WASHINGTON — US special envoy Jared Kushner Thursday issued a lengthy “fact check” to a New Yorker piece that takes up “familiar accusations” linking his diplomatic efforts in the Trump administration to his own private equity firm’s bottom line.
“For years, I let the stories go unanswered,” Kushner told The Post of why he spoke up now against the “Dollar Diplomacy” story. “I focused on my work, but when false claims get repeated enough, people start believing them.
“I decided to put the facts out there and let people judge for themselves.”
In an Oct. 8 post on his personal website, Kushner excoriated the New Yorker for having “failed to correct their preferred narrative” in the piece — despite the nearly 5,000-word article going through the magazine’s “storied fact-checking process.”
The Affinity Partners CEO’s 14-point fact check begins by addressing allegations he raised $5 billion earlier this year for his private equity fund while helping negotiate on behalf of the Trump administration in the Middle East — something that would appear to be an obvious conflict of interest.
“The instant the actions in Iran began and I was asked to extend my volunteer role, I ended all conversations about additional fundraising,” Kushner said.
“Preliminary conversations about a possible future fund are not the same thing as raising a fund, yet the article stated that I was ‘discreetly raising another five billion dollars’ while engaged in talks with Iran. That sentence was beyond misleading,” he added, noting: “while I have been volunteering for the government, Affinity has not raised additional capital.”
Kushner also wrote: “I have never taken a diplomatic action to benefit Affinity, myself, or any investor.”
“Everyone’s looking for conspiracies,” the New Jersey-born real estate scion told The Post, “but maybe the truth is just hiding in plain sight.”
Kushner explained that his upbringing and watching the turmoil in the Middle East led him to get back involved in international diplomacy.
“I was raised to believe that if you want the world to be better, don’t just complain about it: Go try to do something about it,” he said.
“I saw the suffering of the people in Gaza, the Israelis, and the hostage families,” Kushner continued. “I saw Israel tearing itself apart and antisemitism spreading around the world.
“What was I going to do? Sit in Miami and make more investments? When the President and Steve [Witkoff] asked me to help, it was very hard to say no.”
Democrats in Congress like House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) previously drew scrutiny to Kushner’s business dealings in the Middle East after Trump’s first term in the White House.
The same year his father-in-law left office, the Abraham Accords dealmaker went on to secure more than $2 billion in investments from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, known as the PIF, and other funds controlled by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Raskin has since claimed Affinity netted billions more in the subsequent years and its assets under management currently sit at more than $6 billion, creating what he called “a glaring and incurable conflict of interest” given Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025.
“PIF’s investment in Affinity was made after I left government, with no desire, plans or prospects to return to diplomacy, and years before President Trump decided to run again,” Kushner responded to the New Yorker, which made similar allegations of the special envoy having conflicts of interest.
Kushner also noted that his investment moves have been made after consultation with his private ethics counsel — and once he returned to government service, with the White House Counsel’s Office.
“I receive no salary or other compensation from the government for this work and pay my own expenses,” he added. “I served for four years in the first Trump Administration, taking no salary, and am proudly volunteering again now.”
Elsewhere, he batted down conflict-of-interest accusations of business dealings involving the purchase of an Albanian island to build a luxury resort and his firm’s buying up of stocks in an Israeli financial services company called Phoenix Financial.
Kushner also took The New Yorker to task for insinuating that he is both a poorly skilled investor and yet one who through Affinity is helping its clients make 25% returns on capital.
“Before entering government, I invested billions of dollars in real estate, generated substantial profits, founded technology companies, seeded a technology investment firm and owned the New York Observer. I began investing in apartment buildings at 19 while still in college and had already made millions from those investments by graduation,” he explained.
“My subsequent record at Affinity, which is an SEC-registered advisor, provides additional objective evidence by which to evaluate my investment experience. Our assets under management have continued to grow from investment gains, not newly raised capital.”
Kushner also defended his “intentionally unconventional” approach to diplomacy, which he said should be judged on the results he’s already delivered with the 2020 Abraham Accords normalizing relations between Israel and Gulf nations, as well as trade agreements with Canada, Mexico and China.
Additionally, he and special envoy Steve Witkoff succeeded in the last year with bringing all remaining hostages back from Gaza and reaching a tentative cease-fire between Hamas and Israel.
And finally, Kushner pushes back on detractors who claim he was both a political novice and an academic lightweight.
“I entered government without Washington experience, but not without relevant experience. I had spent my career building businesses, managing teams and solving complicated problems, and the President had just watched me apply those skills during the campaign, against all odds, in a very tense environment,” he wrote.
“That record, along with the trust we had developed working together, is important context that is often overlooked, for why he asked me to serve,” he said.
Kushner also highlighted how before his careers in business and government, he had graduated from Harvard University with honors “while building a real-estate business that generated millions of dollars in profits by graduation.”
“I later earned both a JD and an MBA from NYU while working full time,” he concluded. “After more than 20 years in public life, there is now a substantial record by which to judge my abilities.”
The tasks Trump has delegated to Kushner and Witkoff — negotiating with Iran, Russia and Ukraine, and Hamas — are “incredibly difficult challenges … that have defied solutions for decades,” the president’s son-in-law acknowledged to The Post.
“We know how hard they are, but if there’s a chance to end wars, save lives and create a better future, it’s worth trying.”
