In China over the weekend, a woman identified as Jared Kushner's sister promoted an investment opportunity in Jersey City: a tall tower in the heart of downtown. Chinese investors willing to put up $500,000 could own a piece of the building — and get visas for themselves, their spouses, and their children under a U.S. program know as EB-5. The presentation caused an ethics firestorm, in no small part because the event organizers explicitly played up the role of the presenter: Nicole Kushner Meyer, sister to White House adviser Jared Kushner, who has been placed in charge of China relations by his father-in-law, President Trump.

When reporters witnessed the pitch, they were harassed and thrown out. A Washington Post researcher even had her tape and camera deleted. (In a statement, the Kushner Companies said, "While Kushner Companies had nothing to do with press relations at the event, the treatment of journalists there was completely unacceptable.")

Now, it turns out the real estate project is in trouble back home. Three sources confirmed that the anchor tenant and partner, WeWork, is trying to get out of the deal. The Kushner Companies are late with a paperwork filing to the state. And top Jersey City officials say they are not inclined to grant a 30-year tax abatement worth tens of millions of dollars that the Kushner Companies have been quietly lobbying for.

Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop posted on Facebook that he is "not supportive" of the request, and Jersey City Council President Rolando Lavarro said in an interview with WNYC that he was at best "lukewarm" — and that was before he learned of the China pitch. Lavarro said he had explicitly asked lobbyists for the real estate development about the Kushner Companies' relationship with Jared, the former chief executive of the real estate company. The lobbyists said he had divested. 

(Indeed, a statement issued by The White House from Kushner's personal attorney, Blake Roberts, stated that Kushner had "divested his interests in the One Journal Square project by selling them to a family trust ... a mechanism suggested by the Office of Government Ethics." Kushner's mother and siblings, however, are the beneficiaries of the trust.)

But Lavarro said that the events in China seemed to directly contradict what he'd been assured by the lobbyists. "When I say that’s disturbing, that’s an understatement," Lavarro said.

The city tax break isn't the only one that's in trouble: the state offered the project economic incentives back in 2015 based on a 50/50 partnership with WeWork, a shared workspace start-up. In its application to the state, the Kushner Companies asserted that WeWork would lease several floors of the tower. But WeWork hasn't signed a lease, which its spokesman, Dominic McMullan, pointedly noted. 

Meantime, Virginia Pellerin, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey economic development agency, noted the Jersey City project had missed a deadline for annual filing, and is due to submit the material by the end of this week "or request further extension."

In a statement, the Kushner Companies maintained the project will bring "$180 million in tax revenue for Jersey City over the next 30 years, and more than 4,000 union jobs," among other benefits. It added an apology on Meyer's behalf "if that mention of her brother was in any way interpreted as an attempt to lure investors."

It had no further statement on the endangered tax credits or loss of WeWork.

Matt Katz contributed to this story.