What happened

President Donald Trump’s two main envoys, his friend Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, Tuesday held back-to-back negotiations in Geneva aimed at securing a nuclear deal with Iran and an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. The indirect talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, mediated by Oman, were “more constructive” than previous talks and made “good progress” toward a “clear path ahead,” Araghchi told Iranian TV.

Who said what

Sending Witkoff and Kushner to solve two entrenched conflicts “in a single day in Geneva” has “raised questions not only about whether they are overstretched and outmatched, but about their serious prospects for resolving either of the twin crises,” Reuters said. Trump’s “diplomacy without diplomats” gambit, The New York Times said, was a “stark example” of his “conviction that the State Department and the National Security Council, the two institutions that have coordinated negotiations over global crises for nearly 80 years, are best left on the sidelines.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who heads both organizations, was not involved in Tuesday’s shuttle diplomacy.

“Some countries really welcome this informal structure” of transactional deal-making, said Asli Aydintasbas of the Brookings Institution, per the Times. But “I have not seen anyone hugely impressed with the diplomatic skills of the current team.” Having “Witkoff and Kushner tasked with resolving all the world’s problems is, frankly, a shocking reality,” Mohanad Hage-Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut told Reuters.

What next?

The U.S.-Russian-Ukrainian talks are continuing for a second day, but “expectations were low for a breakthrough,” Reuters said. Today’s talks, the Times said, “were expected to focus on the fate of Ukrainian-held territory” that “Moscow wants under its control as the price for ending the war.”

Vladimir Putin could sit alongside Tony Blair, Marco Rubio and Jared Kushner on Donald Trump’s Board of Peace. The Kremlin confirmed the Russian president had been invited to join the new body, which was formally launched last week and will be chaired by Trump himself.

Originally part of the US-brokered 20-point peace plan to end the war in Gaza, the Board of Peace will oversee the territory’s reconstruction, but recent developments suggest ambitions for the organisation go well beyond Gaza.

Who is on it?

With his characteristic effusiveness, the US president posted on Truth Social that the committee he has assembled was the “Greatest and Most Prestigious Board ever assembled at any time, any place”.

The founding executive board, headed by Trump himself, includes former UK prime minister Tony Blair, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US special envoy Steve Witkoff, World Bank president Ajay Banga, and Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner.

The “exact structure” of the board “remains unclear and members are still being invited”, said the BBC. Invitations have also been sent to the leaders of “Argentina, Paraguay, Turkey, Egypt, Canada and Thailand”, said The Guardian. The White House and the Kremlin have both confirmed that an invitation has been extended to the Russian president, a gesture that lends “considerable weight to long-standing suspicions that Trump leans heavily in Putin’s favour in his approach to the Ukraine conflict”.

As chair, Trump will decide who is invited to join, giving him an effective veto. Member states will be limited to three-year terms on the Board of Peace, but those that contribute more than $1 billion in the first year can become permanent members, said Bloomberg.

How will it work in Gaza?

The Bulgarian former UN Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov will serve as the executive board’s high representative for Gaza. A 15-member Palestinian technocratic committee, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), has also been set up, tasked with running day-to-day affairs on the ground in the devastated enclave. Major General Jasper Jeffers, the former head of US special forces, has been appointed to lead an International Stabilization Force (ISF), a multinational peacekeeping unit that will be responsible for security across the territory.

Yet another committee, the Gaza Executive Board, will work with Mladenov, the NCAG and the ISF. The board is “designed to provide regional and international coordination”, said Middle East Eye, although it is “unclear what responsibilities the board or its members would have”.

What else could it do?

According to a draft of its charter, the board will seek to “solidify peace in the Middle East” and, at the same time, “embark on a bold new approach to resolving global conflict”, said The Guardian.

Notably, there is no mention of Gaza in the charter itself, adding to “speculation that the group may have a broader mandate to cover other conflicts and could even be aimed at creating a US-dominated alternative to the United Nations Security Council”, said The New York Times.

