Jared Kushner Addresses $2 Billion Given By Saudis

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law and one of his former top White House advisers, defended on Tuesday his business dealings with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after leaving government, despite the Arab leader being accused by the U.S. of involvement in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

"Are we really still doing this?" Kushner said during a live interview at the Axios BFD summit in Miami when he was asked if he believed that the Saudi crown prince was responsible for the killing. "I know the person who I dealt with. I think he's a visionary leader. I think what he's done in that region is transformational," he said.

Khashoggi, a 59-year-old U.S.-based journalist critical of Saudi Arabia's leadership and bin Salman, was killed in a Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on 2 October 2018. A month later, the CIA concluded with high confidence that the Saudi crown prince had ordered the murder of the journalist, defying the Saudi leadership's claims they were not involved in the killing.

Trump, who was president at the time, denied the findings and blocked the release of an unclassified report identifying anyone implicated in the case. Kushner, who had developed ties with the Saudi crown prince during his role at the White House, kept that relationship going after the end of the Trump administration.

The private equity firm Kushner started after leaving the White House, Affinity Partners, reportedly received $2 billion in investment from Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. In 2022, a spokesman for Affinity Partners told The New York Times that the company, "like many other top investment firms, is proud to have PIF and other leading organizations that have careful screening criteria, as investors."

Axios Business Editor Dan Primack pressed Kushner on Tuesday on his decision to seek Saudi funding for his firm. "You leave public service, you spend all this time particularly with Saudi Arabia, working with them, you leave, a couple months later, six months later, you get $2 billion," he said. "From an optics perspective, or even an ethics perspective, were you at the time concerned about taking money from PIF, and if you could do it again, would you have done it at all differently?"

Kushner denied that there was any conflict of interest in the business deal with PIF and dismissed ethical concerns around accepting funds from the Saudi crown prince, calling the country "one of the most prestigious investors in the world."

Addressing Khashoggi's murder, Kushner said: "I understand why people, you know, are upset about that. I think that what happened there was absolutely horrific. But again, our job was to represent America, and to try to push forward things in America."

Newsweek sent a press inquiry through Affinity Partners' website on Wednesday morning.

During the same livestreamed interview, Kushner said he won't be joining the White House if Trump wins the 2024 election.

"I've been very clear that my desire at this phase of my life is to focus on my firm," he said. "I've really enjoyed the opportunity as a family to be out of the spotlight. Both my wife and myself were working in the White House, which is a 24/7, high-stakes job, and so we both really enjoyed the opportunity to be down here in Florida with the kids."