Jared Kushner

Political background

Jared Kushner had been a lifelong Democrat prior to his father-in-law Donald Trump entering politics. He had donated over $10,000 to Democratic campaigns starting at the age of 11. In 2008, he donated to the campaign for Hillary Clinton and his newspaper the New York Observer endorsed Barack Obama over John McCain in the 2008 United States presidential election. After expressing disappointment with Obama, however, he registered as an independent in 2009 and endorsed Republican U.S. presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012 via the New York Observer. In 2014 he continued to donate to Democratic groups, but joined his father-in-law Donald Trump's nascent US presidential campaign in the field of the Republican candidates in 2015. Kushner had no prior involvement in campaign politics or in government before Trump's campaign.

Newspaper publishing

In 2006, Kushner purchased The New York Observer, a weekly New York City newspaper, for $10 million, outcompeting a bid by Trifecta Enterprises, a group headed by Robert De Niro. To make the bid, Kushner used money he says he earned during his college years by closing deals on residential buildings he purchased in Somerville, Massachusetts, with family members providing the backing for his investments. The buildings, which he purchased for $8.3 million in 2000, sold four years later for $13 million.

After purchasing the Observer, Kushner published it in tabloid format. Since then, he has been credited with increasing the Observer's online presence and expanding the Observer Media Group. With no substantial experience in journalism, Kushner could not establish a good relationship with the newspaper's veteran editor-in-chief, Peter W. Kaplan. "This guy doesn't know what he doesn't know", Kaplan remarked about Kushner, to colleagues, at the time. As a result of his differences with Kushner, Kaplan quit his position. Kaplan was followed by a series of short-lived successors until Kushner hired Elizabeth Spiers in 2011. It has been alleged that Kushner used the Observer as propaganda against rivals in real estate. Spiers left the newspaper in 2012. In January 2013, Kushner hired a new editor-in-chief, Ken Kurson. Kurson had been a consultant to Republican political candidates in New Jersey.

According to Vanity Fair, under Kushner, the "Observer has lost virtually all of its cultural currency among New York's elite, but the paper is now profitable and reporting traffic growth... [it] boasts 6 million unique visitors per month, up from 1.3 million in January 2013". In April 2016, the New York Observer became one of only a handful of newspapers to officially endorse United States presidential candidate Donald Trump in the Republican primary, but the paper ended the campaign period by choosing not to back any presidential candidate at all.

Kushner stepped down from his newspaper role in January 2017 to pursue a role in President Donald Trump's administration. He was replaced by his brother-in-law, Joseph Meyer.

Career after the first Trump administration

Saudi Arabia investment fund

Kushner's firm landed more than $2 billion only six months after Kushner stopped working as a senior adviser for the president, to invest in American and Israeli companies expanding in India, Africa, the Middle East and other parts of Asia. Investors included $2 billion from the Saudi public investment fund, with Kushner stating that he hoped to open an "investment corridor between Saudi Arabia and Israel", seen internationally as a "sign of warming ties between two historic rivals". Within the first Trump administration, Kushner had been a staunch defender of Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman.

In 2021, Kushner started an investment firm, Affinity Partners. He sought funds for the new company through the sovereign wealth funds of Gulf countries. Advisers for the Public Investment Fund, the Saudi government's sovereign wealth fund, expressed several concerns about the transaction—including the inexperience of Affinity management, the degree of risk to be assumed by the Saudi kingdom, an "excessive" management fee, and a finding that Affinity's operations were "unsatisfactory in all aspects". However, PIF management overruled them and invested $2 billion in Kushner's firm, only six months after Kushner had left the White House. The firm primarily depended on Saudi money, as, by April 2022, it only had $2.5 billion under its management. According to ethics experts, the investment created the appearance of potential payback for Kushner. The House Oversight Committee said on June 2, 2022, that it had opened an investigation into whether Kushner had traded on his government position to get the deal.

The fund plans to invest Saudi money into startup companies in Israel. According to the Wall Street Journal, "The decision marks the first known instance that the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s cash will be directed to Israel, a sign of the kingdom’s increasing willingness to do business with the country, even though they have no diplomatic relations."

