Family business: How Jared Kushner Trades on US Political Influence

Just a few years ago, the rumor that Donald Trump, aka “Agent Krasnov,” is a KGB-recruited spy whom the Russians are blackmailing over some unpublished Epstein files or something else, seemed like a wild conspiracy theory.

However, when Trump does what he does, and a story surfaces claiming that the U.S. president’s son-in-law – Jared Kushner – is gaining access to billions of dollars from Arab monarchies and is literally trading U.S. foreign policy influence for the benefit of third countries, it’s much easier to believe.

Especially considering that we’re not talking about a former intelligence officer, but an eccentric American billionaire who has made his way into the Oval Office for the second time and makes little secret of the fact that he’s profiting from it, without officially receiving a single penny.

Vanity Fair published an investigation into how Dutch intelligence allegedly gained access to Jared Kushner’s personal phone and monitored his activities – including bank transfers – for years.

Kushner himself categorically denies the allegations; however, given Trump’s son-in-law’s current status as one of the key negotiators in the efforts to resolve the war in Ukraine, it is difficult to ignore this story. Moreover, it goes a long way toward explaining the motivations and logic behind the negotiations between Trump’s representatives and the Russians.

24 Channel analyzed the Vanity Fair article to assess how Jared Kushner could potentially have turned key White House decisions into a commodity, what Azerbaijan has to do with this, and whether corruption within Trump’s inner circle could have been one of the factors behind the U.S.’s recent shift toward Moscow.

A Billion-Dollar Fund: How Gulf Monarchies Pay for Kushner’s Services

When Donald Trump first entered the White House in 2017, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner received a rather unusual appointment. Without any diplomatic experience or even experience in public service, he became a senior advisor to the president and was effectively given carte blanche to reshape U.S. policy in the Middle East.

At the same time, Kushner worked without an official salary, which, however, did not mean he lacked specific financial interests. After all, the family business empire, Kushner Companies, was facing significant debt problems at the time, particularly due to a skyscraper at the telling address 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City.

And it seems that the situation – both actual and potential – regarding the president’s son-in-law was assessed rather quickly on the other side of “The Atlantic Ocean, also known as the "American" Ocean,” as Donald Trump himself now calls it. According to an investigation by journalist Matthew Cole for Vanity Fair, the de facto ruler of the UAE Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman agreed to create a secret fund to finance the Trump administration’s foreign policy initiatives. Initially, the figure was over $10 billion, but the scheme was later modified.

According to the journalist’s sources, the Arab monarchies provided Kushner with personal access to accounts containing a total of at least $2 billion in funding. Specifically, approximately $750 million was transferred through Azerbaijani banks to an account at First Abu Dhabi Bank, which was registered under the Emirati charitable foundation Watani Al Emarat.

Kushner was allegedly one of the authorized account managers, although he did not legally own the account. According to the investigation, another billion dollars or so was transferred via Azerbaijan to Israel, where the funds were to be held in an account at the Bank of Israel.

And this raises a perfectly logical question: why would the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf spend such astronomical sums on an American official who, in essence, doesn’t even hold a real position? The answer is quite simple – Kushner doesn’t need any official position; it’s enough to be the son-in-law of the U.S. president to receive checks in exchange for certain political favors or the promise of them.

Representatives from Bahrain, Israel, the U.S., and the UAE at the signing of the Abraham Accords / Photo – Wikimedia

For example, a Saudi prince sought to secure Washington’s support in his struggle for the throne (It wasn't easy; 24 Channel reported on it in detail), while the UAE leadership sought to increase pressure on Iran. Kushner himself was interested in normalizing relations between Arab states and Israel as part of the so-called Abraham Accords, which he ultimately achieved in 2020.

This became Trump’s greatest foreign policy success – though it did not earn him a Nobel Peace Prize, nor did it secure his reelection for a second term. Instead, it appears to have brought the Trump family a great deal of money.

At the same time, the scale of the corruption scheme described is so global that it’s even a little unsettling. Take, for example, the story of the nuclear deal with Iran, which the U.S. signed in 2015, back during the Barack Obama administration.

According to the investigation, Mohammed bin Zayed was categorically opposed to the agreements with Tehran, and on May 8, 2018, Donald Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the deal and the reinstatement of sanctions. Trump called the deal bad, arguing that it provided Tehran with too much money, which they would ultimately spend on developing nuclear weapons anyway. As a result, under the pretext of a nuclear threat and the status quo being disrupted by the termination of the “nuclear deal,” Trump launched a major war against Iran in 2026. If we take this version at face value, then Iran’s ballistic missile strikes against the UAE and other countries in the region no longer seem entirely illogical.