US officials had already “floated the idea of allowing the board to mediate in other hotspots such as Ukraine and Venezuela”, said the Financial Times, and the wording of the charter “appears to give credence to diplomats’ fears that the Trump administration is seeking ways to sideline the UN”.

“It’s just very confused as an idea,” said a senior European official. “What does ‘membership’ mean? Is it an alliance or a body for mediation between adversaries?”

What happened

Jared Kushner’s private equity firm Affinity Partners Monday pulled out of a deal to finance a Trump-branded development in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade. Affinity’s withdrawal came hours after a member of President Aleksandar Vucic’s Cabinet and three other officials were indicted for allegedly abusing their positions and falsifying documents as the government worked to strip the bombed-out former military site of its cultural-heritage protections.

Who said what

Affinity said it was withdrawing from the half-billion-dollar deal “because meaningful projects should unite rather than divide, and out of respect for the people of Serbia and the City of Belgrade.” It was an “abrupt end to an increasingly controversial project that Kushner,” President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, “has worked on for more than two years,” The Wall Street Journal said.

The project to build apartments and a Trump-branded luxury hotel on a central Belgrade site bombed by NATO in 1999 involved Kushner and the Trump Organization, “run by the president’s sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr.,” The New York Times said. The project, “fiercely championed” by Vucic, “exemplified the willingness of foreign governments to bend over backward to further the financial interests” of Trump and his family. Serbia “has plenty of things it wants from the Trump administration, such as lifting sanctions on its sole oil refinery,” the Journal said.

What next?

The Serbian prosecutor’s office said its corruption investigation was ongoing and could lead to further indictments. Vucic in recent days has “vowed to pardon any officials caught up in the case,” the Journal said, and “stepped up his rhetoric” against the “semi-independent” prosecutor’s office.

What happened

Electronic Arts, the video game giant behind “The Sims” and “Madden NFL,” announced Monday that it had agreed to be acquired by investors including Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners and private equity firm Silver Lake. The $55 billion deal would be the largest buyout of a publicly traded company in history.

Who said what

EA is a “sports-gaming juggernaut,” The New York Times said, and the deal is the Saudi fund’s latest effort to “advance into gaming” and sports “as it looks to diversify its investments away from oil.” The buyout will be financed by a “staggering” $20 billion of debt, Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier said on social media. The likely result will be “some *aggressive* cost cutting,” including “mass layoffs” and “more aggressive monetization.”

Shareholders in EA, which has been publicly traded since 1990, would get $210 per share in cash under the deal, a 25% premium over the company’s stock price before investors caught wind of the buyout. Amid “strong buzz” about the upcoming release of “Battlefield 6,” The Wall Street Journal said, EA looks to be “getting out while the getting is good.”

What next?

The Saudi involvement means the deal needs approval from national security regulators on the Committee on Foreign Investment, “but there are plenty of reasons to expect it will go through,” The Associated Press said. Along with Kushner being President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, “the president could also be inclined to look favorably on any Saudi investment because he has benefited directly from their spending.”

One of the biggest gaming companies in the world, the US-based Electronic Arts, is about to be taken over by a consortium of buyers that include Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

The “blockbuster” $55 billion (£41 billion) takeover is the “latest win” for Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, an avid “video-game fan” who particularly enjoys playing (Microsoft’s) “Call of Duty”, said Bloomberg.

Electronic Arts makes some of the biggest gaming franchises, including “Fifa”, now known as “EA Sports FC”, “The Sims”, “Madden NFL” and “Battlefield”, and the deal is set to be the largest leveraged buyout of a publicly traded company in history.

‘Money-printing machine’

The EA takeover is “part of a push to deepen trade ties” between Saudi Arabia and the US, said Bloomberg. In May, the crown prince promised to “boost investment” in America to “$1 trillion (£745 billion) in the coming years”.

