Book alleges $2bn in Gulf funds went to Jared Kushner; Kushner calls the claims 'completely insane' and threatens legal action

Last Thursday, Vanity Fair published an excerpt from a new book about Jared Kushner, and within hours he was publicly calling its claims "completely insane." The book is Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed's Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East, by Matthew Cole, and it reached US shelves this week. Its most explosive allegation is that Gulf states funded huge bank accounts for the man who is Donald Trump's son-in-law and one of his top Middle East envoys.

Kushner answered on his own site and on X. He wrote that he had denied every claim on the record and that the author offered no evidence for any of them. He pointed out that during Trump's first term he was among the most scrutinized people in the world, facing heavy media coverage, multiple congressional investigations and a special counsel investigation. He said he cooperated voluntarily and gave more than 30 hours of testimony, and that none of these allegations ever surfaced "because none of these events ever happened." He has demanded that Vanity Fair retract the excerpt and has threatened legal action against the publisher, Simon & Schuster. The Guardian contacted his lawyers at Clare Locke, and Chad Mizelle, and received no reply.

What Cole alleges is this. In early 2017, Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) of the UAE and Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) of Saudi Arabia proposed giving Kushner a fund to pay for projects and foreign policy goals that would benefit Trump. A plan to finance the border wall with Mexico reportedly went nowhere, but Cole claims the two princes, and later MBZ alone, put at least $2bn into at least two banks. He calls the accounts "Alpha" and "Beta." Alpha, he says, sat at First Abu Dhabi Bank, held roughly $750m, and was meant as a foreign policy fund overseen by Kushner and MBZ to help end the Israel-Palestine conflict. Beta allegedly held roughly $1bn and, at Benjamin Netanyahu's suggestion, was moved by MBZ to the Israeli Central Bank via Azerbaijan. Cole says it is unclear how Kushner used the Beta money, but a person with knowledge told him it was for Kushner's personal benefit. He also claims Alpha was drained by failed schemes and that Kushner lost access. He further alleges the accounts were partly managed on an iPhone hacked by Russian and Dutch intelligence; the Dutch government declined to comment.

The book quotes the UAE's top intelligence official, Ali Al Shamsi, calling Kushner "the most expensive employee we've ever had." One source who claimed knowledge of the arrangement says Kushner promised to push the princes' agenda with Trump in exchange for participation, wanting normalization with Israel so business could take off. The same source called such pooled funds a common form of Gulf corruption. Cole also describes a region where blackmail is a routine tool of statecraft alongside torture and murder, citing the 2018 killing of Jamal Khashoggi on MBS's orders and the 2019 killing of the Emirati poet Habib Al Sayegh by agents of MBZ. Those killings are not connected to the Kushner allegations themselves.

The sourcing matters here. Cole relies mostly on anonymous sources and prints no images of emails or documents, though extensive footnotes point to sources, including confidential interviews. The Saudi and Emirati embassies did not respond to the Guardian.

Kushner's side is categorical. Alejandro Brito, a lawyer who has represented Trump in defamation suits, told Cole that Kushner always sought the interests of the United States and made no undisclosed arrangements with foreign leaders, and that "there are no accounts and never were." He pointed to Kushner's public financial disclosures on OGE form 278e. Mizelle, a Trump administration lawyer who called himself Kushner's attorney, wrote on X that the central allegation is false, that the accounts do not exist, and that the claims are defamatory. Cole says Kushner declined multiple interview requests; he first sent questions in May 2026 and followed up twice by email.

The book also revisits Qatari investment in 666 Fifth Avenue, which Kushner has said involved no conflict of interest. And it lands while Kushner, with no official role, still shapes US foreign policy, traveling with Steve Witkoff this week in pursuit of a Ukraine peace on terms favorable to Russia. His firm Affinity Partners took a $2bn investment from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund after Trump left office in 2021; an unnamed Arab official and investor tells Cole, "We pay him to keep him happy."

What to watch: whether Kushner follows through with legal action against Simon & Schuster and Vanity Fair, and whether scrutiny of the Affinity investment intensifies during Trump's second term.