Does Jared Kushner Know What a Conflict of Interest Is?

Por Sophie Hurwitz — Mother Jones Magazine

CNN published an investigation earlier this week detailing how an investment fund operated by Jared Kushner, who has acted as a key Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiator and leader on Trump’s Gaza “Board of Peace,” also holds the largest stake in an Israeli financial institution that backs arms manufacturers involved in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza—one of many financial entanglements author Casey Michel highlighted in a Mother Jones cover story in July.

In a rare move, Kushner took to social media Friday to characterize CNN’s reporting as “deeply misleading.”

The CNN reporters did acknowledge that they “found no indication that Kushner’s actions as a diplomat” directly affected his investment portfolio. But they laid out how Kushner’s private equity company ended up with a 7.4 percent stake in an Israeli firm linked to nine different weapons contractors.

Kushner’s company, Affinity Partners, doubled its stake in the firm, Phoenix Financial, last year—just before Donald Trump returned to office. As Michel wrote for Mother Jones, “Phoenix is a bulwark for Israeli expansion in the Palestinian territories and Syria, enabling more building, construction, and imperialism.”

CNN’s report digs into the details of Phoenix’s investments in Israeli weapons-makers. Most notably, Phoenix has hundreds of millions of dollars in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest military equipment provider, known for unmanned aerial vehicles that are deployed extensively for surveillance and bombardment in Gaza. Phoenix also, according to CNN, has holdings in Israeli jet-engine maker Bet Shemesh, drone-camera maker Next Vision, munitions company Reshef Technologies, and Boeing, which supplies Israel’s military with F-15s and bunker-buster bombs.

In his post, Kushner protested, “Phoenix is not a defense company. It is one of Israel’s largest publicly traded financial institutions, highly regulated and managing approximately $220 billion across thousands of investments.”

Nonetheless, Phoenix manages large investments in weapons companies close to the conflict, even as Kushner touts a $2.4 billion dollar “recovery plan” for Gaza geared toward turning the area into a tourist hub. Israel continues to bomb Gaza—despite having agreed to a ceasefire 11 months ago—killing more than 1,300 people since that agreement was signed.

Kushner has responded to past reporting on his conflicts of interest by saying, essentially, that putting himself in a position to make money off his diplomatic work doesn’t count as a conflict of interest unless he actually makes money. But while serving as a diplomat, he has indeed been making money; in September 2025, Forbes declared Kushner a billionaire, noting that his fortune had grown by about $100 million from a year earlier.

Israel represents just one of Kushner’s numerous global conflicts of interest. While engaged in attempts to negotiate peace with Iran, he was also soliciting investments from officials of Persian Gulf states with a stake in the outcome. Kushner was also tapped to negotiate an end to Russia’s war with Ukraine, despite his ties to prominent Russian officials. And as the lead story in today’s New York Times revealed, the Trump administration’s talks with Russia about ending the war in Ukraine now involve “a multibillion-dollar oil deal that would benefit Middle Eastern business executives with ties to the two main U.S. negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.”

In 2025, CBS’ “60 Minutes” asked Kushner and Witkoff, his fellow “special envoy,” whether their “billions and billions of dollars worth of business” deals with the Gulf States, some of which they’d negotiated while brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Qatar, might constitute conflicts of interest. Kushner seemed to think he was in the clear.

“We’re here to do good,” Kushner responded. “These are impossible tasks.” He stated that he would not be personally involved in deciding who does business in Gaza after the ceasefire deal is signed. “What people call conflicts of interest,” Kushner said, “Steve and I call experience.”

Fonte: Mother Jones Magazine