Princes and thieves.
A new Vanity Fair investigation alleges that Saudi Arabia and the UAE set up a secret, multi-billion-dollar fund for Jared Kushner while he was a senior White House adviser— a story surfaced, improbably, through Dutch intelligence screenshots of his hacked iPhone.
This is an extraordinary claim, so we grade it with extraordinary care. One layer — the $2 billion the Saudis later put into Kushner's firm — is long documented. The new layer — a covert “slush fund” during his government service — is serious, detailed, and from a credible reporter, but it rests on a single outlet and anonymous intelligence sources, and it will be denied. We keep those two layers apart.
What this page is about
On October 22, 2026, Vanity Fair published a lengthy investigation by the reporter Matthew Cole, adapted from his forthcoming book Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed's Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East. Its central allegation: that early in the first Trump administration, UAE ruler Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) offered to bankroll a “slush fund” for the administration's foreign-policy goals, and that at least $2 billion was ultimately placed into bank accounts tied to Jared Kushner — while he was serving as a senior adviser to the president. One account, which Cole calls “Alpha,” sat at First Abu Dhabi Bank, chaired by MBZ's brother, and received roughly $750 million beginning in 2017.
The reporting's remarkable spine is how it surfaced. Per Cole, Dutch military intelligence (the MIVD) obtained screenshots of Kushner's iPhone after a GRU hacker they had turned gave them access to a Russian server storing stolen data — including images of Kushner's screen. The Dutch allegedly watched him log into a UAE bank account that had received hundreds of millions of dollars routed through a bank in Azerbaijan, a known money-laundering way station. A source told Cole that “Jared promised MBZ that he'd push their agenda with Trump if they participated in a fund.”
We separate what is established from what is alleged. Established: that Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund put $2 billion into Kushner's firm, Affinity Partners, in 2021–22 — after he left government, over the objections of the fund's own screening panel — and that Qatar and Abu Dhabi later added more. Alleged, and graded as such: the earlier, secret, during-government “slush fund,” the hacked-phone surveillance, the Azerbaijan laundering, and transfers Cole describes going to figures including a warlord and a mercenary. The second set is from a serious journalist and may well prove out — but as of today it is single-source and uncorroborated, and we grade it SOME SMOKE, not fact.
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The same investigation, restaged one beat at a time. Step through it here, or present it fullscreen.
Princes and Thieves.
A new Vanity Fair investigation alleges Saudi Arabia and the UAE set up a secret, multi-billion-dollar fund for Jared Kushner while he was a senior White House adviser — surfaced, improbably, through Dutch intelligence screenshots of his hacked iPhone.
One layer proven, one layer alleged
Documented: the Saudi sovereign fund put $2 billion into Kushner's firm after he left office — over its own panel's objections.
FACTStart with what is not in dispute, because it is the solid floor under everything else. In 2021–22, roughly six months after Jared Kushner left the White House, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) committed $2 billion to his newly formed private equity firm, Affinity Partners. As The New York Times and Vanity Fair reported from internal documents, the PIF's own screening panel had recommended against the deal — citing Affinity's inexperience, its 'unsatisfactory' operations, and high fees — before the fund's board, chaired by MBS, overruled the recommendation. The House Oversight Committee opened an investigation. Qatar's and Abu Dhabi's funds later added a reported $1.5 billion more. None of this is alleged; it is on the record, and it is the context in which the new reporting lands.
Alleged: a secret Gulf 'slush fund' was set up for Kushner while he was a sitting White House adviser.
SOME SMOKEThis is the explosive new claim, and the reason it matters is timing: not after government, but during it. Per Matthew Cole's Vanity Fair investigation, MBZ and MBS early in the first Trump term offered to fund the administration's foreign-policy aims — a figure of more than $10 billion was initially floated, including money toward Trump's border wall — before the plan narrowed to at least $2 billion placed into at least two accounts tied to Kushner. One, the 'Alpha' account at First Abu Dhabi Bank (whose chairman was MBZ's brother, Tahnoon bin Zayed), allegedly took in roughly $750 million from 2017. We grade this SOME SMOKE: it is detailed, specific, and from a credible reporter with a forthcoming book, which is why we cover it — but it is single-outlet, sourced heavily to anonymous intelligence figures, unproven, and certain to be denied. A serious allegation is not yet a finding.
