By Justin Sink
For a man who vowed to stay out of the political spotlight, Jared Kushner is finding himself very much in its glare.
He helped clinch a ceasefire agreement and secure the release of hostages in Gaza. He has sat across from Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky – separately – in a bid to negotiate a peace deal over Ukraine. And his private equity firm has backed a bid in the politically charged battle for an entertainment empire.
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. The president’s son-in-law has been involved in a number of high-level negotiations in the Middle East and Ukraine.Credit: AP
Such engagement might have been expected in Donald Trump’s first administration, where Kushner served as a senior adviser. But it’s a far cry from the future that the president’s son-in-law envisioned just last year, when he told a Miami crowd that he’d stay out of government affairs even if offered a job.
Now he’s a linchpin of some of the biggest issues confronting the White House, underscoring a defining feature of Trump’s inner orbit: You never really leave.
On Friday, Kushner gathered World Bank chief Ajay Banga and BlackRock chief executive officer Larry Fink with officials from Kyiv in a bid to hammer out an economic backstop for post-war Ukraine. The previously unreported meeting comes as US officials have launched a joint working group with the private sector to think through reconstruction efforts.
Success on a deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war would represent the second major peace accord negotiated by Kushner and presidential envoy Steve Witkoff in recent months, after they earlier helped forge a truce between Israel and Hamas.
“This is way more than I kind of anticipated,” Kushner, 44, told the New York Times after the Middle East deal was reached. “I think there’s a chance that when I get home, my wife changes the locks on the house.”
He was referring to Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, who also had a White House role during her father’s first term but has stayed out of the administration this time around.
Kushner, meanwhile, hasn’t totally forgotten about his day job.
Kushner’s return to the scene has raised familiar questions from his first stint in the White House, where his complex financial interests and relative inexperience in politics and diplomacy led critics to question both his competence and ethics.Credit: AP
Filings in the takeover fight for Warner Bros. Discovery revealed that Affinity Partners — the private equity firm Kushner founded in 2021 with funding from a trio of Middle East sovereign wealth funds – was helping to finance Paramount Skydance’s hostile bid. But on Wednesday (Australian time), Affinity exited the battle. Kushner’s participation in a deal that the president has said he would personally review had drawn a lot of unwelcome attention to him, according to people familiar with the decision. Affinity’s $US200 million contribution to the financing was relatively minor, they said.
Along with Affinity’s initial involvement in the bid, Kushner was involved in helping secure billions in funding for the deal from Middle East funds.
Ethics and competence
Kushner’s return to the scene has raised familiar questions from his first stint in the White House, where his complex financial interests and relative inexperience in politics and diplomacy led critics to question both his competence and ethics.
Just this week, Affinity said it’s dropping plans for a Trump-branded luxury hotel in Serbia after tensions around the project culminated in the indictment of a government official who helped clear a path for its development.
“He gets involved with government-run investment funds, and those governments also happen to want things from the American government,” said Jordan Libowitz, a vice president with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog. “So you have a president’s son-in-law financially entangled with foreign governments, and what’s good for him might not be what’s good for the American people.”
But for Kushner, still known mononymously as “Jared” across the West Wing, Trump’s surprise return to the White House offers opportunity for redemption.
During the first term, Kushner’s policy efforts — from immigration to infrastructure, criminal justice to government reform — became something of a punchline in Washington, unveiled with great fanfare at the White House only to be ignored on Capitol Hill or within the bureaucracy.
His relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, forged over meetings and WhatsApp chats, became a flashpoint after the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate in Turkey. And his courting of celebrities — including a West Wing welcome for Kanye West — contributed to the often circus-like feel of Trump’s first term.
Kushner and presidential envoy Steve Witkoff helped forge a truce between Israel and Hamas earlier this year.Credit: Getty Images
During Trump’s second term, Kushner has narrowed his scope and stuck to more favourable terrain.
In the Middle East, he’s positioned himself as an interlocutor that both sides can trust while seeking to find a way to end two years of bloodshed.
He emphasised to negotiators the relationships cultivated not only through his business dealings, but also a rare bright spot in his first-term policy portfolio: negotiating the Abraham Accords to normalise diplomatic relations with Israel.
Tackling Benjamin Netanyahu was a bit easier. The Israeli prime minister is a longtime friend of Jared’s dad, Charles Kushner, and has even spent nights at the family’s New Jersey home.
Those involved in the talks credited Kushner with being able to sort the signal from the often cacophonous noise of the conflict, as threats and recriminations threatened to derail efforts to secure the release of hostages and a plan for post-war Gaza.
“We always bring Jared when we want to get that deal closed,” Trump said while visiting the Knesset to celebrate the agreement.
Kushner has sought to again leverage his relationships from New York finance and real estate as he looks to tackle the war between Russia and Ukraine.
In recent days, Kushner brought BlackRock’s Fink in for a discussion with Zelensky around rebuilding Ukraine’s economy, a key concern for Kyiv as it weighs a US proposal.
But there have been challenges. A framework agreement drafted by Kushner, Witkoff and Russian officials has sparked alarm across Europe, calling for significant concessions from Kyiv that would be politically difficult — if not impossible — for Zelensky to deliver.
“While Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are capable in their own right, I don’t think they have the depth of experience to fully appreciate how President Putin plans out these meetings, how he executes these meetings and he looks for ways to manipulate his friends across the table,” Julianne Smith, a former US Ambassador to NATO, told CNN.
Trump, meanwhile, has made clear he’s tired of talks that seem to get repeatedly derailed.
“We don’t want to waste a lot of time, we think it’s negative,” Trump told reporters on Thursday. “We want it to get settled.”
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said Kushner was an “informal, unpaid adviser” trusted by the president and Witkoff for his “experience with complex negotiations.”
‘Nothing in my life has gone according to the plans I’ve set.’
Jared Kushner
The president has sidestepped questions about Kushner’s role in the other big deal consuming attention at the White House: the battle between Netflix and Paramount for the future of Warner Bros.
But Trump did offer signals that could bolster his son-in-law’s effort to derail the Netflix bid endorsed by the Warner Bros. board.
Trump told reporters he’d look at whether a combination with Netflix would give the new company too high of a market share. He also indicated he wanted a deal that resulted in new owners who could pressure CNN management to make changes.
Trump has already spoken to Paramount CEO David Ellison, whose offer would see CNN and other networks come under his roof, about the future of the cable network. But it has emerged that Warner Bros. Discovery is reportedly planning to reject Paramount’s bid due to concerns about financing and other terms.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called suggestions that Kushner may face conflicts of interest “despicable.”Credit: AP
The threat — and the prospect of foreign sovereign wealth funds underwriting the acquisition of a major US news outlet — have prompted concern from Democrats in Washington. And the prospect of Kushner profiting off the decision comes despite Trump for years claiming former president Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, exploited his father’s influence.
The potential deal isn’t even Kushner’s first large media acquisition effort in his father-in-law’s second term: Affinity Partners and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund worked with Silver Lake Partners to acquire video game giant Electronic Arts earlier this year.
Trump has so far denied speaking to Kushner about the Warner Bros. deal – while praising his son-in-law’s work on global diplomacy.
Kushner has downplayed the notion that his financial entanglements were an issue.
“What people call conflicts of interest, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world,” he said in an interview with CBS News’ 60 Minutes.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called suggestions that Kushner may face conflicts of interest “despicable.”
Kushner’s central role in some of the biggest negotiations of the year might have come as a surprise to him back on the stage at the Miami forum hosted by Axios in 2024 – but perhaps not a total shock.
“Nothing in my life has gone according to the plans I’ve set,” he said.
Bloomberg
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