Jared Kushner

Kushner was born on January 10, 1981, in Livingston, New Jersey, one of four children of real estate developer Charles Kushner. He graduated from the Frisch School, a yeshiva high school in Paramus, New Jersey, then went to Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry, graduating in 2003. A journalist later wrote that he had a modest academic record in high school and was admitted to Harvard after his father offered the university an endowment; a Kushner Companies spokesperson responded that the claim “is and always has been false.”⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

In November 2000, at 19 and still a Harvard sophomore, Kushner bought seven residential buildings in Somerville, Massachusetts, for $9 million, and later acquired another investment property. According to local mortgage documents, as an undergraduate he was vice president of 10 corporations centered on Somerville Building Associates and operating as part of Kushner Companies, and he ran the day-to-day business of the properties; the corporations were funded by his father and family friends. When Somerville Building Associates disbanded in 2005, it had reportedly returned a profit of more than $20 million.⁠[2][2][2][2][2][2]

Kushner Companies was founded by his father, Charles Kushner, in 1985. In 2005 Charles Kushner pleaded guilty to crimes including tax evasion and witness tampering and went to prison; Jared Kushner took over the family business and became CEO of Kushner Companies in 2008.⁠[2][1][3][1]

Under his leadership, Kushner Companies, which had long invested in residential apartment buildings, shifted its focus to small and medium-sized cities in the southeastern United States, partly because large investment firms had driven up prices in bigger cities. The company’s major deals included the 2013 purchase of a five-building complex in Brooklyn Heights for $340 million and the Jersey City luxury apartment tower Trump Bay Street, which opened in 2016 after a $225 million investment.⁠[3][3]

In August 2006, the 25-year-old Kushner paid $10 million for a controlling stake in The New York Observer, a small-circulation weekly influential in New York media, real estate and politics that was then losing about $2 million a year. He said the money he invested was his own, earned from property deals during his Harvard years, though much of the backing came from family members; he promised not to interfere with editorial content and to focus on boosting advertising and circulation. At the time he was attending New York University’s law and business schools.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][4][4]

In 2007 Kushner bought the Manhattan office tower at 666 Fifth Avenue for a then-record $1.8 billion, taking on $1.2 billion in debt on the eve of the global financial crisis. On August 3, 2018, Brookfield announced that it had acquired the entire leasehold interest in the building’s office condominium.⁠[1][3][5][5]

In October 2009, Kushner married Ivanka TrumpIvanka TrumpIvanka Trump is an American businesswoman. She served as executive vice president of development and acquisitions at the Trump Organization and founded an eponymous fashion brand, and during Donald Trump’s first presidential term she was an unpaid White House adviser to the president, focusing on issues such as women’s economic empowerment, job training, paid parental leave, and combating human trafficking. After the first term ended, she turned to entrepreneurship and investing.Open the full entry, daughter of Donald Trump, in Bedminster, New Jersey.⁠[1]

Despite coming from a Democratic family, Kushner became a key adviser to Trump in his 2016 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, working on merchandising, speeches, social media outreach and the selection of Indiana Governor Mike Pence as the vice-presidential candidate. That summer Trump tweeted an image, originating on an alt-right message board, labeling Hillary Clinton as corrupt against a Star of David–like shape and money, sparking an antisemitism controversy; Kushner defended him in The New York Observer, saying his father-in-law was not an antisemite. After Trump won on November 8, Kushner became a central member of the transition team.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

In January 2017, Trump’s transition team announced that Kushner would serve as senior adviser to the president. On January 20, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded in an opinion for the White House counsel that the president’s special hiring authority for the White House Office exempts its positions from the federal anti-nepotism statute, so the law did not bar the president from appointing his son-in-law there. He served as an unpaid senior adviser throughout Trump’s first term, leaving in 2021.⁠[1][6][6][6][7][8]

On March 27, 2017, Trump announced the White House Office of American Innovation and appointed Senior Advisor Kushner to lead it, with senior White House officials including Gary Cohn and Dina Powell, to make recommendations to the president on improving government operations and services and creating jobs. Kushner said the office would combine internal government resources with the private sector’s innovation to solve problems affecting Americans’ quality of life.⁠[9][9][9][9][9][9]

