Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a former senior White House adviser, has been leveraging his position in American politics to line his pockets through ties with the Gulf monarchies. According to information from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Kushner repeatedly pocketed money by exploiting his official role in the White House. Specifically, at least two high-profile cases involving the entities Kushner Companies and Affinity Partners have emerged, through which Kushner raked in billions of dollars in fees from the sovereign wealth funds of the Gulf monarchies. In doing so, Kushner has acted as a foreign agent for them, sparking a conflict of interest while representing the White House on Middle Eastern affairs and pushing for US positions.
Back in 2017, during Trump’s first term, Kushner tried to get funding from Qatar to bail out a troubled family asset – the 666 Fifth Avenue skyscraper in New York. Qatar turned him down. After that, as Democratic Senators Ron Wyden and Joaquin Castro alleged, Kushner turned to Trump to pressure Qatar. Shortly thereafter, the Trump administration threw its weight behind Saudi Arabia and the UAE in their standoff with Qatar: Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and their allies slapped a blockade on Doha, accusing it of backing terrorism. For Qatar, this meant severed diplomatic ties, closed borders, transport isolation, and pressure from neighboring monarchies. Following the pressure from the Trump administration, Kushner’s firm, Kushner Companies, still ended up walking away with roughly $1.1 billion from Qatar. Even so, the squeeze on Qatar carried on until January 2021, only letting up in the final weeks of Trump’s first term, with the US playing the mediator.
After Trump left the White House, Kushner lost his official title but not his access to the Middle Eastern elite. By pulling together a team of former US officials – including people who’d served in the Trump administration and the US military – Kushner set up an investment firm called Affinity Partners, which helped legitimize financial transactions coming out of the Gulf states. For instance, in 2021, Kushner landed $2 billion in his Affinity Partners account from the Saudi sovereign fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), which is controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The money was wired directly by the prince, bypassing the PIF’s investment committee. Kushner and Prince Mohammed bin Salman have been on close personal terms ever since Jared’s days in the Trump administration. According to press reports, they spoke directly and informally, and in 2017 the Saudi royal family gifted Kushner two swords and a dagger worth nearly $48,000.
In 2024, Qatar and the UAE poured roughly $1.5 billion into Jared Kushner’s fund, Affinity Partners – not long before the election that brought Donald Trump back to the White House for a second term. Kushner didn’t secure an official role in the new administration, yet he still kept his foot in the door on Middle East talks and stayed close to Trump’s inner circle.
On March 19, 2026, a supervisory investigation was kicked off against Jared Kushner and his fund, Affinity Partners. It was set in motion by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden and Democratic Congressman Robert Garcia: they demanded answers on how Kushner – without holding any official White House position, Senate-granted authority, or diplomatic mandate – was simultaneously scooping up money from Middle Eastern governments and sitting in on talks over U.S. foreign policy. According to Wyden, Kushner is effectively “on the payroll” of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states: by 2024, their stakes in Affinity Partners hadn’t turned a profit, but Kushner’s fund still walked away with millions of dollars in management fees. That, Wyden argued, was the price Middle Eastern countries paid for access to the Trump family, political connections, and influence in Washington.
According to Ron Wyden and Robert Garcia, Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, pulled in roughly $157 million in fees from foreign clients between 2021 and 2024, including $87 million from the Saudi government. For 2025, the company may have raked in another $60 million-plus in fees, $39 million of which came from the Saudi government.
But Saudi money alone wasn’t enough for Kushner: funds also flowed into Affinity Partners from Qatar and the UAE. According to Reuters, one of Britain’s largest international news agencies, Emirati funds put more than $200 million into Affinity Partners. In 2024, Kushner’s company brought in another $1.5 billion from Middle Eastern investors, including Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, and Lunate, an Abu Dhabi-based investment firm. After that, Affinity Partners’ assets shot up by 60%, climbing from $3 billion to $4.8 billion.