Jared Kushner is pushing back against allegations of improper business dealings raised in a recent New Yorker article, arguing that the story relies on misleading claims and overlooks documents and other evidence that contradict its conclusions.
Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a key Middle East negotiator, published a lengthy response Thursday to a September article disputing several of its central claims, including allegations about possible conflicts of interest stemming from his business dealings before returning to government service.
Kushner said he had previously avoided responding to what he considered inaccurate allegations, but argued that allowing claims to go unanswered can cause them to become accepted as fact through repetition.
“People should at least have access to the facts before they come to any conclusions about me (or anyone else),” Kushner wrote.
“Dexter Filkins’s piece was carefully reported and fact-checked,” a spokesperson for the New Yorker told the Washington Examiner. “All of the points raised by Jared Kushner in his response were discussed with him before publication, and his perspective was included throughout. We stand by our reporting.”
Kushner specifically challenged the article’s suggestion that foreign businesspeople invested with him in 2021 to gain influence over the U.S. government, noting that the investments came two years before Trump announced his 2024 presidential campaign.
Kushner also pointed to what he described as an internal contradiction in the article: A source cited by the New Yorker complained that the investments generated financial returns but failed to produce influence over U.S. policy. Kushner argued that the claim undercuts the article’s suggestion that the investments were made to gain political influence.
Kushner said he was not asking readers to agree with his business decisions or diplomatic approach, but wanted the underlying documents and records to be available for readers to assess for themselves.
Kushner has also pushed back on a similar report published by CNN last week, alleging his work in the Middle East was linked to investments in Israeli companies.
“This is another example of a troubling journalistic practice: use a sensational headline that implies wrongdoing, while placing the underlying reporting, and the important facts that substantially qualify the headline behind a paywall,” Kushner wrote of the CNN article.
Kushner said Phoenix, an Israeli financial institution discussed in the report, is not a defense company but one of Israel’s largest publicly traded financial institutions. The company manages approximately $220 billion across thousands of investments.
“Think of Phoenix as the Israeli equivalent of Fidelity or Vanguard: a large financial institution managing retirement and other savings across thousands of investments,” he wrote. “I have no role in choosing those underlying investments. Investments which apparently constitute only a fraction of a percentage of Phoenix’s assets.”
Kushner said his investment firm, Affinity Partners, has no role in determining which companies Phoenix invests in and does not own the defense companies highlighted in CNN’s report.
He also noted that Affinity is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission and that its investment in Phoenix was publicly disclosed before Trump was reelected and before Kushner returned to public service.
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Despite Kushner’s effort to quell the allegations, he could face a congressional hearing in the coming months. Two Democrats — who could lead key investigative committees if Democrats take power in November — signaled they would probe Kushner earlier this week.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) has called for Kushner to document how his government job intersects with Affinity Partners’ investments. Meanwhile, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) said the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was “investigating the unprecedented and dangerous way in which President Trump and his family have profited directly from their access to power.”