President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is trying to raise more than $5 billion from foreign governments for his private equity firm while working as “one of the U.S. government’s chief negotiators in the Middle East,” the New York Times reports.
According to the Times, who spoke with five people familiar with the discussions, Kushner is trying to raise money for his investment firm Affinity Partners. Representatives form the company “have already met with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund,” which is led by Kushner pal Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. PIF had already invested $2 billion in the firm “soon after the first Trump administration ended.”
The fundraising “[shows] the blurring of the lines between public service and private profit-seeking” in Trump’s administration, the Times reports. Kushner, who traveled as an official U.S. delegate to the the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, used the trip to “[discuss] his plans to raise billions in new investments for Affinity in private meetings with international business leaders, two people with knowledge of the conversations said,” according to the report.
The fundraising is a change from Kushner’s previous claim that he would table his efforts to work for his father-in-law. In December 2024, Kushner told a posdcaster that Affinity “[doesn’t] have to raise capital for the next four years.”
As the Times notes, Kushner, who founded Affinity in 2021, “leaned heavily on his government contacts” when he began the company after Trump’s first term.
According to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Kushner’s appointment as Special Envoy for Peace on Feb. 19 started the clock on a 30 day requirement for him to file a public financial disclosure report.
“Kushner’s previous unofficial role raised substantial conflict of interest concerns given Kushner’s business and investments in the very countries and conflicts that he had been working on — and because Kushner had no defined position, he was not subject to any ethics laws, security clearance process or Senate confirmation,” CREW wrote on Wednesday.
Indeed, the blatant “greed and corruption of the Trump family” has stunned political observers, including University of Virginia Center for Politics Director Larry Sabato, who wrote on X Saturday that Kushner’s fundraising “is almost beyond belief.”
Political historian Brian Rosenwald agreed, calling the revelation “mind boggling.”
“[A]ny of dozens of things they do would've been a presidency ending scandal for any other president,” Rosenwald said.