Alleged: the whole thing surfaced because Dutch intelligence had screenshots of Kushner's hacked iPhone.
SOME SMOKEThe sourcing mechanism is as extraordinary as the claim, and it cuts both ways. Cole reports that the Netherlands' military intelligence service (MIVD) obtained access to Kushner's iPhone after turning a GRU hacker, who led them to a Russian server holding screenshots of Kushner's screen; the Dutch then developed their own exploit and watched his phone from around 2018. Through it, they allegedly saw him log into a UAE bank account funded by hundreds of millions of dollars routed through a bank in Azerbaijan — a country Cole describes as a known way station for disguising the origin of large dollar transfers. If true, it is a remarkable intelligence story. But it is also precisely the kind of claim — foreign spy services, anonymous sources, intercepts no reader can inspect — that demands corroboration before it hardens into fact. We report it as Cole's account, and grade it accordingly.
The quid-pro-quo — 'push their agenda with Trump if they participated in a fund' — is a source's characterization, which we pose.
SOME SMOKEThe heart of why this would be corruption rather than merely a business relationship is a single sourced quote. Cole reports a person with knowledge of the arrangement saying, 'Jared promised MBZ that he'd push their agenda with Trump if they participated in a fund. He wanted normalization with Israel so that business could take off.' The same source framed the arrangement as a 'slush fund… a common form of Gulf Arab government corruption.' This is the alleged exchange — money in, US foreign-policy influence out — and if established it would be grave. But it is one anonymous source's characterization of intent, not a documented agreement, and we treat it that way: we pose the quid-pro-quo, we do not assert it. Note the overlap with the documented record: the Trump administration did pursue exactly the normalization MBZ and MBS wanted, which makes the allegation plausible and also means correlation is not proof.
The money allegedly moved onward — to figures Cole describes including a warlord and a mercenary — which we do not assert as fact.
SOME SMOKECole's account goes further than a static fund: he reports that Kushner appeared to transfer significant sums out of the Gulf accounts — the article's headline cites more than $700 million in transfers — to various individuals, among them, he writes, a warlord, a mercenary, and a one-time hit man, in the context of the UAE's use of mercenaries in Middle East and Africa conflicts. This is the most lurid thread, and therefore the one we fence hardest. We do not assert any of it as established; we report that Cole alleges it, sourced to his intelligence contacts, and we grade it SOME SMOKE pending the documentary evidence his book presumably contains and any independent confirmation. The gap between 'a reporter says the intercepts show this' and 'this is proven' is exactly where our discipline lives.
Kushner denies impropriety; the allegations are uncorroborated as of publication — and that is the open question.
FACTTwo things are simultaneously true and we hold both. Jared Kushner has consistently maintained that his Gulf financial dealings were proper and lawful, that the PIF investment was an ordinary arm's-length transaction, and he and Affinity can be expected to deny the new allegations in full; we carry that denial. And: as of this writing the new claims rest on one outlet and anonymous intelligence sourcing, and have not been independently corroborated by other newsrooms or confirmed in any public record. We grade FACT only the things that are actually settled — that the reporting exists and makes these specific claims, that Kushner denies wrongdoing, and that the 2021–22 PIF investment is documented. Whether the wartime slush fund is real is the question the reporting opens, not one it has yet closed. If corroboration arrives, the grade rises; if it is debunked, we will say so.
The firewall the Founders built — and what's left of it
Strip away every unproven claim in Cole's reporting and a remarkable story remains, one already on the public record. A senior White House adviser — the president's son-in-law, running Middle East policy, whose family business was staring down a billion-dollar loan on its trophy tower at 666 Fifth Avenue — left government and, within months, received a $2 billion investment from the sovereign wealth fund of the very government whose interests he had been shaping, over the written objections of that fund's own vetters. You do not need a hacked phone to find that arrangement alarming; the House Oversight Committee did not. The documented half alone is a case study in how the line between public service and private enrichment dissolves at the top.
