Tag: Pete Hoekstra

A major financial backer of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, who once owned a housing estate in which low-income tenants were said to endure “inhumane” living standards, has been nominated as the US ambassador to Belgium. He will now undergo a month in a US state department “ambassadorial school” before making the move to Brussels. There is a certain amount of relief in Belgium that the nomination has been made at all – more than a year after the last US ambassador left the country’s embassy in Brussels. In 2013, Gidwitz told a court that he would not invest in the complex as it would be equivalent to a charitable donation, and if the owners had wanted to make charitable donations, there were better options. The housing project was eventually taken over by the city of Joliet. But in a related court case, Gidwitz was forced to acknowledge that politicians including the then senator Barack Obama had complained about “inhumane conditions” on the project, where there was said to be an overwhelming stench of urine. DoJ agrees to expand election inquiry after Trump meeting, White House says Read more The mayor of Joliet has described the 356-unit complex of high-rise apartments as “unsafe and dangerous, a public nuisance and a blighted area”. “If you can’t get planning permission for a [security] guard house, you can’t build a guard house,” he said, according to the Chicago Tribune. I’ve had volunteer jobs but I’ve never had one quite as serious. Belgium has been a great ally of ours for 150 years.