New Billionaire Jared Kushner Is Mired in Conflicts of Interest as “Peace Envoy”

“Kushner is now a billionaire,” proclaimed Forbes in September 2025 of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. While just over half of Kushner’s wealth — $560 million — comes from his family’s real estate empire, what’s catapulted Kushner into billionaire status is the growth of his private equity firm, Affinity Partners, formed in 2021.

“[T]hese days,” said Forbes, Kushner is “laser-focused on Affinity.”

Kushner is not an experienced investment manager. His key clients are Gulf state sovereign wealth funds — hugely wealthy state-owned coffers that invest revenue generated by fossil fuel sales — overseen by the same regimes with whom Kushner is now involved diplomatically as a U.S. “special envoy for peace.”

That Kushner personally profits from, and is currently trying to raise billions from, the same actors he’s negotiating with, raises code red-level alarms over potential conflicts of interest. Moreover, two of Trump’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, have been tied to a slew of business deals connected to companies that are benefitting handsomely from federal government contracts.

“The degree of shamelessness is unprecedented,” Jeff Hauser, founder and executive director of the Revolving Door Project, a watchdog group monitoring the U.S. executive branch, told Truthout. “The degree of unity among elected Republicans to not speak about the Trump progeny, and their corruption, is the worst conspiracy of silence in American political history.”

Affinity Partners

Jared Kushner founded Affinity Partners in 2021, and he is the firm’s sole owner. Forbes estimates Affinity was worth $215 million as of September 2025, up from $170 million in October 2024. Through Affinity, Kushner recruits wealthy clients and invests their money through funds that acquire stakes in different companies.

Affinity currently has $6.2 billion in assets under management. According to the Israeli financial paper Globes, Kushner earns “a commission of 1.25 percent on investors’ capital.” Forbes says that Affinity’s investors “pay about $60 million per year in fees.”

The New York Times also reports that Affinity has earned an estimated 25 percent rate of return on its investments since 2021. Private equity investment firms often get a double-digit percentage cut on client returns.

Affinity’s biggest clients are Gulf state sovereign wealth funds. According to The New York Times, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which invests the kingdom’s oil profits and is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is “already the largest and earliest investor in Affinity,” having invested $2 billion with the firm after Trump’s first term ended. As part of that investment deal, Saudi Arabia was also given “the first chance to invest during any subsequent attempts by Affinity to raise funds,” said The New York Times.

The sovereign wealth funds of both the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar were also early investors in Affinity Partners, with the UAE investing over $200 million in Kushner’s firm.

“Most of Affinity’s investors came through connections Kushner made while serving in the White House,” wrote Forbes.

Kushner is currently trying to raise $5 billion or more in new funds for Affinity. As part of this effort, The New York Times reported in March 2026 that Affinity representatives had met with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and that the United Arab Emirates and Qatar “are also expected to be asked for more” as the fundraising efforts should “stretch on for the better part of this year,”

“Staggering Conflicts of Interest”

Kushner’s current fundraising efforts with Gulf state regimes, through which he aims to personally profit, raise serious concerns over conflicts between his business interests with regional states and his diplomatic role as a top Trump administration negotiator.

“There’s an enormous conflict of interest when you have somebody who had never been a money manager like this before, and who is all of a sudden building massive funds based off a handful of foreign investors with an interest in buttering up the Trump administration,” said Hauser.

Hauser said it’s “not unprecedented” for well-connected family members or friends of presidents to influence U.S. diplomacy. But, he adds, “it is very susceptible to abuse, and I think it’s being abused here,” and government reforms are needed in the wake of Kushner’s current “diplomatic exploits.”

The potential conflicts of interest have been highlighted by some members of congress. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) has opened an investigation into what he labels Kushner’s “foreign entanglements and staggering conflicts of interest.”

“From the standpoint of the American people, your decision to act in these two roles — one public for the government and one private for personal profit — creates a glaring and incurable conflict of interest,” Raskin wrote in a letter to Kushner.

Kushner’s diplomatic efforts have included helping to design and advance the Abraham Accords, which aims to normalize relations between Israel and key Gulf States; carrying out negotiations with Iran, whose retaliatory strikes have been aimed at nations like Saudi Arabia and the UAE; and working on Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace,” which several Gulf states, including top Affinity clients, have joined.

Kushner’s Portfolio Companies

Affinity Partners’ most significant deal has been its $55 billion acquisition in 2025, in partnership with Saudi Arabia and other investors, of the video game giant Electronic Arts, maker of popular franchises like Madden and Sims. The transaction, which has garnered protests from gamers and developers, would be the largest-ever private buyout of a publicly-traded company. It’s currently in its final stages of approval.

