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Kushner's War
___Kushner’s key role in brokering the Gaza deal, which includes a framework for the territory’s postwar redevelopment, cannot be separated from the investment firm he owns, Affinity Partners, which is overwhelmingly financed by the very Arab petrostates critical to the agreement and potential reconstruction – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Together, these three states provided crucial support to Kushner after he left the White House in January 2021, investing billions of dollars that allowed him to launch and expand his private equity firm.
Six months after the end of the first Trump administration, Kushner’s newly created company secured a $2bn investment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. It was an unusually large stake, considering that Kushner and his firm had little experience or track record in private equity. In fact, the kingdom’s crown prince and de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, overruled a group of advisers who had objected to investing in Kushner’s new project. The advisers warned that due diligence conducted on behalf of the Saudi Public Investment Fund had found the firm’s early operations “unsatisfactory in all aspects”. But leaked internal documents published by the New York Times showed that Prince Mohammed dismissed those concerns, and he was more focused on using the infusion of Saudi cash to cultivate a “strategic relationship” with Kushner.
In September 2024, as Trump was running for president, a US Senate committee found that Kushner’s firm had been paid $157m in management fees from foreign clients since 2021 without returning any profit to its investors. The Senate investigation, which was launched by Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator from Oregon who chaired the finance committee at the time, showed that Affinity Partners had collected $87m in fees from the Saudi wealth fund. In a letter to Kushner’s company, Wyden questioned why the firm had not generated any profit for its investors, despite charging hefty management fees – and he raised concerns that the entire venture was a way for foreign powers to buy influence in anticipation of Trump returning to power. “Affinity’s investors may not be motivated by commercial considerations, but rather the opportunity to funnel foreign government money to members of President Trump’s family,” Wyden wrote.
In December 2024, Kushner revealed that he had raised an additional $1.5bn for Affinity Partners from investment funds controlled by Qatari and UAE government officials. In a podcast interview, Kushner said he had “pre-emptively tried to avoid any conflict” by securing new funding from his existing investors before Trump won the presidential election. The added funds brought the firm’s total assets to $4.8bn by the end of last year, nearly 99% of it from foreign sources. The increase in management fees raked in by Affinity has also boosted Kushner’s personal wealth, and turned him into a billionaire, according to Forbes.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/29/jared-kushner-financial-ties-trump
___Republican Sen. Thom Tillis (N.C.) is asking why Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are leading peace talks with Russia, Iran and Israel, given their general lack of foreign policy experience and the fact that they never underwent formal Senate confirmation proceedings.
Tillis told ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl that peace talks to resolve the violence in Ukraine and Gaza and another potential conflict with Iran should not be led by Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, and Witkoff, a Trump ally who made his fortune in real estate.
“Kushner and Witkoff are very accomplished businesspeople. I’m sure they’re good negotiators, but they’re not subject to Senate confirmation, and they’re not subject to oversight,” Tillis told Karl.
“It is suspect that you can negotiate a Ukraine peace, an Iranian situation, a Gaza situation, and whatever, and be the same two people. That doesn’t make any sense to me,” Tillis said.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/tillis-kushner-witkoff-leading-peace-talks-doesnt-make-any-sense/ar-AA1X8r0c
___A highly classified whistleblower complaint against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard stems from an intercepted conversation between two foreign nationals that referenced President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner and, in part, Iran, according to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
The whistleblower complaint, submitted in May 2025, claimed the National Security Agency detected a phone conversation between foreign intelligence officials and a person linked to Trump. Instead of allowing the NSA to distribute its intelligence report, Gabbard allegedly brought a paper copy of the report to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and directed the NSA to transmit the details to her office, rather than publishing it, it was reported earlier this month.
At the time, Kushner had been involved in Middle East peace talks, despite having no official role in the Trump administration, while also having business interests in the region. This has repeatedly caused concerns over potential conflicts of interest across both of Trump’s terms.
Now, according to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, new details show the person about whom concerns were raised was Kushner, who was mentioned by two foreign nationals speaking about Iran, in a conversation the NSA intercepted.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/jared-kushner-named-in-iran-spy-intercept-tied-to-gabbard-complaint-reports/ar-AA1WeWFw
___The highly-classified complaint, submitted in May 2025, alleged that the National Security Agency failed to publish an intelligence report about a phone conversation, intercepted by a foreign spy service, between two overseas intelligence officials concerning Iran in which a person linked to Trump was under discussion.
But it has now emerged that the participants on the call were referencing Ivanka Trump’s husband and suggesting he was the person to speak to if they hoped to influence the direction of future peace talks in their favor, the Times reports.
While the anonymous whistleblower clearly felt the invocation of Kushner was significant – hence their decision to file the complaint against Gabbard, accusing her of suppressing it on political grounds – others within the intelligence world have dismissed the affair as mere “gossip,” according to the Times.
In response to the latest development, the campaign watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington decried Kushner’s ongoing role in U.S. diplomatic missions overseas, complaining about his reportedly recently joining Trump and members of his cabinet in a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Jared Kushner is a private citizen who has billions in investments from foreign governments,” it wrote on X. “He has no formal role in the Trump administration and is not subject to any ethics rules. So WHY is he meeting with Israel’s president alongside Pres. Trump and two cabinet secretaries?”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/jared-kushner-tulsi-gabbard-whistleblower-complaint-b2919723.html
Jared Kushner Addresses $2 Billion Given By Saudis
The private equity firm Kushner started after leaving the White House, Affinity Partners, reportedly received $2 billion in investment from Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. In 2022, a spokesman for Affinity Partners told The New York Times that the company, "like many other top investment firms, is proud to have PIF and other leading organizations that have careful screening criteria, as investors."
Axios Business Editor Dan Primack pressed Kushner on Tuesday on his decision to seek Saudi funding for his firm. "You leave public service, you spend all this time particularly with Saudi Arabia, working with them, you leave, a couple months later, six months later, you get $2 billion," he said. "From an optics perspective, or even an ethics perspective, were you at the time concerned about taking money from PIF, and if you could do it again, would you have done it at all differently?"
Kushner denied that there was any conflict of interest in the business deal with PIF and dismissed ethical concerns around accepting funds from the Saudi crown prince, calling the country "one of the most prestigious investors in the world."
During the same livestreamed interview, Kushner said he won't be joining the White House if Trump wins the 2024 election.
"I've been very clear that my desire at this phase of my life is to focus on my firm," he said. "I've really enjoyed the opportunity as a family to be out of the spotlight. Both my wife and myself were working in the White House, which is a 24/7, high-stakes job, and so we both really enjoyed the opportunity to be down here in Florida with the kids.
https://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-addresses-2-billion-given-saudis-1869757
___According to the Post’s exclusive report, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman privately urged Trump in multiple phone calls over the past month to carry out military action against Iran, even as he publicly supported diplomatic engagement.
At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been openly pressing for a US strike, describing Iran as an existential threat to Israel.
The Saudi push for military action came even as Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner were engaged in talks with Iranian officials over Tehran’s nuclear and missile programs.
According to a senior administration official quoted by the Post, Witkoff and Kushner held their final meeting with Iranian representatives in Geneva on Thursday -- their third high-level session since early February --
https://www.dhakatribune.com/world/middle-east/404444/saudi-arabia-israel-push-precedes-us-strike-on
14 replies
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...in an orange jumpsuit.