Zoom out, and the reason this is a constitutional nightmare rather than a mere ethics lapse comes into focus. The framers of the Constitution were nearly obsessed with one danger: that a foreign prince might buy the loyalty of an American officeholder. They wrote two emoluments clauses specifically to forbid it, after watching European courts corrupt envoys with gifts and gold — Benjamin Franklin's diamond-studded snuffbox from the King of France was exactly the sort of thing that haunted them. For two centuries that firewall mostly held, not because it was heavily enforced but because the norm was strong enough that no senior official dared test it in the open. What this story describes — proven half and alleged half alike — is that firewall simply gone: a foreign sovereign wiring billions to the family of the man steering US policy toward it, and the system producing no charge, no clawback, no consequence. The scandal is not that someone broke the rule. It is that the rule turned out to be unenforceable against anyone powerful enough to ignore it.
And the scale is new. The Gulf sovereign wealth funds — Saudi Arabia's PIF, Abu Dhabi's ADIA and Mubadala, Qatar's QIA — now control several trillion dollars between them, and over two decades they have become the indispensable patrons of Western finance, sports, universities, think tanks, and tech. The cultivation of American elites was always there: the ex-officials on retainer, the endowed chairs, the lobbying shops. What is different now is directness and velocity. Instead of buying influence diffusely over a career, a fund can wire two billion dollars straight into a sitting — or freshly departed — adviser's firm, and the sum is so trivial to them relative to the favor that, as Cole's source put it, “a billion or two is nothing for them.” When the buyers are that rich and the guardrails are that weak, the retail cultivation of the past gives way to something closer to an outright acquisition.
There is also a counterintelligence shadow over the affair that should frighten anyone, whatever their politics. If Cole is right, a Russian military-intelligence unit and then a Dutch service both held a live window into the iPhone of the president's son-in-law and Middle East point man — meaning a sitting senior US official's private communications and money movements were visible to at least one adversary and one ally, and perhaps others. An official whose personal finances are entangled with foreign governments is, by definition, a man those governments have leverage over. That is the oldest counterintelligence nightmare there is: not a spy who steals secrets, but an insider who can be owned. The question is not only what Kushner did with the money — it is who, knowing about it, could make him do things, and whether US Middle East policy in those years was ever fully America's to make.
What Cole alleges is that the money started flowing earlier and more secretly — that the $2 billion was not a post-government reward but a during-government instrument, an off-books fund through which a foreign power paid for favorable US foreign policy in real time. That is the comparison our reader reached for: Iran-Contra, the 1980s scandal in which the Reagan administration ran a foreign-policy operation on secret, off-the-books money outside any congressional control. It is an apt frame for the shape of the allegation — foreign cash, hidden accounts, US policy aims pursued beyond oversight — and we attribute it as a frame, not a proven equivalence. The difference Cole's sources draw is bleak: in Iran-Contra, the money served a national objective, however illegal; here, the question is whether it served a family's balance sheet.
This is why we file it in Self-Dealing and The Untouchables rather than treating it as a foreign-intrigue curiosity. The throughline of this site is the fusion of public power and private money at a height where no prosecutor reliably reaches — the same machinery we document in the pardon market and across Kushner's own ventures, from a resort in Albania to the Gulf. Cole's reporting, if it holds, would be the most extreme documented instance of it. Our job is to hold the grade honestly until it either holds or breaks, and to make sure that if it breaks, we are not the ones who asserted it as gospel first.
Foreign money, American policy, no oversight
If the alleged wartime fund is real, it describes something the US constitutional order is built to forbid: a foreign government paying a sitting American official to steer American foreign policy. The Constitution's emoluments clauses exist precisely to prevent princes from buying the loyalty of US officeholders, and the entire apparatus of congressional oversight exists to keep foreign-policy money visible and accountable. An off-books, foreign-funded, privately-run diplomacy would route around all of it. Even the proven half — a $2 billion investment from a government a former adviser had served, over its own vetters' objections — already tests whether those guardrails mean anything once a man is powerful and connected enough. The stakes of getting the answer right, and of grading it honestly rather than sensationally, are hard to overstate.