Also involved in the deal is Affinity Partners, a private equity firm run by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. He was apparently “key” to winning Saudi Arabia’s interest, said the Financial Times. His presence may also “ease the deal’s path” through the Committee of Foreign Investment in the United States, which is responsible for reviewing company transactions involving buyers from abroad.

“It’s not hard to see why EA is an attractive target for private equity,” said GamesHub. The company is a “money-printing machine” with a “low-risk, high-reward” profile.

For Saudi Arabia, this “advance into gaming” is part of its effort “to diversify its investments away from oil”, said The New York Times. Its Public Investment Fund had already committed to spending $38 billion (£28 billion) across the gaming sector by 2030. Riyadh hosted the Esports World Cup over the summer, and will host the first Olympic Esports Games in 2027. The “gaming push is part of a broader bet by the kingdom on sports”, including backing LIV Golf and making major investments in football and mixed martial arts.

‘Gameswashing’ questions

Just as that investment in sports triggered accusations of “sportswashing” – investing in sporting events to “launder” its international reputation and distract the world from its poor human rights record – Saudi is now facing questions about “gameswashing”, said GamesHub.

The Public Investment Fund has already spent billions on equity stakes in Nintendo, Take-Two Interactive and Activision Blizzard and, earlier this year, acquired the gaming division of Niantic, whose titles include “Pokémon Go”. But the EA deal “is by far its most significant soft power move”.

The Albanian government has approved a controversial $1.4 billion deal with Donald Trump's son-in-law to develop the island of Sazan into a "luxury resort", said Balkan Insight.

Sazan, an uninhabited island off the southern city of Vlorë, was an "isolated military outpost" of Fascist Italy and later of Communist-era Albania.

Jared Kushner's investment firm, Affinity Partners, has "big plans for tiny Albania", said Air Mail, and although "not all of the plans are crazy", they have already elicited plenty of opposition.

Lavish and Jurassic

Albania's "Cold War designation" as the "North Korea of Europe" means it is one of the last undeveloped spots in Western Europe.

Affinity's plans include a 1,100-acre luxury resort on the country's Adriatic Coast, with 6,000 hotel rooms and villas. Architectural plans for the project show "modernist multistorey structures" built along the shore, dunes and headlands around the Narta lagoon, a spot currently "prized by birders for its rich avian diversity", said The New York Times.

On Sazan itself, which lies about six miles off the coast from the edge of the lagoon, within a national marine park, the firm wants to build a "similarly lavish" 1,400-acre resort community.

The island's landscape is "Jurassic", said The Guardian, with "ferns, giant lavender, plumbago, rosemary, broom and laurels" growing on its central mountain, which enjoys "dramatic sunsets" and "dizzyingly beautiful" views.

More corruption

Negotiations about the sale of Sazan were "kept secret" from residents and parliamentarians, who weren't aware of the $1.4 billion deal until it was reported in the media.

Those reports "have stirred resentments among some local landowners who question whether the Albanian government is courting Mr Kushner in order to curry political favour with his father-in-law", said The New York Times. The prime minister, Edi Rama, has forcefully denied this suggestion.

With Sazan "on the verge" of becoming a "mecca for ultra-luxury tourism", there are lots of questions from environmentalists, said The Guardian. The area is "prized for its biodiversity", said the NYT. A local ornithologist said that there will be a "tremendous" ecological and economic cost to development.

Kushner, who is married to the US president's daughter Ivanka Trump, and his team have dismissed the concerns. Asher Abehsera, the executive overseeing the developments, said the firm recognises the "rich biodiversity and natural landscape" of the area and have a "master plan" designed to "restore and improve ecological conditions".

But even so locals have "expressed fears of overtourism" and water shortages, or that they would lose their land or public access to the lagoon and beaches. Others said that "more infrastructure" would only mean "more government corruption".

Albanians are "not anti-tourism", said one. They're just "against tourism that will destroy our land and our traditions".

