“Unprecedented”: Jared Kushner’s “unusual” dependence on foreign money shocks other investors

Technically, it would not be accurate to say that literally all of the investment money that’s been flowing to Jared Kushner since he left the White House has come from foreign sources, such as the governments he worked with while serving former President Donald Trump. The actual figure, as reported by The New York Times on Tuesday, is “just” 99 percent, the vast majority of the $3 billion raised thus far coming from authoritarian governments.

It’s an arrangement – Kushner cashing in on relationships forged while his father-in-law was the president – that at the very least constitutes an appearance of impropriety. It is also far from the norm, experts say.

In 2022, just six months after leaving the White House, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund invested $2 billion in Kushner’s newly formed private equity firm, despite misgivings among the fund’s staff that Trump’s son-in-law had little relevant experience. Kushner has also accepted investments from state-managed funds in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. 

Kushner, who won’t rule out serving in a second Trump administration, has in turn invested some of that money in a foreign project, last month announcing a $500 million real estate project in Serbia at the same site where Trump himself had previously sought to build a luxury hotel.

J. Robinson West, a former Reagan administration official who spoke to the Times, said there were a number of “unusual” things about Kushner’s post-White House business dealing.

“A lot of people leave government and become lobbyists or they start consulting firms,” he said. But no one that he recalled had ever received so much money, so fast, from foreign governments – especially not ones they worked with while working for a president.

“I think it’s fair to say that the spirit of public service and George Marshall and Robert Lovett — those days are past,” he said.

Steve Rattner, an economic analyst who himself leads an investment firm, commented that he’s never seen a U.S. private equity firm so dependent on foreign cash. “This is extraordinary — unprecedented — I’ve never seen anything like it,” he told MSNBC.