In 2023, Republican candidate for President Chris Christie criticized Kushner and Trump for the deal, saying "Why would you send Jared Kushner to the Middle East when you have Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo... You send him? Why? We found out the answer six months after he left office: $2 billion from the Saudis to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, $2 billion, and because he did all this and more with his family. I'm going to end this family grift that's going on. We are not a third-world republic." The Wall Street Journal reported that Kushner has not made any investments despite receiving the funding some years ago, collecting "tens of millions in management fees each year" while not making any investments. Norm Eisen of the Brookings Institution suggested the payments were meant to curry favor with Trump's family, should the former president retake the White House in the 2024 election: "It appears to be money for nothing." The House Oversight Committee Chairman, Kentucky Republican James Comer, said he believes Kushner “crossed the line of ethics” by accepting the investment from Saudi Arabia.

As of 2024, the fund had made $157 million in management fees (including $87 million from the Saudi government alone) since 2021. The fund is under Senate investigation for possible foreign influence buying ahead of the 2024 election after a New York Times report suggested that Kushner used contacts he made from his role in Trump's White House.

In September 2025, Kushner spearheaded a purchase of Electronic Arts with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) and Silver Lake. According to the Financial Times, "While a deal of this kind could face regulatory scrutiny in Washington, several people said they expected the transaction to go through fairly easily, citing the influence of Kushner and Saudi Arabia on the White House."

Member of the Indian Creek, Florida Village Council

On July 8, 2024, Kushner succeeded Village of Indian Creek Vice Mayor & Village Trustee Javier Holtz, joining the Village council.

Diplomatic activity and Ukraine peace-plan efforts

In December 2025 Kushner resurfaced as part of a high-stakes U.S. delegation in Trump's second administration. Alongside real-estate investor and special envoy Steve Witkoff, Kushner traveled to Moscow and met for nearly five hours with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss a revised U.S. peace proposal aimed at ending the war in Ukraine.

2026 Geneva negotiations and Operation Epic Fury

In early 2026, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner led high-stakes nuclear negotiations with Iranian officials in Geneva. British National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell, who attended the talks, characterized Tehran's proposal as "surprising" and substantial, suggesting a diplomatic breakthrough remained possible.

However, the negotiations collapsed amid allegations from diplomats and critics that Witkoff and Kushner had misrepresented Iran's positions to President Trump, specifically regarding Tehran's willingness to reduce its enriched uranium stockpile. Following the failure of the summit, the United States and Israel launched a joint military operation against Iran on February 28, 2026, known as Operation Epic Fury.

In the aftermath, The Guardian reported that a Gulf diplomat criticized Witkoff and Kushner's role, describing them as acting like "Israeli assets" and accusing them of "unorthodox and destructive diplomacy" that allegedly manipulated the President into the conflict. On March 20, 2026, Trump signaled a potential "winding down" of military operations in Iran, citing nearing completion of objectives, while Kushner and Witkoff were reported to be exploring a return to diplomacy based on previous Geneva frameworks.

Presidential transition

During the presidential transition, Kushner was said to be his father-in-law's "confidant," and one of Donald Trump's closest advisors, even more so than Trump's four adult children. Trump was reported to have requested the top-secret security clearance for him to attend the presidential daily intelligence briefings as his staff-level companion, along with General Mike Flynn, who already had the clearance prior to his resignation.

Senior Advisor to the President

On January 9, 2017, Kushner was named Senior Advisor to the President (formally, "Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor"). He consequently resigned as CEO of Kushner Companies, and as publisher of the Observer.

After Donald Trump became President-elect, Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump met with the Japanese prime minister and other Japanese officials, while Ivanka was conducting a licensing deal between her namesake clothing brand and Sanei International, a company whose investors include the Japanese government's development bank. Although negotiations around the deal had begun in 2015, well before Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination for president, Ivanka backed out of the deal to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. She had sat in on a meeting between her father, then-president-elect Donald Trump, and Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe.

Kushner helped broker the sale of $100+ billion of arms to Saudi Arabia, and during a meeting with Saudi officials at the White House to finalize the deal, he called Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson to ask for a lower price on a radar system to detect ballistic missiles.

