US Embassy officials say Jared Kushner excluded them from recent meetings with Saudi Royal family: report

Last week, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, visited Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he met with members of the Saudi royal family—including Crowd Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a.k.a. MBS, and his father, King Salman. And the Daily Beast is reporting that Kushner, according to three anonymous sources, did not share the details of the meetings with members of the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh.

Sources told the Daily Beast that no one from the U.S. Embassy was present during Kushner’s meetings with MBS and King Salman. Although the U.S. State Department had a senior official in attendance, he was not part of the State Department team in Riyadh.

A congressional source told the Daily Beast, “The Royal Court was handling the entire schedule, but that is normal for (Kushner’s) past trips.”

When the Daily Beast asked the White House for comment, a senior Trump Administration official denied that the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh was excluded from Kushner’s meetings with the Saudi royal family—saying, “This reporting is not true, and the sources are misinformed.”

According to the White House, the topics that Kushner discussed with the Saudi royal family ranged from Israeli/Palestinian relations to economic investment in the Middle East.

The Daily Beast’s Erin Banco reports that Kushner, who has been on friendly terms with MBS, has visited Saudi Arabia several other times in recent years—and he often visits that part of the world with Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt. Typically, when an administration official visits a foreign country, the U.S. Embassy helps to coordinate the trip and helps with the security. But Banco reports that according to the Daily Beast’s sources, the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh “was largely left in the dark on the details of Kushner’s schedule and his conversations with Saudi officials” last week.