The bulk of the mortgage had been previously sold in the CMBS market and the remaining $285 million balance had been syndicated to firms specializing in subordinated debt including AREA Property Partners, Starwood Capital Group, Colony Capital and Paramount Group. Colony Capital founder Thomas J. Barrack Jr. later claimed Donald Trump, Jared Kushner's father-in-law, personally called him to set up a meeting with Jared Kushner to invest $45 million in the building's distressed debt. Further reports indicated that Jared Kushner had complained to his wife Ivanka Trump about Barrack pressuring him on the debt and that she had asked her father Donald to set up a meeting. AREA Property Partners also held $105.4 million of the building's debt and objected to the restructuring plan. In retaliation, Jared Kushner reportedly directed Elizabeth Spiers, the publisher of "The New York Observer" which Kushner had purchased in 2006, to publish a "hit piece" against AREA's CEO Richard Mack. However, after several months of effort yielded no leads, Kushner reportedly dropped the request and no article was ever published by "The Observer".