President Trump rejected as totally false a Vanity Fair report claiming Jared Kushner accessed $2 billion tied to Middle Eastern governments, with aides saying the piece offered zero evidence.
President Donald Trump told reporters Friday morning the story was fake as he left the White House, answering questions about a Vanity Fair excerpt from a forthcoming book that alleged his son-in-law had access to large sums linked to Middle Eastern governments.
Newsweek reported Trump’s flat rejection of the claims and the broader pushback from Kushner, his lawyer, and White House officials. The outlet noted the allegations have not been established as findings of wrongdoing.
“It’s a false story. It’s a totally false story,” Trump said. He added: “It was totally an incorrect story. It was just fake news. Amazing.”
The dispute centers on reporting by Matthew Cole, excerpted by Vanity Fair from his book Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East, set for release through Simon & Schuster. Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a special envoy who previously served as a senior White House adviser, runs the private equity firm Affinity Partners and has taken part in high-level diplomatic work on Gaza, Ukraine, and Iran-related issues in the second term.
Kushner answered on X on Thursday. He said the author failed to back a single claim with proof and that none of the alleged events occurred.
“We denied every one of these claims on the record, yet the author failed to provide a single shred of evidence to substantiate any of them.”
He continued that the allegations never surfaced in earlier scrutiny “because none of these events ever happened,” calling them “outrageous fabrications being presented as investigative journalism” and “a mixture of fantasy, fiction, and advocacy.” Kushner also labeled the claims “completely insane” and said they “never happened.”
He pointed to the absence of bank statements, wire records, account numbers, or transaction dates. Kushner said he had voluntarily cooperated with prior media scrutiny, congressional investigations, and a special counsel probe from the first Trump administration period the book revisits, and that he provided more than 30 hours of testimony. Families in public life often face layered legal fights, a pattern also visible when a lawsuit challenged a Blanche immunity memo tied to Trump family tax matters.
Cole’s account, as summarized in the coverage, claimed Dutch intelligence obtained screenshots of Kushner’s iPhone through files found on a Russian military intelligence operative’s server and then monitored his phone activity. It alleged intelligence officials discovered Kushner had accessed a UAE-linked bank account that had received hundreds of millions of dollars from a bank in Azerbaijan.
The report described roughly $750 million moving into an account at First Abu Dhabi Bank held by the Watani Al Emarat Foundation, a UAE government-funded charity. Kushner was portrayed as a signatory, not the owner. Cole wrote the account was meant to serve as a foreign policy fund and alleged the charity helped support the UAE’s overseas military and intelligence operations.
A separate claim involved an account in Israel that allegedly received roughly $1 billion intended for Kushner’s personal benefit. Cole wrote that UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan arranged the transfer, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu encouraged the deposit in Israel, and that Kushner communicated with Netanyahu about the transactions through then-U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. Trump’s own framing treated the overall picture as Kushner having access to $2 billion from Middle Eastern governments.
Financial and wire-related claims against people close to Trump have drawn White House attention before, including when Trump weighed removing Kimberly Guilfoyle amid separate wire-request allegations.
David Friedman rejected any role. He said he knew nothing about the allegations and that specific claims about him or his alleged involvement were “100% false.” The report itself quoted Kushner’s counsel saying Kushner “has no idea” about the account at issue.
“I know absolutely nothing about any of these allegations.”
Chad Mizelle, Kushner’s attorney, issued a statement Thursday night and posted on X after Vanity Fair published the excerpt. He said the legal team had already sent Simon & Schuster a 13-page letter before publication denying the allegations and challenging a total absence of supporting evidence. Mizelle called the central allegation in the book “categorically false” and said the team intended to pursue legal action.
“Vanity Fair has now published an excerpt amplifying these false and defamatory allegations. We have seen no credible evidence substantiating any of these claims, and we question what independent verification Vanity Fair conducted before publishing them.”
Political families under investigation routinely retain aggressive counsel, a dynamic also seen when Newsom hired Hunter Biden’s former defense lawyer as probes closed in on his own relatives.
White House principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly wrote on X that critics “lodge nefarious, baseless smears against people like Jared Kushner.” She said the outlet had “zero evidence” and that the report rested “on what two anonymous sources supposedly heard about, but never even saw for themselves, because these events didn’t happen.”
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung posted Thursday with a sharper line.
“TOTAL FAKE NEWS!”
Cheung added: “This bulls*** Vanity Fair article comes from a book that is complete fiction, and was fabricated from the warped mind of failed spy thriller writer.”
House Oversight Committee Democrats took the opposite tack on X. They called the report “the latest in a series of serious allegations that Jared Kushner has been selling foreign policy to the highest bidder” and said he needs to “answer these questions before the American people.” That framing treats unproven claims as a presumption of guilt rather than a demand for records that the denials say do not exist.
Administration legal posture in other fights has included formal privilege assertions, including when Trump formally asserted executive privilege in a Kennedy Center management lawsuit.
The coverage is clear on one point the book excerpt does not resolve: these allegations have not been established as findings of wrongdoing. No bank records, wire documents, or Dutch intelligence files are reproduced as primary proof in the account summarized for readers. Kushner’s camp stresses that earlier investigations never produced these claims, and that the author offered no transaction-level evidence after on-the-record denials.
Trump’s inner circle remains a constant target for books and committee statements even as the president sets personnel and succession markers, a focus that also surfaced when Trump settled on JD Vance in 2028 speculation after a book tour.
What remains is a familiar cycle. A magazine excerpt advances dramatic dollar figures and spy-thriller sourcing. The subjects deny every element and document the lack of proof. Partisan lawmakers demand a public inquisition. The president calls it fake news and walks on. Readers are left with contested anonymous claims on one side and categorical, on-the-record rejections on the other, and still no established finding that any of the money moved as described.
Until someone produces the wires, the account numbers, or the intelligence files, recycled foreign-money smears against Trump’s family remain exactly what the White House called them: baseless.