Shock Report Says Kushner Raised $5 Billion For His Fund While Negotiating With Iran On Behalf of US

(AP Photo/Terry Renna)

The New Yorker revealed in a bombshell report on Monday that Jared Kushner was simultaneously “raising another five billion dollars” from the Middle East for his investment firm while also engaging in talks with Iran this year.

Pulitzer Prize-winning staff writer Dexter Filkins wrote the deep-dive profile of Kushner for the latest issue of the magazine, which ran the article under a subtitle that read, “Donald Trump’s son-in-law represents the kind of Washington figure for whom public office serves as a means to extraordinary wealth.”

Kushner serves as a special envoy for peace in the current administration and has handled negotiations in the Middle East alongside Steve Witkoff. Kushner also served in the first Trump administration and opened his own investment fund, Affinity Partners, soon after Trump left office, raising billions of dollars from countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Kushner’s fund has long been a source of controversy as critics claim those countries invested with Kushner as a kind of “pay-for-play” access to his influence.

“Earlier this year, as Kushner engaged in talks with Iran, he was also discreetly raising another five billion dollars for Affinity in the Middle East. After the attacks on Tehran began, suspicions arose that the two endeavors were linked,” Filkins reported, adding:

“My sense is that he thinks he was killing two birds with one stone—he was helping the Arabs defeat the Iranians, and he wanted to be paid for it,” an American with deep ties to Middle Eastern leaders told me.

Since the war has devolved into a quagmire, Kushner and Witkoff have been relegated to a secondary role in peace talks; Vance took the lead in the latest round, this summer. A former senior U.S. official told me that the Gulf monarchies were disappointed by Kushner’s failure to prevent a war: “They were investing money in him. They thought that would bring them some influence that would protect them, and it did the opposite.” He added, “Their whole business model was stability. And now it’s gone.”

Kushner’s fund has also raised eyebrows as it has only invested a fraction of the money it holds, despite collecting management fees on all the cash.

“Yet Kushner has thrived. In 2025, new investments from the Middle East helped his fund grow by thirty per cent, to more than six billion dollars, meaning that it collects at least tens of millions of dollars a year in fees,” Filkins explained, adding:

Affinity estimates its annual internal rate of return at twenty-five per cent. Among its projects are two large investments in Israel: a hundred and ten million dollars in the Shlomo Group, a car-leasing firm, and about three hundred million dollars in Phoenix Financial, an insurance company. Again, Kushner used Saudi money, as part of a broader goal of opening an “investment corridor” between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Filkins detailed several of Affinity’s other major investments and concluded the lengthy article by highlighting the risks Kushner has taken with his business.

“For Kushner, the risk of mixing politics and business is that political currents will turn against him: his patrons overseas will stop seeing him as a valuable ally, or his opponents in the U.S. will find ways of prosecuting his apparent violations of ethics laws,” he wrote, arguing that Democrats regaining either chamber of Congress is likely to lead to immediate investigations.

Virginia Canter, a former White House counsel for both Clinton and Obama administrations, told Filkins, “If Kushner wasn’t the son-in-law of the President, he would be under investigation by the F.B.I. No one else could get away with this.”

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