Kushner's business activities in China drew press scrutiny for mixing government with business. Kushner's investments in real estate and financial services have also drawn controversy for conflicts of interest. In May 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported that he had failed to disclose all required financial information in his security clearance applications, including that he owed $1 billion in loans. While noting that “it is difficult to calculate net worth” using financial disclosure forms, The Washington Post estimated that during 2017, Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump made $82 million in outside income at the same time that they served as senior White House advisors. Kushner and Ivanka's lawyers asserted that their net worth had largely remained the same.

In June 2017, Saudi Arabia and the UAE had implemented a naval blockade on Qatar, accusing them of aiding terrorist groups, and reportedly planned to invade Qatar. During the dispute, Jared had backed the Saudis and Emiratis in the conflict, undermined efforts by then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to stop the blockade and to bring the conflict to a peaceful outcome, and pressured President Trump to back the Emiratis and Saudis in the dispute, which the President did, according to The New York Times.

In a statement, Abbe Lowell, Kushner's lawyer, admitted that Kushner had intermittently used private e-mail for official White House business. No classified or privileged information was used on this account. During the campaign for the 2016 presidential election, Trump repeatedly criticized his opponent Hillary Clinton for her use of personal e-mail in her role as Secretary of State, which involved the transmission of classified information over a server Clinton had set up in her basement.

In an HBO/Axios interview released in June 2019, Kushner denied that President Trump was a racist. When asked whether birther conspiracy theories about President Obama (which Trump pushed extensively for a number of years) were racist, Kushner did not answer, saying instead twice, "Look, I wasn't really involved in that." In the interview, Kushner, whose grandparents survived the holocaust and later immigrated to America, spoke of his own family's immigration history: "It's a great reminder of how great this country is." In the same interview, he defended the Trump administration's decision to drastically reduce the number of refugees accepted by the United States (the lowest level in 40 years).

In March 2020, the Associated Press reported that Kushner had sold stakes in a firm that had benefitted from the same Opportunity Zone tax breaks—incentives for new investment in low-income communities—that Kushner pushed for as a senior White House advisor.

Office of American Innovation

From 2017 until the end of the first Trump administration in January 2021, Kushner directed the Office of American Innovation. The office, created by President Trump in March 2017, was to draw on the lessons of the private sector to solving problems in government, such as the federal government's IT spend, economic activity, and the opioid crisis.

Firing of Chris Christie

Kushner was reportedly an influential factor behind the firing of New Jersey governor Chris Christie as head of the transition team, as well as the dismissal from the Donald Trump transition team of anyone connected to Christie. An anonymous source familiar with the transition told Politico, "Jared doesn't like Christie... He's always held [the prosecution of his father] against Christie." Kushner told Forbes that the reports that he was involved in Christie's dismissal were false: "Six months ago, Governor Christie and I decided this election was much bigger than any differences we may have had in the past, and we worked very well together.... I was not behind pushing out him or his people." In his memoir Christie said that Steve Bannon fired him at Trump Tower but that Kushner had his firing ordered as revenge for what Christie had done to Kushner's father Charles Kushner for several felonies.

Middle East peace plan and Abraham Accords

Trump put Kushner in charge of brokering peace in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, despite the fact that Kushner had no foreign experience or experience in the Middle East. On August 24, 2017, Kushner traveled to Israel to talk to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (with whom Kushner has longstanding personal links and family ties, causing Palestinians to distrust him). He then traveled to Palestine to meet President Mahmoud Abbas in an attempt to restart a peace process in the Middle East.

Donald Trump formally unveiled a plan authored by Kushner in a White House press conference alongside Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on January 28, 2020; while representatives from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Oman attended the event. Palestinian representatives were not invited. In an interview, Kushner said he had "been studying this now for three years", and that he had "read 25 books on it, I've spoken to every leader in the region, I've spoken to everyone who's been involved in this." The plan, which was endorsed by the Israeli government, offered the Palestinians a conditional path to an independent state with defined borders. It has been characterized as requiring too few concessions from the Israelis and imposing too harsh requirements on the Palestinians. Both the West Bank settlers' Yesha Council and the Palestinian leadership rejected the plan: the former because it proposed a path to a Palestinian state, the latter arguing it is too biased in favor of Israel. Reaction was muted among the Arab states, although Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt, Lebanon issued statements expressing appreciation for the effort. The proposal gave American approval for Israel to annex its settlements in the West Bank, contingent on Israel and the United States agreeing to a concrete map for the contested areas within the West Bank and Jerusalem.

After Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to the United States, wrote a June 2020 opinion piece warning that annexation of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank would threaten better relations between Israel and the Arab world, Kushner saw an opportunity and stepped in to facilitate talks. The talks led to the August establishment of diplomatic ties between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, normalizing what had long been informal relations between the two countries and ultimately becoming the first Abraham Accord, which was the first normalization agreement between Israel and an Arab country since it normalized relations with Jordan in 1994. As part of the agreement, Netanyahu suspended the annexation of West Bank settlements, which the Kushner peace plan had approved months earlier. The first commercial flight from Israel to the UAE later arrived in Abu Dhabi with a U.S.-Israeli delegation led by Kushner.

Hours after the August 13 announcement of the U.S.-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, senior Bahraini officials called Kushner with a message: "We want to be next". Over the next 29 days Kushner and aide Avi Berkowitz negotiated, and traveled to Bahrain, before closing the deal on September 11, 2020, in a call between Trump, Netanyahu and the king of Bahrain.

All three countries officially committed to the deals on September 15, 2020, with the signing of the Abraham Accords on the South Lawn of the White House.

On September 4, 2020, Kosovo, a Muslim-majority country, announced that it intended to normalize relations with Israel as part of an economic agreement the United States had brokered between it and Serbia. The negotiations were led by Ric Grenell, special envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations, with support from Kushner.

On October 23, 2020, Israel and Sudan agreed to normalize ties, making Sudan the third Arab country to set aside hostilities in two months. The agreement was negotiated on the U.S. side by Trump senior adviser Jared Kushner, Middle East envoy Avi Berkowitz, national security adviser Robert O'Brien, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security official Miguel Correa.

On December 10, 2020, President Trump announced that Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco agreed to establish full diplomatic relations. The agreement was negotiated by Trump senior adviser Jared Kushner and Middle East envoy Avi Berkowitz and marked Kushner and Berkowitz's fourth normalization agreement in as many months. As a component of the deal, the United States agreed to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara.

On November 30, 2020, Kushner and Berkowitz traveled to Saudi Arabia for negotiations on the Qatar diplomatic crisis. The next day, Kushner continued to Qatar, but left Berkowitz in Saudi Arabia so the duo could continue to mediate the deal between the Saudis and the Qataris over the phone in real time. The negotiations led to a breakthrough, and on January 5, 2021, Kushner and Berkowitz attended the GCC Summit in Saudi Arabia, where the parties signed an agreement ending the Qatar diplomatic crisis. For his efforts in the Middle East, Kushner has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Years later, Kushner was invited to address a forum at the Harvard Kennedy School to talk about Middle East issues. Tarek Masoud, the school's director of Middle East Initiatives, said he chose Kushner since he was the architect of the Abraham Accords. In the interview, Kushner referred to the valuable potential of Gaza's “waterfront property,” suggesting that Israel should move civilians from Gaza to the Negev desert in southern Israel.

US–Mexico–Canada Agreement

Shortly after Trump assumed office, Kushner and several administration officials initiated discussions with the Mexican government around renegotiating NAFTA. In April 2017 reports surfaced that Trump intended to withdraw from the trade agreement. Working with counterparts in the Mexican and Canadian governments, Kushner convinced Trump to set aside these plans and instead enter into formal trade negotiations. When the Senate confirmed Robert Lighthizer as United States Trade Representative in May 2017, Lighthizer commenced formal negotiations, leading on the technical aspects of the discussions while Kushner managed the relationships with the Mexican and Canadian governments. On August 27, 2018, the United States and Mexico announced that they had reached a preliminary deal without Canada. A month later, Canada announced that it intended to join the deal as well. At a press conference in the Rose Garden on September 30, 2018, Lighthizer stated that the $1.3 trillion trade deal “would not have happened” without Kushner's efforts. In recognition of these efforts, President Peña Nieto awarded Kushner the Order of the Aztec Eagle, Mexico's highest honor granted to a non-Mexican citizen, calling Kushner a “grand ally” of Mexico and an “important actor” in the U.S.-Mexico relationship.

