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jared kushner
Wyden Probes 'Deeply Concerning' Kushner Firm Payments From Gulf Monarchies
The Senate Finance Committee chair accused the former Trump adviser of "creating significant conflicts of interest and potential counterintelligence risks."
Jun 12, 2024
U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden on Wednesday announced a new probe into Trump-era White House adviser Jared Kushner's private investment firm Affinity Partners, 99% of whose $3 billion under management comes from foreign sources, mainly the sovereign wealth funds of Gulf dictatorships.
"It is deeply concerning that several Middle Eastern governments are using funds managed by Affinity as a means to pay tens of millions of dollars in fees every year to former President [Donald] Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, creating significant conflicts of interest and potential counterintelligence risks," Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote in a letter to Lauren Key, Affinity's chief financial officer.
"These arrangements also raise concerns that Affinity's exclusively foreign-funded private investment funds are being exploited as a loophole by Mr. Kushner and other former U.S. government officials as a means to avoid complying with the Foreign Agents Registration Act and other U.S. laws requiring U.S. persons to disclose payments from foreign governments," the senator said.
Wyden pointed out that almost all of the money under management by Affinity comes from the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar:
The largest source of funding for Affinity appears to be a $2 billion investment from the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF)... made in June 2021, shortly after Mr. Kushner left the White House. The remaining $1 billion is split between sovereign wealth funds owned by the governments of the United Arab Emirates and Qatar; Terry Gou, a Taiwanese billionaire and politician who is the founder of the world's largest electronics manufacturer; and another investor whose identity has not been publicly reported.
Wyden said the Saudi PIF buy-in "raises concerns that the investment was a reward for official actions Kushner took to benefit the Saudi government, including preventing accountability for the Saudi government ordering the brutal murder" of journalist and permanent U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi.
"Private investment funds that take money exclusively from foreign politically exposed investors present heightened national security and other risks," Wyden's letter asserts. "From a national security perspective, the U.S. government has recently highlighted how the opacity and lightly regulated status of private funds can present risk to national security."
Wyden is asking Key to list all of Affinity's clients, how much they've invested, and their annual rates of return. The senator is also seeking information about the company's employees; their roles, responsibilities, and compensation; and "whether the individual meets with or liaises directly with representatives of foreign sovereign wealth funds, including the Saudi PIF, as part of their professional responsibilities."
This isn't the first time that Wyden has questioned Kushner's business ties to Gulf dictatorships. In 2022, the senator sought details regarding possible Qatari involvement in a 2018 real estate deal in which Brookfield Asset Management, a Canadian firm, paid Kushner Companies for a 99-year-lease on 666 5th Avenue, one of the premier properties in the Kushner family portfolio.
Earlier this year, House Democrats led by Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) urged colleagues to hold hearings over Kushner's "apparent influence peddling and quid pro quos" during the period in which he led critical foreign policy negotiations including over the Abraham Accords agreements between Israel and several Middle Eastern and North African nations.
During his White House tenure, Kushner faced repeated calls to resign as Trump's senior adviser, mostly over concerns about possible conflicts of interest related to his business dealings.
Kushner
said earlier this year that he will not accept any official administration position if Trump—the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, despite his recent felony conviction and dozens of pending federal and state criminal charges—is reelected.
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Trump Son-in-Law Jared Kushner Calls for Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza to 'Finish the Job'
Kushner, who served as a key Middle East adviser to Trump, said that Gaza's "waterfront property could be very valuable" and urged Israel to "clean it up."
Mar 19, 2024
Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former president and presumptive 2024 Republican nominee Donald Trump, said in a recent interview that if he were in charge of Israeli policy, he would push Gaza civilians into Egypt or Israel's Negev desert—a proposal that critics denounced as ethnic cleansing.
"You want to get as many civilians out of Rafah as possible," Kushner told the faculty chair of Harvard University's Middle East Initiative, Tarek Masoud, in a March 8 interview that was first reported widely on Tuesday. "I think that you want to try to clear that out. I know that with diplomacy maybe you get them into Egypt."
"I know that that's been refused, but [with] the right diplomacy I think it would be possible," Kushner added. "But in addition to that, the thing that I would try to do if I was Israel right now is I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there. I know that won't be the popular thing to do, but I think that that's a better option to do so you can go in and finish the job."
Kushner played a central role in crafting Trump's Middle East policy during his first four years in the White House, and the former president's son-in-law's remarks provided a potential glimpse of how the U.S. would approach Gaza if Trump wins another term in November.
