In 2021, shortly after leaving his role as senior White House adviser, Jared Kushner made it known that he loved his job but did not like the scrutiny and exposure that came with being a top US government official. He founded a private equity firm and it took an investment of 2 billion dollars from the Saudi treasury headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He announced that he was embracing a private life. “I’m an investor now,” Kushner said in 2024 interview. If President Trump “calls you in November whatever and says, ‘I’d like you to come back to DC,'” do you say, ‘Thanks, but I’m fine’? interviewer, Dan Primack of Axiospressed. “Yes,” Kushner replied.
But Kushner returned. Two days before the US and Israel attacked Iran this past February, he was in Geneva for the highest stakes talks. Over the weekend, he traveled with Vice President Vance to Islamabad to participate in failed peace talks with Iran. Without title or pay or any kind of official appointment – just “son-in-law” – Kushner in the first 14 months of the second Trump administration has sat down with world leaders including Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as the Saudis and many other actors from the Middle East.
However Kushner also did not return. While conducting public business for his father-in-law, he has continued to pursue his personal interests and refused to divulge any information about them. There is a qualification carved into the ethics laws known as “special government employee,” which allows businesses to work for the government. Elon Musk was a special government employee, and so was Corey Lewandowski. But Kushner has not been appointed as one. He’s out and about in government — a “volunteer,” the White House calls him. And he is proud of the taboos that were put in place to protect the systems of government from becoming tools of foreign or private interests.
No one mentioned any events, Kushner he told it 60 minutes last spring, where he “followed any policies or did anything that was not in the interest of America.” But it is impossible to know, from the available shreds of information, where Kushner’s economic interests lie. He tried, for example, to raise $5 billion for his company, Affinity Partners, in Davos, New York Times statement, where he was also part of the official United States the message present a plan for the future of Gaza. When I asked Affinity about this, it sent a statement from its chief legal officer, Ian Brekke: “Affinity held preliminary talks with its lead investor and has no intention of taking any additional capital when Jared is committed to the government. An investment firm registered with the SEC, Affinity has complied with all rules and regulations and will continue to comply with Kushner’s requirements and will continue to do so. And any other suggestion is false. Jared has always worked in the best interest of the United States.”
In a wave of post-Watergate reforms, Congress passed the Government Ethics Act in 1978, and soon established Office of Government Ethics uphold the principle that “The American people can see the financial holdings of the most senior officials in the executive branch, and use this information to ensure that those officials do not have conflicts of interest.”
But Kushner does not file any ethics disclosures. Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement that she is “acting in her capacity as a private citizen; therefore, she is not subject to disclosure requirements.” He added, “Mr. Kushner has been generous in lending his valuable expertise when asked. He does so in his capacity as a private citizen, and the entire administration appreciates his willingness to give up his family and livelihood to help address these difficult problems.”
Kushner may not have a title, but there is no doubt that he is a key figure in the Trump administration and acts as a senior official would. He’s traveled the world with Special Envoy Steve Witkoff—who started a cryptocurrency business with his two sons and the Trumps just weeks before the 2024 election, and who officially became the government. employee last summer and submitted a form to provide information that showed he still has a stake in the crypto outfit, World Liberty Financial. (In February, a White House lawyer told The Wall Street Journal which Witkoff had separated from the Freedom of the World.)
This is a much more transparent league than Jared Kushner has been.
“Kushner’s role is not unlike Witkoff’s,” Donald Sherman, president and CEO of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told me. “So they have to explain why he is held to a different moral standard than someone who has the same job.”
Ethics disclosure is not very complete. They are full of names of limited liability companies that cover the business partners of officials; different laws apply to public business ownership and private business ownership; adult children are not allowed to be exposed; forms can run excessively long. A Trump official filed the petition 1,878-pages disclosure form, nearly nine times that of the president 234-pages form.
Kushner has yet to submit even an incomplete form. He has dismissed the concept of conflict as it pertains to him and Witkoff. “What people call conflicts of interest, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships that we have around the world,” Kushner. he told it 60 minutess after he and Witkoff negotiated a cease-fire in Gaza. “If Steve and I didn’t have this deep relationship, the plan that we were able to make, that freed these hostages, would not have happened.”
Kushner has a reputation for being a serious communicator. And he has a direct line to the president. But his political activities are intertwined with his businesses. Kushner is related by marriage to the president, who smiles at those who do business with his family, and the 2021 Saudi investment in Affinity Partners took place despite the Saudi fund finding that the company’s operations were “unsatisfactory in all aspects.” Kushner has defended the plansaying that the Saudi fund “is one of the most popular investors in the world.”
Trump is now its fourth chief of ethics. He has fired dozens of presidential appointees and replaced them with loyalists, and the Justice Department, which normally can prosecute criminal conflicts of interest, is heeding his wishes. Amidst this breakdown in the moral landscape, pressing for Kushner’s exposure may seem trivial, or at least not a high priority.
But the Framers of the Constitution believed that the threat of corruption—which they associated with European monarchies—was as great as the threat of war. They believed that it is human nature to respond to financial interests, so their solution was to put in place structures to prevent temptations and remove temptations to commit corrupt practices. That’s why they wrote in the Constitution the emoluments clause, which prohibits the president from taking gifts from a foreign leader without the approval of the parliament.
“Against the insidious machinations of foreign influence,” George Washington wrote in his 1796 farewell address“The jealousy of free people should always be on the alert, for history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the worst enemies of a republican government.”
Centuries into our democratic experiments, this is still true.