COVID-19 pandemic actions and response

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Kushner was an influential advisor to President Trump, and shaped the administration's actions. At Trump's order, Kushner set up what has been described as a "shadow task force," separate from the official coronavirus task force chaired by Vice President Mike Pence. The Kushner operation was staffed by a dozen young volunteers from the private sector; they worked out of offices on the seventh floor of the Health and Human Services building. Their first assignment was to facilitate the search for medical supplies and protective equipment, with their performance receiving criticism for favoritism shown to Trump associates. According to The Washington Post, numerous rudimentary initiatives proposed by Kushner interrupted the work of other government officials who were seeking to manage the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. The New York Times reported that one way that Kushner was seeking advice on how to deal with the coronavirus outbreak was to ask his brother's father-in-law, a physician, for recommendations. The physician then proceeded to crowdsource advice on a Facebook group for physicians.

Early on during the outbreak, Kushner advised Trump that the media was exaggerating the dangers of the coronavirus outbreak; at the time, Trump downplayed the dangers of the coronavirus. Kushner helped write the Oval Office address that President Trump gave to the nation on March 11, 2020, along with Trump's advisor Stephen Miller. Drafts of the address were not shared with any of the staff working on the coronavirus task force or with the agencies dealing with the coronavirus response, and Kushner, Miller and Vice President Pence (who joined the writing process later on) were still working making edits to the draft shortly before Trump gave the address. The Washington Post wrote that the address that Kushner, who had "zero expertise in infectious diseases and little experience marshaling the full bureaucracy behind a cause", helped write was "widely panned". In the address, Trump blamed Europeans and the Chinese for the virus, describing the virus as a "foreign virus". During the address, Trump inaccurately said "all travel from Europe" would be prohibited, and that the travel prohibitions would apply to goods. The speech caused markets to plunge, as White House aides had to clarify what the actual policy was. European leaders said they were blindsided by the address. The speech set off panic among Americans abroad who had to scramble to learn whether they could return to the United States and under what circumstances; this created chaos at airports in Europe and the United States. Trump reportedly blamed Kushner for the widely panned address, telling aides that he should not have listened to Kushner.

Kushner also helped put together a March 13 Rose Garden event where Trump falsely claimed that Google was "quickly developing" a website that could help test people for coronavirus. Google later clarified their involvement, stating that the website would initially serve the Bay Area. Trump also announced a project intended to set up testing sites across parking lots across the United States, taking the state and federal health care workers who oversee the project by surprise. These drive-through testing sites were later used to support distribution of the coronavirus vaccine. On March 30, 2020, The Atlantic reported that a website that Trump had said would help Americans to diagnose themselves and direct them to a nearby coronavirus testing site in a March 13 press conference had been a project between the government and Oscar Health, a company that Kushner had ties with. Kushner's brother, Joshua, co-founded and owns Oscar Health, and Kushner himself was a partial owner of the firm before joining the White House. The website was quickly scrapped.

In April 2020, Kushner made a rare public appearance, when in the White House briefing room he defended the administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic. In response to requests by state and local governments that the federal government distribute medical supplies to the states, Kushner said, "The notion of the federal stockpile is that it's supposed to be our stockpile. It's not supposed to be states' stockpiles that they then use." The Strategic National Stockpile page on the Public Health Emergency website was retconned on the same day to reflect this new interpretation of its mission.

2020 election aftermath

Kushner did not participate in the Trump administration's attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election. He started writing a memoir, made plans to move his family to Miami, and focused on his project of Middle East diplomacy. He met with Biden administration security advisors Jake Sullivan and Jeffrey Zients to prepare for transition of power. During the January 6, 2021 United States Capitol attack, he was returning from a diplomatic trip around the Persian gulf states. On January 11, 2021, he arranged a meeting between vice-president Mike Pence and Donald Trump to try to reconcile their relationship. On March 31, 2022, he voluntarily spoke to t

Criminal justice reform — FIRST STEP Act

Kushner was a strong supporter within the first Trump administration for the bipartisan criminal justice reform bill Formerly Incarcerated Reenter Society Transformed Safely Transitioning Every Person Act (FIRST STEP ACT, H.R. 5682) which President Trump signed into law in December 2018. The legislation implemented several reforms to America's prison and criminal justice systems, reducing sentences for certain non-violent offenders and improving prison programs to reduce recidivism, among other priorities. In announcing his support for the bill, Trump argued that it would “make our communities safer and give former inmates a second chance at life. According to reporting by Axios in 2020, Trump expressed regrets in private about having followed Jared Kushner's lead in going through with the First Step Act.