On July 24, 2017, Kushner was questioned behind closed doors by Senate Intelligence Committee staff about his contacts with Russians, and met the House Intelligence Committee the next day; both panels were investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. Beforehand he released an 11-page statement describing four contacts with Russians during the campaign and transition, including two meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, a meeting with a Russian banker and a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer. Afterward he said in front of the White House: “I did not collude with Russia, nor do I know of anyone else in the campaign who did so.”⁠[1][10][10][11][1][10][11]

In late February 2018, after White House Chief of Staff John Kelly announced an overhaul of the security clearance process for White House staff, Kushner, who had not yet received a final clearance, had his interim status downgraded from top secret to secret; that May he received a top-secret clearance. On February 28, 2019, The New York Times reported that in May 2018 Trump had overruled security officials and White House Counsel Donald McGahn and ordered Kelly to give Kushner a top-secret clearance, and that Kelly and McGahn each wrote internal memos about it; White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said, “We don’t comment on security clearances.” NBCNBCNBC (National Broadcasting Company) is an American national commercial broadcast television network. It was founded by RCA in 1926, began as a radio network and later developed television. With ABC and CBS it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks; it passed to General Electric with RCA in 1986, merged with Universal to form NBCUniversal in 2004, has been controlled by Comcast since 2011, and is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry News had earlier reported that two White House security specialists rejected his application after an FBI background check raised concerns including potential foreign influence, but were overruled by their supervisor. House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings said the committee had opened an investigation into the White House security clearance process.⁠[1][1][12][12][12][12][12][12]

On September 30, 2018, the United States, Canada and Mexico reached agreement on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement to replace NAFTA. Kushner had been the White House point person on Mexico since the start of Trump’s presidency, and U.S., Mexican and Canadian officials credited him as a central force in bridging differences and salvaging the trilateral trade pact, leveraging his relationships with Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray and top advisers to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. That November, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto planned to award him the Order of the Aztec, Mexico’s highest honor for foreigners, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Buenos Aires.⁠[13][13][14][14][14][14][14][14]

Kushner’s White House portfolio included prison reform. On December 21, 2018, Trump signed the criminal justice reform law known as the First Step Act, whose provisions included allowing prisoners to earn time credits through vocational and educational programs and reforming mandatory minimum sentences.⁠[7][15][15][15][15]

In June 2019, the bipartisan leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., making criminal referrals of Donald Trump Jr., Kushner, Steve Bannon and others over possibly misleading the committee in their testimony. As described by The Washington Post, the letter’s first section named three people, including Bannon, suspected of making false statements, while a second section raised concerns about witnesses including Trump Jr. and Kushner whose statements were contradicted by campaign aide Richard Gates, without pointedly alleging false statements. Lawyers for Kushner and the others had previously denied that their clients misled the committee; as of August 2020 there was no public indication of any investigation.⁠[16][16][16][16][16][16]

On August 13, 2020, after a call among Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, it was announced that Israel and the United Arab Emirates would fully normalize relations, with Israel suspending declarations of sovereignty over areas outlined in the Vision for Peace. Kushner said that day he did not think Israel would move ahead with annexation before discussing it with the United States and expected interactions between Israel and the UAE very quickly. Israel subsequently signed agreements with Bahrain and Morocco, and Sudan also signed related documents; together they are known as the Abraham Accords. Kushner is credited as a principal broker of the 2020 Abraham Accords.⁠[17][17][17][18][18][19][8]

On January 5, 2021, at a Gulf Cooperation Council summit in Al-Ula, Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia and its regional allies reached an agreement with Qatar ending three and a half years of severed ties and blockade; the deal was brokered by Kuwait and the United States, among others, and Kushner attended with Avi Berkowitz, special representative for international negotiations. Kushner later said that when he left Washington in January 2021 the Middle East was “calm and had momentum,” from both the Abraham Accords and the resolution of the Qatar blockade.⁠[20][20][8]

