The family real estate company of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, has been dropped as a client by crisis management consultant Risa Heller.
Early last week, after only a year and a half of representing the company, Heller decided to part ways. Heller actually lasted longer than many of the other media relations firms that worked in the past with Jared’s father, Charlie Kushner, the family patriarch and convicted felon.
This account is disputed by a spokesman for Kushner Companies, who said that last week the company decided to replace Heller. This parting of ways came as outrage spread across the country over the response of Trump to the white supremacy protests in Charlottesville, Virginia.
According to Politico, “Heller’s work with a real estate client was not political — but it bled into that realm after the election, when she served as a spokeswoman for Jared Kushner, before he joined the White House, and then for his wife, Ivanka Trump. Heller was hired separately by the president’s daughter last Christmas, before Ivanka Trump expected to take an official role in the administration. Heller helped oversee the rollout of Ivanka Trump’s self-help book, ‘Women Who Work,’ earlier this year, and helped handle her ethics disclosures, but wrapped up her work with her client in July.
Heller’s involvement with two of the most prominent members of the Trump family and administration has roiled New York City political circles, where the one-woman crisis management machine has long been known as a straight-talking Democratic operative, known best as a former spokeswoman for New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer and as a close friend and adviser to former New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner. She now heads up her own firm, Risa Heller Communications.”
Heller leaves the real estate company as public relations crisis are hitting Kushner Companies from every direction. According to a report last week in the Baltimore Sun, judges were used by the company to arrest tenants who did not repay their debts.
Also, recently the Chinese company Anbang Insurance Group has dropped out of discussions to redevelop 666 Fifth Avenue, one of Kusher’s flagship skyscrapers in Manhattan.
Last April, Ivanka Trump told BuzzFeed, “Risa is incredibly talented, driven and passionate. She is a formidable advocate and respected by all as a trustworthy and honest broker of facts.”
A inside source told Politic that Heller is parting on good terms with Ivanka and Jared.
Meanwhile, global strategy firm based in New York and London, Finsbury Communications, has been retained by Kushner Companies as their new representation.
By Charles Bernstein