Allegations of nepotism

Kushner's appointment as Trump's senior advisor in the White House in January 2017 was questioned on the basis of a 1967 anti-nepotism law which forbids public officials from hiring family members, and explicitly one's son-in-law, in agencies or offices they oversee. The law was passed in response to President John F. Kennedy's decision to appoint his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general in 1961. However, on January 20, 2017, the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion stating the anti-nepotism law does not apply to appointments within the White House, after Kushner's lawyer, Jamie Gorelick claimed the 1967 law does not apply to the White House because it is not an 'agency'. Among other precedents, the OLC opinion invoked a 1993 D.C. Circuit Court ruling that enabled Hillary Clinton to serve within the White House during the Clinton administration. Kushner was sworn in on January 22, 2017 and was given the office which is physically the closest to the Oval Office.

Security clearance

On January 18, 2017, immediately after his appointment as senior advisor to President Trump, Kushner requested Top Secret security clearance, using "Standard Form 86 (SF86): Questionnaire for National Security Positions". The request omitted all of Kushner's contacts with foreign officials, including the meetings with Kislyak and Gorkov, though he quickly updated his filing to notify government officials that he would supplement his disclosure to provide the required information. Failure to disclose pertinent contacts can cause security clearances to be declined or revoked, and an intentional failure to disclose can result in imprisonment. Kushner's lawyers said that the omissions were "an oversight", and that "a member of [Kushner's] staff had prematurely hit the 'send' button" before the form was completed.

By July 2017, Kushner had updated his SF86, this time disclosing contacts with foreign nationals. This was the first time that government officials were made aware of the June 2016 Trump campaign–Russian meeting and Kushner's role in it.

On September 15, 2017, Carl Kline, the director of the personnel security office within the Executive Office of President Trump, recorded Kushner as having an interim Top Secret/SCI security clearance. Kushner and his wife were among at least 48 officials granted interim clearance giving them access to sensitive compartmented information (SCI): detailed accounts of intelligence sources and methods.

On February 27, 2018, in response to the Rob Porter scandal, White House chief of staff John Kelly downgraded Kushner's interim security clearance to "secret" status, along with other White House staffers working with interim security clearances. White House sources said that part of the reason Kushner had not yet been granted permanent security clearance was that he was under investigation by Robert Mueller.

Kushner finally received permanent Top Secret security clearance on May 23, 2018. In January 2019, Trump told The New York Times that he had not intervened to grant Kushner's security clearances. On February 8, 2019, Kushner's wife Ivanka also denied that Trump had intervened to grant her or Kushner's security clearances. However, on February 28, 2019, CNN (citing three anonymous sources) and The New York Times (citing four anonymous sources) reported that in May 2018 Trump ordered Kelly to grant Kushner a top-secret clearance, which Kelly contemporaneously documented in an internal memo. Reportedly, this was the first time any U.S. president had intervened in such a way. Carl Kline later testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that there had been no external intervention in the decision to restore Kushner's clearance.

Conflicts of interest

While serving in the first Trump administration, Kushner retained ownership of businesses, which drew criticism from government ethics experts who said it created conflicts of interest.

After his appointment as Senior Advisor to Donald Trump (in January 2017), Kushner resigned as head of his family's real-estate firm, Kushner Companies, and partially divested himself of some of its assets, including all his stake in Thrive Capital, a venture capital firm co-founded by his brother, all common stock holdings and over 35 other investments, and his stake in 666 Fifth Avenue. However, he did not actually sell off his assets or set up a blind trust with outside management. Instead, he transferred ownership of some of his assets to his brother and to a trust overseen by his mother rather than selling off his assets to a third party or setting up a blind trust with outside management. The New York Times reported that Kushner managed to retain "the vast majority of his interest in Kushner Companies. His real estate holdings and other investments are worth as much as $761 million." Disclosures he was required to make show that Kushner still receives millions of dollars a year in income from rent collected by his assorted real estate portfolio.