On January 21, 2021, the day after Trump’s first term ended, Kushner incorporated the company that later became the Miami-based private investment firm Affinity Partners. Six months later it secured a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman; the fund’s board overruled a group of advisers who had cautioned against the investment, citing in part “the inexperience of the Affinity Fund management.” Money from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates followed. The SEC registration of Affinity’s registered adviser, A Fin Management LLC, became effective on August 25, 2021, and its regulatory filings list Kushner as founder and chief executive officer since June 2021, owning 75% or more.⁠[21][21][21][21][22][23]

On March 31, 2022, the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot interviewed Kushner virtually for more than six hours; he was the first Trump family member and the highest-ranking former administration official to meet with the committee, and he appeared voluntarily. The Biden White House said it would not assert executive privilege over his testimony. On January 6 itself, Kushner had been returning to Washington from Saudi Arabia.⁠[24][24][24][24][24][24]

In August 2022, Kushner published his memoir, Breaking History: A White House Memoir. In it he writes that he stopped Trump from publicly attacking Rupert Murdoch early in the campaign and persuaded Murdoch to stop attacking Trump, and that after entering the White House he sparred with Steve Bannon over leaks to the press.⁠[25][25][25][25]

In 2023 Affinity made its first investment in Israel, buying a 15% stake in the Shlomo Group’s car rental and credit business for $150 million. In July 2024 Affinity bought a 4.95% stake in the Israeli listed financial group Phoenix FinancialPhoenix FinancialPhoenix Financial (Phoenix Financial Ltd., formerly The Phoenix Holdings) is an Israeli listed financial services group traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, operating insurance and asset management businesses, with about NIS 658 billion (roughly $217–220 billion) in assets under management as of June 30, 2026. Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners has been its largest shareholder since January 2025; in October 2026 CNN reported on Israeli military-linked holdings in its portfolio, prompting controversy over Kushner’s potential conflicts of interest.Open the full entry for $128.5 million; on January 15, 2025, five days before Trump’s second inauguration, Israel’s Capital Market, Insurance and Savings Authority approved the exercise of its option, raising its holding to about 9.9% and making it the largest shareholder. Kushner said at the time that investing in Phoenix in July 2024 reflected his belief in Israel’s resiliency and the company’s fundamentals.⁠[21][21][21][26][26][26][21]

On February 13, 2024, Kushner said in an interview at the Axios summit in Miami that he would not join a new Trump administration if Trump won again: “my desire at this phase of my life is to focus on my firm.” The same month, at a Middle East Dialogues event at the Harvard Kennedy School, he said Israel had “no choice” but to invade Gaza after the October 7 attack, called a future Palestinian state “a worthy objective,” and described Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as “a friend.”⁠[27][27][27][8][8][8]

In 2024, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, a Democrat, opened an inquiry into Affinity after The New York Times reported that Kushner was pursuing property deals abroad during his father-in-law’s campaign; he wrote to the firm in June, arguing that its exclusive reliance on foreign investors raised national security concerns, and again in September. In the September letter he said Affinity had collected about $157 million in management fees from foreign investors since 2021, including $87 million from the Saudi government, without returning any profit to investors, and argued it was likely part of a compensation scheme designed to circumvent the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Affinity Chief Legal Officer Chad Mizelle called the criticism political, said the firm had complied with federal laws and ethics rules, and said the delay in returning profits was not unusual. James Comer, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, had also said in 2023 that Kushner “crossed the line of ethics” in accepting the Saudi money.⁠[28][28][28][29][28][28][29][28][28]

In December 2024, weeks before Trump returned to the White House, Kushner disclosed that Affinity had raised an additional $1.5 billion earlier that year from wealth funds controlled by Qatari and UAE officials. He said in a podcast interview that raising from foreign investors early was meant to “preemptively try to avoid any conflicts,” adding, “We don’t have to raise capital for the next four years.”⁠[30][30][30]

Unlike in Trump’s first term, Kushner did not take a formal position; from May 2025 he advised his father-in-law on the Middle East as an unofficial adviser, working with Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. He later said it “really got started with Gaza”: at first he quietly helped Witkoff, and when things grew intense Witkoff and the president asked him to get more involved operationally. From 2025 he also worked with former British Prime Minister Tony BlairTony BlairTony Blair is a British politician who served as prime minister from 1997 to 2007 and Labour leader from 1994 to 2007. His government pursued devolution, a national minimum wage and the Northern Ireland peace process, while its Iraq War decisions drew sustained scrutiny. After leaving office, he worked in Middle East diplomacy and policy advisory services, founding the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, where he is executive chairman. He became an advisor to the Skydance board in October 2026.Open the full entry on plans for a postwar Gaza. In September 2025, after Israel’s strike on Hamas leaders in Doha, he was in the Oval Office as Netanyahu called Qatar’s prime minister, and later that day went over a ceasefire framework with the Israeli delegation.⁠[21][21][21][7][21][21]

