Talk about a retraction!
News outlet the Guardian spiked its plan to move into a Dumbo office complex owned by Jared Kushner’s family firm after reporters complained the connection to President Trump’s son-in-law could kill their credibility.
The news was first reported by Buzzfeed, citing anonymous sources, and later confirmed by a Guardian staffer to this paper.
The left-leaning British paper’s New York bureau was slated to move into Kushner Companies’ Dumbo Heights development next month but nixed the plan after employees objected to the landlord, with some journalists worrying the Edward Snowdens of the world wouldn’t feel comfortable leaking to them anymore, according to the report.
Some staffers also objected to the commute — Dumbo is served only by the notoriously pokey York Street station.
Kushner — himself the former publisher of the Observer — resigned as chief executive of his family’s real-estate business in January after signing on as Trump’s senior advisor, but the Guardian’s management still balked when it learned of the link, the paper told Buzzfeed.
Instead, the newsroom will move to an office in Manhattan in May.
Dumbo Heights — old Jehovah’s Witnesses’ printing plants that Kushner bought for $373 million in 2013 — is best known as the office of craft e-tail giant Etsy, which is part of a lawsuit fighting Trump’s executive order on immigration.
Kushner also bought the Witnesses’ old Columbia Heights headquarters and a massive empty residential lot next to York Street station last year.
The Guardian didn’t return a request for comment. Kushner Companies declined to comment.