After her father was elected president, global sales of Ivanka Trump merchandise surged. On April 6, 2017, the same day that Kushner and Ivanka dined with Chinese president Xi Jinping and his wife at a dinner hosted by the president at Mar-a-Lago, the Chinese government provisionally approved three new trademarks for the Ivanka Trump brand giving it monopoly rights to sell Ivanka Trump brand jewelry, bags and spa services in the world's second-largest economy. Ivanka applied for the trademarks in 2016 due to concerns about the proliferation of knock off and counterfeits goods being sold under her name in China as her father's presidential campaign progressed.

In March 2026, Representative Robert Garcia and Senator Ron Wyden sent letters to the White House seeking information on Jared Kushner's business dealings in the Middle East. The lawmakers cited reports that Kushner's private equity firm, Affinity Partners, was soliciting billions of dollars in investments from regional governments while he simultaneously served as a negotiator for the administration in the same region. In April 2026, Dem. Jamie Raskin has opened a sweeping investigation that details, Affinity partners had amassed $6.16 billion in assets, including $1.2 billion made in 2025 alone.

In September 2026, CNN published into an investigation into Affinity Partners following its investments in Israeli insurance company Phoenix Financial, which invests in several arms manufacturers contracted by the Israel Defense Forces. In July 2026, Affinity Partners sold about a quarter of its stake in Phoenix Financial for more than $340 million, more than five times what it had initially invested. Affinity kept a 7.4% stake in the company, valued at more than $1 billion at the time, and remained Phoenix's largest shareholder. CNN reported that it found no evidence that Kushner's diplomatic activities had directly influenced the investments it examined. The report cited conflicts of interest given Kushner's role as a negotiator for the Gaza Peace Plan.

Use of WhatsApp for White House duties

While a White House official, Kushner used WhatsApp to conduct government business, raising concerns among cybersecurity experts that sensitive government communications could be vulnerable to exploitation by foreign governments and hackers. Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman was reportedly one of the individuals that Kushner contacted through WhatsApp; in January 2020, UN investigators said that there was evidence that bin Salman was involved in the hacking of Jeff Bezos's phone through WhatsApp communications, advising that Kushner and others in contact with the Crown Prince should take measures to protect their communications. Kushner reportedly used WhatsApp to communicate with his coronavirus team during March and April 2020. Ethics watchdogs have since confirmed that Kushner turned over his WhatsApp records prior to departing the White House, and that these records have been acquired in full by the National Archives and Records Administration.

Pardoning white collar criminals

Upon his suggestion and the Aleph Institute, several white collar criminals have been pardoned; for example in 2020 Philip Esformes, who defrauded Medicare for about $1.3 billion.

Secret Service protection

Jared Kushner was in the list of 13 family members and three Cabinet appointees, who were granted security for an additional six months after Donald Trump left the White House, a dispensation which had also been granted to Sasha and Malia Obama.

In May 2021, four months after Donald Trump had vacated the Presidency, the Daily Beast reported Kushner's Secret Service security team accompanied him to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, incurring US State Department costs of $12,950. Kushner cited the requirement of high security for which a total of 50 "room nights" at $259 each were booked between May 5 and 14 at Abu Dhabi's Ritz-Carlton hotel. Ethics watchdogs raised concerns of financial connections between Kushner and the UAE, citing that former Senior Advisor to the US president was believed to be "particularly manipulable" by the UAE. A month before Trump left office, Kushner's last overseas trip cost US taxpayers around $24,335 in hotel costs alone.

Gaza displacement controversy

In February 2024, during an appearance at the Harvard Kennedy School, Kushner described the Gaza Strip as "valuable waterfront property" and suggested relocating Palestinian civilians to the Negev desert or Egypt while the territory was "cleaned up", saying "I think that’s a better option, so you can go in and finish the job." In February 2025, U.S. president Donald Trump promoted a Gaza Strip takeover proposal that involved transforming Gaza into a luxury resort, widely linked in media coverage to Kushner's remarks.

The comments drew international criticism. Human rights observers and Palestinian officials have said that Kushner's proposals would amount to forced displacement or ethnic cleansing. The redevelopment vision, which involved large-scale relocation of Gazans, was condemned by Palestinian civilians, leaders, Arab governments, and international rights groups, and organizations such as the United Nations, as being both unrealistic and contrary to international law.