And it is worth being precise about what money at this scale actually buys, because it is not what a bribe buys. A few thousand dollars buys a vote; a lobbying contract buys a meeting. Two billion dollars does not buy a transaction at all — it buys a person. A stake that size is not a fee for one favor rendered and then settled; it is a permanent, open-ended claim on someone's judgment, good for as long as they remain anywhere near power. And with a family this embedded across administrations, “near power” can mean decades. You do not pay that kind of money to rent influence. You pay it to own an asset — and an owned official does not perform corruption on a schedule you can catch. They simply carry their owner's interest into every room they enter, for the rest of their career, and call it their own judgment.
Which is the whole reason a page like this matters even while its sharpest claims are still unproven. The point is not to convict one man in public before the evidence is in — we have graded this exactly as carefully as the evidence allows. The point is to make the shape of the thing legible: so that the next time a sovereign wealth fund wires nine or ten figures to someone orbiting an American president, the public recognizes the pattern in real time, and asks the hard question before the deal closes — not a decade later, when a book finally comes out and the money has long since done its work. Behind-the-scenes grifting survives on the public not knowing what it looks like. The surest defense against it is a public that has seen the move before, and can name it the moment it starts.
- If a foreign government put $2 billion into a senior adviser's accounts while he shaped US policy toward it, what word other than “bought” fits — and if US policy can be set by who pays the president's family, is it still US foreign policy, or just the preference of the highest sovereign bidder wearing an American flag?
- The emoluments clauses were written to stop exactly this, and the proven $2 billion produced no charge, no clawback, nothing. If the firewall the Founders built against foreign princes buying US officials is now unenforceable against the powerful, what is left of it — for this family, or the next one?
- We are now in a second term, with the president's family deeper in business than ever — crypto, Gulf real estate, AI, a pardon market. If the first-term playbook looked like this, what does the second-term version look like, and who is even positioned to see it, let alone stop it?
- If a Russian unit and a Dutch service both had a live feed of the son-in-law's phone and finances, they had leverage over the man running Middle East policy. An official who can be owned is the oldest counterintelligence catastrophe there is. What did that leverage buy — and how would the public ever find out?
- The reporting is extraordinary and single-sourced. What corroboration — documents, a second outlet, a sworn account — would move the wartime slush fund from SOME SMOKE to fact, and who has the power to compel it before the moment passes?
Questions worth taking seriously
If it's in Vanity Fair by a real reporter, why not just say it happened?
Because “a credible reporter alleges it” and “it's established” are different grades, and collapsing them is how outlets get burned. Matthew Cole is serious and the detail is specific, which is exactly why we cover it. But the core new claims rest on anonymous intelligence sources and intercepts no reader can inspect, in a single outlet, on the day of publication, about living people who will deny it. Our rule is the same for everyone: a serious, sourced allegation is SOME SMOKE until it's corroborated — a second newsroom, documents, a sworn statement, a record. If that arrives, we raise the grade immediately. Holding the line protects the story, too: the surest way to discredit a true allegation is to assert it as proven before it is.
Didn't we already know the Saudis gave Kushner $2 billion? What's new?
The timing is what's new, and the timing is everything. The documented $2 billion came in 2021–22, after Kushner left government — which is corrupting enough, and drew a House investigation, but is at least a post-service transaction. Cole's allegation is about a different and earlier flow: money placed into accounts tied to Kushner while he was a sitting White House adviser running Middle East policy, as an alleged instrument of that policy. “Rewarded after leaving” and “paid while serving” are categorically different in law and ethics. We keep them separate precisely so the proven scandal isn't inflated and the alleged one isn't smuggled in on its coattails.
If you are named on this page
If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.
This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.
The record
- Vanity Fair — Matthew Cole: Jared Kushner's hacked phone and the alleged Gulf slush fund (adapted from ‘Princes and Thieves’)
- The New York Times (2022) — House panel examines Kushner over the $2 billion Saudi PIF investment
- Vanity Fair (2022) — the Saudi screening panel's objections to the Affinity deal
- Middle East Monitor (2022) — Saudi Arabia invested $2bn into Kushner's firm despite panel warnings
- Black Book Audit — Kushner in Albania (the pattern of sovereign-adjacent deals)
- Black Book Audit — Jamal Khashoggi (the MBS relationship in context)
- Black Book Audit — Self-Dealing