Although he declined a role in President Donald Trump's second term, son-in-law Jared Kushner has reemerged as a "central player" in the Gaza deal and now questions are emerging about his questionable financial ties as they relate, according to The Guardian.
Following Kushner's most recent involvement in the Middle East, "Kushner took a victory lap, as Trump and others in the US administration gave him significant credit for helping negotiate a ceasefire after two years of Israel’s brutal war on Gaza," The Guardian says.
According to a Washington Post column by Ishaan Tharoor, this Middle East victory lap was short, and Trump's declaration of a "new dawn" may be a false one.
“The big gap that I don’t think Trump or his team have really prepared the ground for … is the gap that exists between his administration and Israel on the one hand, versus the rest of the Arab world, on the longer-term questions, especially a pathway to a two-state solution,” Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said.
Despite all this, writes The Guardian, "Kushner is being hailed as the consummate deal-maker, a private citizen whose business acumen succeeded where career diplomats failed."
Because of that, however, Kushner's shady finances are also being highlighted.
"As in Trump’s first term, Kushner’s diplomatic work often overlapped with his business dealings, raising questions about financial conflicts," The Guardian says, adding, "In fact, his potential conflicts are even more conspicuous today."
Following the end of his father-in-law's first term, Kushner's newly-created company landed a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, The Guardian explains.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates offered "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," the authors write.
Kushner's role in brokering the Gaza deal, they continue, "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" of Gaza.
The Saudi investments are also personal.
"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 Guardian says, with bin Salman saying he was focused on using Saudi cash to cultivate a “strategic relationship” with Kushner.
Throughout his first term, Trump tried to shield bin Salman from blame for the 2018 assassination of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was ambushed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a 15-member hit team.
"Despite a CIA assessment that concluded, with 'high confidence,' that the prince had ordered the killing, Trump and Kushner offered the Saudi regime continued political support and billions of dollars in US weapons sales," The Guardian explains.
The $2 billion investment to Kusnher, The Guardian explains, was "a bet by the crown prince on continued goodwill from a future Trump administration."
As Trump ran for president in 2024, a US Senate committee launched by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) found that Kushner’s firm had also been paid $157 million "in management fees from foreign clients since 2021 without returning any profit to its investors," The Guardian notes.
The investigation also showed that Affinity Partners collected $87 million in fees from the Saudi wealth fund.
“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 said.
Kushner continued to raise Middle East money for his investment firm, scoring an additional $1.5 billion from investment funds controlled by Qatari and UAE government officials in December 2024.
"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.
When Republicans regained control of the Senate, Wyden lost his finance committee chair position and his "investigation into Kushner's company floundered," the Guardian says.
Currently, "Trump and his family are facing little scrutiny in Washington for exploiting the presidency to promote their business interests," The Guardian notes.
The Trump administration insists that "Kushner’s diplomatic work in the Middle East – while he manages an investment firm funded by three Arab monarchies – poses no conflict of interest," The Guardian explains. But "even as he brokered the fragile ceasefire agreement, Kushner continued to negotiate business deals that benefit his firm and foreign partners – including Saudi Arabia, which the Trump administration was consulting as part of its emerging Gaza deal," the report adds.
On the same day Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu announced the Gaza deal, "Kushner and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund announced that they had reached a $55 billion deal to acquire the video game publisher Electronic Arts," The Guardian says.
The Financial Times reported last month that Kushner’s involvement in Electronic Arts "could ease the sale’s path with US regulators."
The Guardian says that "with no formal job in the current administration, Kushner has avoided most previous criticism of his business dealings. He has no White House title, and far less oversight this time around," adding, " And with little resistance from Congress, Kushner and the rest of Trump’s family will continue to reap the financial benefits of dominating the US government."