However, if viewed through the lens of “paid services” for Arab counterparts, Washington literally did exactly what Kushner’s partners from the Persian Gulf were seeking. The only thing that doesn’t add up in this story is that Trump himself criticized the deal long before becoming president, and journalists have not yet established a direct link between the alleged payments and the withdrawal from the deal.

Corruption or Lobbying

It should be noted that for the United States, this kind of trading in political influence is nothing out of the ordinary: Washington does this all the time, and certain interest groups from various countries operate in one way or another within the U.S. Congress (in accordance with lobbying laws, which some experts consider to be state-sanctioned corruption).

The only problem is that all such lobbying must be explicitly disclosed by the officials themselves: that is, it must be documented which country paid and for what services. In Kushner’s case, if the financial arrangements described in the article did indeed exist, they could have violated U.S. requirements regarding the disclosure of foreign assets, and if agreements regarding political services were involved – they could also have violated anti-corruption legislation and the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Interestingly, Jared Kushner himself has categorically denied the existence of secret accounts, while his lawyers have called the allegations false and even threatened to sue the publication itself. But in this case, it seems we won’t be limited to just one case, as – in accordance with the “Streisand Effect” – the number of such cases may soon increase. After all, there are plenty of facts and people willing to put two and two together.

For example, there is a much better-documented story. After the end of Trump’s first presidency, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund invested $2 billion in Kushner’s company, Affinity Partners. Moreover, according to an investigation by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, as of July 2024, the company had not yet generated a profit for its investors, but, according to an investigation published that same year, it had already received up to $157 million in commissions from foreign clients. Of that amount, $87 million came from the Saudi government.

And while the Affinity Partners story demonstrates just how lucrative ties with Arab monarchies can be, the Vanity Fair investigation mentions an even more intriguing player. According to the journalists, the path for Arab billions into American politics ran through a rather unexpected intermediary – Azerbaijan.

The Azerbaijani Laundromat: How Shady Financial Deals Secure Political Influence

It appears that in this story, Azerbaijan served as a kind of money laundering operation through which Arab monarchies – and, subsequently, Kushner – could conceal the origins of their billions. At least, that is what the authors of the investigation claim.

According to Vanity Fair, Dutch intelligence agents noticed that the money deposited into the aforementioned Emirati account – to which Kushner had access – was transferred in U.S. dollars from an Azerbaijani bank. Moreover, according to preliminary assessments by intelligence agencies, the sender’s account may also have been linked to the Azerbaijani government.

As the author of the investigation explains, some Azerbaijani banks offered a rather specific service, similar to the traditional Eastern practice of informal money transfers known as “Hawala,” but adapted to the technological age in which we all live.

The essence of the scheme is that a client would transfer Saudi riyals or Emirati dirhams to Baku, after which the bank would send the equivalent amount in U.S. dollars from another account to the desired address.

For such transactions, intermediaries could earn a commission of about 6–7%, which doesn’t sound like much, but considering that billions of dollars are involved in this scheme, the net profit is quite substantial.

But the most interesting thing is that such financial schemes are far from new for Azerbaijan. Back in 2017, the international network of investigative journalists OCCRP exposed the so-called Azerbaijani Laundromat – a massive money-laundering scheme involving $2.9 billion that passed through shell companies and European banks between 2012 and 2014.

In general, Azerbaijan has been appearing in the media quite frequently lately, and always in the role of a sort of “gray cardinal.” For example, recall the recent scandal in Germany, when police detained August Hanning, the former head of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), on suspicion of espionage and treason. According to investigators, he obtained classified documents from German intelligence and may have used them to benefit foreign intelligence services.

In fact, according to German media reports, one of Hanning’s possible contacts was an employee of the Azerbaijani intelligence service. At the same time, the former BND chief had been a member of the leadership of the German-Azerbaijani Forum – an organization that actively promoted Baku’s interests – since at least 2013. However, Azerbaijani authorities categorically denied any involvement in the espionage scandal, and the German prosecutor’s office never officially named the country on whose behalf Hanning may have been acting. In other words, Baku was defending itself against charges it had not actually faced.

Of course, it is unlikely that the stories involving Kushner, money laundering, and Hanning are in any way connected, aside from mentions of Azerbaijan in the media. However, it is very telling just how important a tool of international politics money – and the ability to transfer it discreetly – can become. And we’re not talking here about official trade partnerships, but specifically about secret agreements and personal connections with influential officials.