Earlier this month, Trump said he wants Israel to "finish the problem" in Gaza—a remark that Kushner echoed just three days later in his March 8 interview.
In addition to advocating the removal of civilians from Rafah—which is currently packed with more than 1.5 million people, including hundreds of thousands of children—Kushner said Gaza's "waterfront property could be very valuable."
"It's a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel's perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up," Kushner said.
Just days after the @ADL’s @JGreenblattADL gave him an award for “his record of policy work,” Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner openly advocates for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza: https://t.co/VFhidPf60W
— Dylan Williams (@dylanotes) March 19, 2024
Kushner responded flippantly to concerns that if Gazans were forced out of their territory, the Israeli government wouldn't let them return—something that top Israeli officials have publicly advocated.
"Maybe," he said, "but I'm not sure there's much left of Gaza at this point."
Kushner also claimed that Israel has gone "way more out of its way" than other countries would to protect civilians—despite the
abundance of evidence to the contrary.
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New Right-Wing Owner to Baltimore Sun Reporters: 'Go Make Me Some Money'
"The Sinclair TV owner bought The Baltimore Sun for the same reason Elon Musk bought Twitter," opined one critic. "Power."
Jan 17, 2024
New Baltimore Sun owner and right-wing media executive David D. Smith raised eyebrows and ire in media circles and beyond following a Tuesday meeting at which he reportedly insulted journalists at his new acquisition and told them to focus on profit.
Smith, the multimillionaire head of the Sinclair Broadcasts Group—a network notorious for its fealty to former U.S. President Donald Trump—purchased the Sun, along with a bevy of other Maryland papers, last week for what The New Republicdescribed as an "unspecified, nine-figure" amount from Alden Global Capital, an investment firm known for its cost-cutting ways.
Sinclair started out in Baltimore and the Sunreported that it's the first time in nearly four decades that the paper will be locally owned. However, NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik atold "All Things Considered" host Juana Summers that Sun staffers left the meeting with Smith "fairly on edge."
Smith "said he's only read [the Sun] about four times, which is kind of astonishing for a guy whose family has been there for more than a half-century," Folkenflik said, adding that the new owner also argued that the paper "just isn't offering people news that is holding local government actors accountable."
"This," Folkenflik added, "for a newspaper that, you know, revealed corruption by the then-mayor of Baltimore that led to the Sunwinning a Pulitzer just a few short years ago."
The once-venerable Sun has, in fact, won 16 Pulitzer Prizes over its storied history.
Folkenflik, who once worked for the Sun, noted:
It has a really proud heritage going back to 1837. The story of the Sun, nonetheless, is kind of the story of modern American newspapering. Alden is the latest in a string of big corporate owners that has, you know, time after time, decade after decade, whittled down or slashed its staffs and its ambitions. The paper has shrunk pretty sharply.
Media accountability advocates expressed alarm and concern over Smith's purchase of the Sun. Popular Information publisher Judd Legum noted that the paper's new owner is a donor to far-right groups including Project Veritas, Turning Point USA, and Moms for Liberty.
"Sinclair Broadcasting, which is controlled by the Smith family,
forces nearly 200 local TV affiliates to run right-wing pro-Trump political commentary," Legum said. "Sinclair affiliates have also promoted right-wing conspiracy theories, including claims that [Democratic National Committee] staffer Seth Rich was murdered by a hitman as payback for sharing sensitive emails to WikiLeaks."
Sinclair and Smith have been closely aligned with the Trump family. Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner has admitted that the former president and 2024 GOP front-runner's campaign
struck a deal with Sinclair in 2016 for access in exchange for more favorable coverage.
"We are here to deliver your message," Smith
told the Trump campaign. "Period."
Smith is also openly inimical toward the mainstream media—including the
Sun. According toThe Baltimore Banner, he told New York Magazine in 2018 that he viewed print media to be "so left-wing as to be meaningless dribble."
Pressed during Tuesday's meeting whether he still believed this, Smith answered in the affirmative. Asked if that included the paper he just bought, he replied, "in many ways, yes."
Sun staffers present at Tuesday's meeting told Folkenflik that their new boss seemed especially focused on the paper's bottom line.
"Smith told his new staffers that, you know, the
Sun was profitable but that he meant to make it more profitable," Folkenflik told Summers.
According to the Banner, he told them to "go make me some money."
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