In October 2025, Kushner and Witkoff went to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to help mediate; on October 9, Israel and Hamas reached an agreement on Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan, and days later he appeared at a celebration of the ceasefire in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv. As an unpaid volunteer he is not subject to the laws and disclosure requirements that apply to government employees, and critics argued he was evading safeguards against conflicts of interest. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called suggestions that his involvement was inappropriate “despicable,” while Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen said Kushner needed to stop approaching the issue as a real estate deal. Kushner said in an October 2025 interview with “60 Minutes Overtime”: “What people call conflicts of interests, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships.”⁠[21][7][31][21][7][7][7][7][21][21]

On January 16, 2026, the White House announced a founding Executive Board of the Board of Peace, chaired by Trump, to implement the second phase of the comprehensive Gaza peace plan; Kushner was named alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Witkoff, Tony Blair and others, and also to a newly established Gaza Executive Board. On January 22, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he unveiled a “masterplan” for rebuilding Gaza, including a “coastal tourism” zone with room for 180 skyscrapers and a new airport, and said “New Gaza” would offer the private sector “amazing investment opportunities.”⁠[32][32][32][32][32][21][21][21]

On February 19, 2026, at the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace, Trump announced that Kushner and Witkoff were both “envoys of peace.” At the same meeting Kushner said many participants were “volunteers” and “people are not personally profiting from this.” Media have since referred to him as U.S. Special Envoy for Peace or Special Envoy for Peace Missions.⁠[33][33][21][34][31]

The nonprofit watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) said the next day that the appointment formalized his ad hoc role and would likely require him to file a financial disclosure report, and argued that the Senate should weigh in on the appointment and that Kushner should divest from Affinity. CNNCNNCNN (Cable News Network) is an Atlanta-based news organization founded by Ted Turner on June 1, 1980, as the world’s first 24-hour television news channel. It has been owned in turn by Turner Broadcasting System, Time Warner, AT&T and Warner Bros. Discovery, became part of Skydance Corporation along with Warner Bros. Discovery in October 2026, and is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry’s October 2026 investigation, by contrast, wrote that he acts as a volunteer envoy rather than holding a government job that would require him to disclose his finances.⁠[35][35][35][35][21]

In March 2026, Kushner disclosed that Affinity had made 28 investments so far; around the same time, The New York Times reported that while serving as Middle East envoy he had approached investors, including foreign governments with an interest in his diplomatic work, about at least $5 billion in new financing, and the White House responded that he “only acts in the best interests of the American public.” In a regulatory filing dated March 22, 2026, Affinity reported about $6.16 billion in assets under management. That month, House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia demanded answers from the White House about Affinity’s fundraising in the Middle East. On April 17, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin wrote to Kushner opening an investigation, saying about 99% of Affinity’s funding came from foreign sources and that his dual diplomatic and private-investment roles created an “incurable” conflict of interest that may violate federal ethics, bribery and foreign agent laws.⁠[21][30][30][23][36][37][37][37][37]

In July 2026, Affinity sold 25% of its Phoenix Financial shares for more than NIS 1 billion (more than $340 million), returning its original investment while remaining the largest shareholder with 7.4%; at July values the remaining stake was worth more than $1 billion, a return of more than five times the initial stock purchase.⁠[38][21][21]

In August 2026, a Board of Peace official confirmed that Kushner would travel to Israel and elsewhere with Tony Blair and High Representative for Gaza Nickolay Mladenov to advance the 20-point peace plan, saying the United States and Israel agreed on the end state of a demilitarized Hamas. That month he met Hamas leaders in Cairo; the U.S. side said it wanted to see “real efforts and not just words” on disarmament.⁠[34][34][34][31][31]