Under the deal’s terms, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — which already had a 10 percent stake in Electronic Arts — will own 93.4 of EA, while Affinity Partners will own 1.1 percent. For Saudi Arabia, the deal advances two separate but intertwined aims: diversifying its economy away from overreliance on oil revenue, and partnering with a member of the Trump family as the deal seeks regulatory approval from the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment, chaired by Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent

Affinity Partners also invests in smaller AI and financial companies, including U.K. digital bank OakNorth, AI infrastructure firm Universal AGI, and the fintech start-up company Revolut. Forbes reports that Kushner recently launched a new San Francisco-based AI start-up with the prominent Israeli-born venture capitalist Elad Gil. The firm, Brain Co., also raised funds from Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong and LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman.

Raising more potential for conflicts with his diplomatic role, Kushner also has stakes in several Israeli companies, including $1.68 billion in Phoenix Financial, one of Israel’s leading insurance and financial companies. Affinity is Phoenix’s top shareholder and has seen a five-times return on its investment.

Affinity is also invested in the Israeli Shlomo Group, one of Israel’s largest holding groups with big investments in the auto sector.

Kushner, TikTok, and the Trump Web

Jared Kushner is also embedded in a wide web of business figures advancing the Trump agenda — which could be seen in the January 2026 deal that created a U.S. spinoff of TikTok.

Kushner’s Electronic Arts deal is co-led by Silver Lake, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm. As Truthout previously reported, Silver Lake is also a 15 percent stakeholder in the new U.S. TikTok. The firm’s co-CEO Egon Durban sits on the seven-member board of U.S. TikTok.

In 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported that acquiring Electronic Arts was Durban’s “dream deal,” but that “the pieces began to fall into place” for the acquisition only after Durban “began spending time with Jared Kushner.”

Silver Lake also owns Endeavor, whose portfolio includes TKO Group Holdings, the parent company of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the mixed martial arts corporation that is chummy with Donald Trump.

Durban and Silver Lake are close business partners with Michael Dell, the megabillionaire chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies who is also part of the U.S. TikTok ownership group with Durban. Dell has cast himself as a Trump ally by donating $6.25 billion toward the president’s so-called “Trump Accounts” program, which creates investment accounts for U.S. children.

Billionaire Yuri Milner, another U.S. TikTok investor, previously invested $850,000 in a real estate company started by Kushner in 2015. Jon Winkelried, the billionaire CEO of TPG Global, a private equity firm represented on U.S. TikTok’s board, also previously served as a strategic adviser and partner for Thrive Capital, an investment firm overseen by Jared Kushner’s brother, Josh Kushner.

The Trump Sons

If Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, may be personally benefiting from his closeness to the president, so too might be two of the president’s own children.

Donald Trump Jr. is a partner with an investment firm called 1789 Capital, which he says is dedicated to “patriotic capitalism,” and which has seen its assets under management boom from $200 million to $3.5 billion over the past year.

1789 Capital has made investments in companies that have gone on to benefit from federal contracts. For example, the Trump administration helped secure a $620 million loan for Vulcan Elements, a rare earths firm, months after 1789 Capital acquired a stake. Other 1789 Capital portfolio companies that benefit from federal contracts include rocket propulsion start-up Firehawk Aerospace, quantum computing company PsiQuantum, and AI group Cerebras Systems, as well as SpaceX and Anduril. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have also been linked to other drone makers, including Unusual Machines and Powerus, that have secured federal contracts.

Trump Jr. told the Financial Times that he is “very involved in the strategic decisions regarding where to invest” the resources of 1789 Capital.

The Financial Times also reported that Eric Trump accompanied his father on his recent state visit to China at the same “a company linked to him and the US president’s family” — Alt5 Sigma, a Las Vegas-based financial technology company — “explores a deal” with Chinese chipmaker Nano Labs that U.S. lawmakers says is tied to the Chinese Community Party. Eric Trump is an “observer” on the board of Alt5 Sigma, while Zach Witkoff, the son of top Trump aide Steve Witkoff, chairs Alt5’s board.

The Financial Times also reports that a shell company backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump is set to merge with a critical minerals group that last year secured up to $1.6 billion in U.S. government backing to mine tungsten in Kazakhstan. Now, that group is asking for $400 million more from the government.

Holding Politicians to Account

While Donald Trump may be struggling in the polls, his family, financially, is doing just fine.

Hauser told Truthout that much of Donald Trump’s “economic interest” is tied to “increasing the wealth of his kids,” including his son-in-law Kushner. “When they are engaged in these types of overseas actions, they are carrying Trump’s interests with them inherently,” said Hauser.

But, Hauser adds, the law treats adult children of presidents as wholly independent from their parents, allowing “relative impunity” for their intermixing of business transactions with diplomatic roles or close familial relations.

“The law is just not written to address this type of situation,” said Hauser.

But Hauser sees hope in past U.S. history, which he says has always experienced vicissitudes of political corruption and revulsion against corruption that propels reform through both legal avenues as well as social ostracization of bad actors.

“Political corruption cycles tend to be cyclical,” he said. “Hopefully this is [the] nadir, and we can all be angry enough and hold our politicians to account such that they start to clean this up, and we can switch from a vicious cycle of ever-increasing corruption to a virtuous cycle of greater integrity.”