Kushner Denies Vanity Fair Claims of Gulf Slush Fund and Hidden Bank Accounts, Calling Them 'Completely Insane'

Jared Kushner took to X to answer a story that, if true, would reshape how his time in the first Trump White House is understood. He called the claims "completely insane" and said they "never happened." The accusations come from a Vanity Fair report published as an excerpt from a forthcoming book by Matthew Cole, titled 'Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed's Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East.'

The central allegation is that Dutch spies were watching Kushner's iPhone during Donald Trump's first term and saw him access a bank account linked to the United Arab Emirates. According to the report, that account had received hundreds of millions of dollars from a bank in Azerbaijan. Nearly $750 million, it says, was transferred into an account at First Abu Dhabi Bank held by the Watani Al Emarat Foundation, a charity funded by the UAE government.

The report describes Kushner as a signatory on that account, which would have given him access, but not as its owner. Oversight, it says, rested with Tahnoon bin Zayed, the bank's chairman and brother of UAE ruler Mohamed bin Zayed.

The account was allegedly conceived by bin Zayed and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as a slush fund to support the Trump administration's foreign policy goals. The report says that idea eventually fizzled, but that the two royals put at least $2 billion into two accounts for Kushner.

A second account is also described. The Saudi royal allegedly used it to transfer $1 billion for Kushner's personal benefit. The report says UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan arranged the transfer and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu encouraged Kushner to have the money deposited in Israel. Kushner, it claims, communicated with Netanyahu about the transactions through David Friedman, then the US ambassador to Israel. The allegations have not been established as findings of wrongdoing.

Kushner, now 45, is married to Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter, and currently works alongside special envoy Steve Witkoff as part of what has been described as the president's makeshift peacemaking duo.

His response was blunt. He wrote that the claims were "outrageous fabrications being presented as investigative journalism," and described the piece as a mixture of fantasy, fiction and advocacy written by someone "deeply disturbed or acting with sinister intent." He said his side denied every claim on the record, yet the author offered no bank statements, wire transfer records, account numbers, transaction dates or other verifiable details.

Kushner also pointed to the scrutiny he faced during the period in question: intense media coverage, multiple congressional investigations and a special counsel investigation. He said he cooperated voluntarily, giving more than 30 hours of testimony, and that none of these allegations ever surfaced "because none of these events ever happened."

His attorney, Chad Mizelle, went further on X, calling the claims "categorically false" and saying this was not a matter of interpretation or competing recollections: "there are no bank accounts. They don't exist." He called the claims egregious and defamatory.

The story now rests on an unpublished book excerpt and reported intelligence, set against flat denials. What to watch for is whether any documentary evidence emerges, whether further reporting follows, and whether Kushner or his lawyer take legal action.