On Thursday, October 1, 2026, CNN published an investigation finding that while Kushner was acting as a key negotiator in the Gaza war, Affinity, which he owns solely, had held the largest stake in the Tel Aviv financial group Phoenix Financial, which backs businesses involved in Israel’s military campaigns. Reviewing records disclosed under Israeli financial transparency laws, CNN found that Phoenix holds a stake of at least $265 million in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, and stakes in at least eight other companies supplying equipment to the Israeli military; Affinity does not directly hold stakes in those nine companies. CNN also stated that it found no indication that Kushner’s actions as a diplomat directly affected the investments it reviewed.⁠[21][21][21][21][21][21][21][21]

Kushner’s attorney told CNN that he had never participated in or directed Phoenix’s investment decisions, had no involvement in buying, holding or selling any of the nine companies, and had never served on Phoenix’s board. The attorney also confirmed that Kushner’s September 2025 statement to ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry that he met Phoenix’s leadership every few weeks was accurate at the time, but said those interactions had since significantly decreased. White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly called the conflict-of-interest concerns a “tired narrative” of Democrats and said Kushner’s personal business activities have “nothing to do” with his diplomatic work, which he conducts on a volunteer basis at the president’s request. Cynthia Brown, CREW’s chief ethics counsel, argued that the people profiting from a policy should not be the people making it.⁠[21][21][21][21][21][21][21][21]

On October 2, Kushner responded in two posts on X, saying that for the past ten years he had ignored false and misleading stories about himself but would now respond publicly when the truth mattered. He called CNN’s story and headline “deeply misleading” for suggesting that his Middle East diplomacy benefited investments in Israeli defense companies, noting that CNN’s own reporting, behind a paywall, acknowledged finding no direct effect. He said Phoenix is not a defense company but one of Israel’s largest publicly traded financial institutions, highly regulated and managing approximately $220 billion across thousands of investments, the Israeli equivalent of Vanguard or Fidelity, managing the retirement savings of millions of Israelis; savers do not choose individual investments, and he has no role in Phoenix’s buying or selling. He added that Affinity is an SEC-registered investment firm, that its investment in Phoenix is public and predates Trump’s re-election and his own return to public service, and that Affinity does not own the defense companies named in the story. A CNN spokesperson responded, “we stand by our reporting.”⁠[39][39][40][40][40][40][40][40][41]

The same day, Bill AckmanBill AckmanBill Ackman is an investment manager and the founder and CEO of Pershing Square; he is also executive chairman of Howard Hughes Holdings and a co-trustee of the Pershing Square Foundation. His career spans Gotham Partners, shareholder activism at public companies, closed-end funds and permanent capital vehicles, and philanthropic funding in education, health care, and scientific research.Open the full entry, CEO of the hedge fund Pershing Square, defended Kushner on X, calling him a “first-class human being,” saying the United States is “extremely fortunate” to have him representing its interests in negotiations for peace, hostage return and otherwise, and calling attempts to take down others out of spite, envy or political calculation “pathetic.”⁠[42][43][43]

On October 6, House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia wrote to Affinity requesting details of its business dealings in the Middle East, saying the apparent conflict of interest between its investments and Kushner’s Middle East work demanded congressional oversight. Kushner’s attorney responded that Garcia himself indirectly held Phoenix or Elbit stock through pension plans and that “Jared has no role in deciding what Phoenix buys or sells”; Garcia’s spokesperson said he does not trade stocks and has no control over the pension funds. Such requests from minority-party lawmakers are voluntary and can be ignored without legal consequences.⁠[44][36][44][44][44][44][44]

On October 9, 2026, Kushner marked on X the first anniversary of the agreement on the 20-point Gaza peace plan, saying it created a path to reunite hostage families, bring security to Israel and relieve the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, and citing progress including the release of the last living hostages, the handover of the remaining deceased hostages’ remains in January 2026, the creation of a Palestinian technocratic administration and a 72% increase in humanitarian aid; he also said disarmament, security, restoring essential services and rebuilding communities remained hard work ahead.⁠[31][31][31][31][31]

Affinity Partners: Official website: https://affinitypartners.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[23]

X: Public account: https://x.com/jaredkushner (opens in a new window)⁠[45]