second arrangement involved something less tangible: access to the Trumps. Mr. Boulos’s cousin promised to get a Saudi businessman invited to the Boulos-Trump wedding so that the businessman could pose for photographs with the Trumps and project a closeness with the family. “We want you to be at the top of the guest list,” the cousin, Jimmy Frangi, wrote.
Everyone involved denies wrongdoing, and both deals went bad. Mr. Kushner’s yacht sits unfinished in Greece. And the Saudi businessman never got the access (or the wedding invitation) that he had been offered. But Mr. Boulos received about $300,000 from the yacht sale, his cousin says, and $100,000 from the Saudi businessman.
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The post He Asked Tiffany Trump to Marry Him. Then the Deals Started Coming. appeared first on New York Times.