For Ukraine, the problem lies in the fact that a figure as potentially corrupt as Jared Kushner remains one of the key players in negotiations to resolve the Russian-Ukrainian war. And given the Kremlin’s ability to buy off foreign officials and the frequency of Donald Trump’s diplomatic about-faces, the question arises: does Kushner have another account where money is already flowing – not from Arab monarchs, but from the Russian "tsar"?

Business Built on Blood: How Investment Projects Between the U.S. and Russia Are Driving the Peace Process Around Ukraine

It seems that Jared Kushner has finally found his calling in American politics – negotiating big money deals with authoritarian regimes. And while previously the focus was on Arab sheikhs and their ambitions in the Middle East, now the U.S. president’s son-in-law has taken on a much more formidable counterpart – Vladimir Putin.

Moreover, unlike the story involving Arab billions, you don’t even need to hack into Kushner’s phone to understand his relationship with the Kremlin. It’s enough to look at what he’s discussing with the Russians under the guise of resolving the war in Ukraine.

For example, on October 8, Reuters reported that Jared Kushner, together with Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, discussed the resumption of Russian gas supplies to Europe via the “Nord Stream” pipelines. Moreover, it is proposed to involve American investors in the gas pipelines, which would allow U.S. businesses to profit from the supply of Russian gas to Europe.

At the same time, the parties were considering the possibility of acquiring Lukoil’s foreign assets with the participation of a U.S. government investment agency and investors from Qatar and the UAE. That is, the very same Arab monarchies whose financial ties to Kushner are already raising a host of questions.

But standing in the way of Kushner and Dmitriev’s so-called business utopia is one small obstacle: the sanctions imposed by the U.S. against Russia for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. So it turns out that for American investors to profit from Russian gas and oil, these restrictions must be eased or lifted. And it’s very convenient that the very people authorized to force Vladimir Putin to end the war are simultaneously making plans to bring Russian energy resources back to Western markets.

After all, in this model, according to the Trump administration, Ukraine – and specifically, only Ukraine – must be the one to make concessions. Even during the talks in Miami on October 9, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff explained to the Ukrainian delegation that permission to export Russian diesel fuel must somehow soften the Kremlin’s position.

At the same time, the Americans called on Kyiv to stop striking Russian oil refineries – one of the key levers of pressure against Moscow.

In other words, Russia is being offered the opportunity to profit from fuel exports, while Ukraine is being asked to stop striking facilities that sustain the Russian war economy. And all this for the sake of a vague promise that Putin might finally be willing to talk about peace.

But it appears that Washington’s rapprochement with Moscow has long since gone beyond mere discussions about the return of Russian gas and oil to Western markets. According to a Financial Times investigation, the Russian company Novatek may have secretly financed and effectively controlled the $25 billion U.S. strategic project Polar Train LNG in Alaska. The company’s former CEO, Joel Riddle, claims he learned about the Russian funding while he was still employed there and resigned precisely because of concerns about violating U.S. sanctions.

Another report, from The New York Times, adds a particularly intriguing twist: Putin personally discussed this project with Kushner and Witkoff back in September. And as part of broader negotiations between the U.S. and Russia, the possibility of easing sanctions against Russia’s “Arctic LNG-2” project in exchange for Novatek's participation in a U.S. project was considered.

And this raises the key – and by no means rhetorical – question for Kushner, Witkoff, and the Trump administration as a whole: Whose interests exactly do the people representing the U.S. in negotiations to end the war represent, while simultaneously communicating with representatives of the aggressor about new business opportunities? Especially considering that one of them is already implicated in an investigation into the alleged trading of U.S. foreign policy influence.

Of course, Jared Kushner’s mere participation in such negotiations does not prove corruption (and even if it did, his father-in-law would pardon him, as he has the right to do so), but it creates a dangerous situation in which it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish U.S. national interests from the commercial interests of businessmen close to Trump who hope to profit from the restoration of relations with Russia. And worst of all, it is proposed that these agreements be paid for at the expense of Ukraine’s national security.

After all, for Putin, this kind of “diplomacy” opens up the prospect of a return to Western markets without having to give up his own imperial ambitions. For American investors, it’s an opportunity to make billions off Russian energy resources. And for Ukraine, it poses the risk of ending up with a peace agreement in which its security is traded for foreign commercial deals.

And the scariest part of this story isn’t even that the Kremlin could potentially buy off American negotiators. It’s that, to get what it wants, it seems it doesn’t even need to buy them off anymore. All it takes is to promise the Americans a lucrative deal, and they, in turn, will present the bill to Ukraine.