Justice Kennedy's Family Has Multiple Financial Ties to the Family of President Trump

In April of 2017, Shane Goldmacher reported in Politico noted that Justice Anthony Kennedy and President Trump had a conversation after Trump’s first speech to Congress that was picked up by boom microphones.

Here is the conversation they had, as quoted in Politico:

“Say hello to your boy,” Trump said, “Special guy.” “Your kids have been very nice to him,” Kennedy replied. “Well,” Trump said, “they love him, and they love him in New York.”

Kennedy’s son Gregory Kennedy worked at NASA in the early days of the Trump administration, as one of the political appointees the president chose to serve as his eyes and ears at major federal agencies. (That group of appointees was described by ProPublica in March 2017 and revised in August of the same year. ProPublica reported that Gregory Kennedy was appointed January 20, Inauguration Day.)

Gregory Kennedy attended Stanford law School with Trump technology advisor Peter Thiel, and his company, Disruptive Technology Advisors, has worked with Thiel’s company, Palantir.

Justin Kennedy is an associate of Donald Trump, Jr., through New York real estate. He has worked for Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank. Financial Times reported in August 2017:

“Justin Kennedy, a trader who arrived from Goldman to become one of Mr Trump’s most trusted associates over a 12-year spell at Deutsche, is the son of a Supreme Court justice.”

While Justin Kennedy was a co-owner of LNR Properties, the company came to the rescue of Kushner’s troubled property at 666 5th Avenue, which he bought at the top of the market and has since scrambled to hold onto. The Real Deal New York described the bail-out in 2011. https://therealdeal.com/2011/07/07/jared-kushner-reaches-tentative-deal-with-lnr-property-to-save-666-fifth-avenue/

It seems that there are a number of family-financial connections between the Trump and Kennedy families. Perhaps Justice Kennedy should have recused himself from Supreme Court cases involving the Trump administration.

Tuesday Justice Kennedy wrote a concurrence for the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to uphold Trump’s travel ban on people from seven countries (Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen). Wednesday, he announced that he will retire from the Court at the end of July.

Perhaps in his less-than-two-page concurrence he left a clue to his reasons for retirement. (His concurrence begins on page 45.)
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-965_h315.pdf

---