Jared Kushner gets $2B Saudi investment

Former first son-in-law Jared Kushner received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund with expected annual management fees of $25 million according to a new report, drawing comparisons to first son Hunter Biden’s overseas business ventures.

Kushner’s firm Affinity Partners made the deal shortly after President Donald Trump left office, despite a Saudi Public Investment Fund review panel’s concerns about “inexperience” and a due diligence review that was “unsatisfactory in all aspects,” according to minutes of a June meeting reported by the New York Times.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman leads the fund’s board, which overruled the skeptics. 

A letter written by fund staff to a board member who dissented cited “aims to form a strategic relationship with the Affinity Partners Fund and its founder, Jared Kushner” in going ahead with the deal, according to the report.

Kushner worked as a top Trump White House aide and built a relationship with the crown prince while in office including while working on the Abraham Accords that led to four Arab states establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.

Trump is openly teasing a possible 2024 bid and Kushner’s arrangement sparked ethics concerns from some of the same experts who slammed Hunter Biden’s overseas ventures.

Walter Shaub, director of the US Office of Government Ethics during the Obama administration, tweeted that he was concerned about the possibility that Kushner may have influenced US policy during his time in office to benefit potential future business plans.

“Makes you wonder if Jared did something with his official authority for MBS before leaving government to earn that investment,” Shaub tweeted.

US spy agencies have assessed that the crown prince ordered the 2018 operation that resulted in the death and alleged bone-saw dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a US resident who died after being lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Trump condemned the murder but said the US-Saudi relationship was too important to jeopardize by breaking with the prince, who is the country’s de facto ruler.

“This is corruption,” wrote Brookings Institution fellow Norm Eisen, a former Democratic official and co-founder of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, on Twitter.

Angel investor Jason Calacanis posted, “They’re all grifters… we probably need to ban kids (including daughters and sons in law) of Presidents from being involved during their parent’s terms. If they’re qualified let them serve under the next president and earn their slots.”

Hunter Biden pursued a wide variety of business deals during his dad’s vice presidency and afterward before turning to anonymous sales of his novice artworks when his father assumed the presidency.

Most of Hunter’s business deals remain shrouded in non-transparency and President Biden’s involvement in those ventures remains the subject of debate.