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is meeting Arab foreign ministers and a leading Palestinian official in Cairo today as he calls for a pause in the fighting in Gaza.

Washington wants an "immediate and sustained ceasefire" between Israel and Hamas, while the British government has demanded an "immediate pause in fighting", followed by "progress towards a sustainable ceasefire". But the international community has been less forthcoming with specific ideas for how to move forward. 

As the violence continues, some have suggested creating a demilitarised zone, or even transforming Gaza into a rich, waterfront property empire.

What did the commentators say?

"Reaching a peaceful solution is easy if people would only make the decision to do it," Saudi prince Turki al-Faisal, a former ambassador to the US, told The New Statesman. 

The royal believes the solution is a ceasefire that leads to a "prolonged truce of at least five years", said the magazine. A Palestinian state would then be created and recognised by the international community – including Israel – and negotiations would begin between Israel and Palestine, "as two sovereign states, for the resolution of the conflict between them".

Donald Trump's son-in-law and former foreign policy adviser Jared Kushner has put forward an alternative idea that "sparked a backlash", said The Independent. During an interview last month at Harvard University, Kushner praised the "very valuable" potential of Gaza's "waterfront property" and suggested that Israel should "clean up" the strip after expelling Gazan civilians to the Israeli Negev desert.

Broadcaster Jon Stewart has had his say too. He suggested last month that the Arab countries who "claim Palestine as their top priority" should "come in and form a demilitarised zone between Israel and a free Palestinian state", said The Guardian. The Saudis, Egypt, UAE, Qatar and Jordan could "all form like a Nato arrangement guaranteeing security for both sides", Stewart said on his "The Daily Show". "Anything is better than the clusterf**k cycle we have now." 

But Jonathan Lord, director of the Middle East Security programme at the Center for a New American Security think tank, told Business Insider that "every American administration going back decades has discussed some version" of Stewart's suggestion. Anna Jacobs, a senior Gulf analyst based in Qatar for the Belgium-headquartered International Crisis Group, added that Stewart's idea would risk "angering Iran", which is a "massive concern for the region", said the news site.

Writing for The Spectator, Stephen Daisley suggested another "way to break this impasse". Recalling how the League of Nations created a mandate for the British administration of Palestine in the 1920s, he argued that the "basic concept is still sound". So "if the international community wants Israel to stop bombing Gaza", the international community should "take over Gaza and stop Hamas attacking Israel".

More familiar suggestions have also been repeated. In November, the United Nations called for the international community to move towards a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, with Jerusalem serving as the capital of both states.

But, said Reuters, the idea would hit the long-standing obstacle of Palestinians wanting East Jerusalem, "which includes the Old City's sites sacred to Muslims, Jews and Christians alike", to be the capital of their state, while Israel insists that Jerusalem should remain its "indivisible and eternal" capital.

What next?

Blinken is meeting foreign ministers from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan today. Also present will be the Emirati international cooperation minister and the general secretary of the Palestinian Liberation Organization's executive committee, an Egyptian foreign ministry source told Reuters.

Although the subject of the meeting in Cairo has not been officially disclosed, Egyptian security sources said that Arab nations would present plans for a political solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Such long-term plans had been "put on hold", said Al Jazeera, as mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the US have sought to secure a deal for a ceasefire in Gaza.

A Dominion Voting Systems court filing Monday featured excerpts of News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch's January deposition, focusing on Murdoch's acknowledgment that several Fox News hosts "endorsed" on TV claims about 2020 voting fraud that Murdoch and his network knew to be false. But the filing also pointed to an unsealed exhibit in Dominion's defamation lawsuit against Fox News suggesting Murdoch tried to tip the scales in former President Donald Trump's favor during the election.

"During Trump's campaign, Rupert provided Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, with Fox confidential information about Biden's ads, along with debate strategy," the court filing said.

That little bombshell set up testimony from Murdoch that he declined to step in when Kushner called him on election night, after Fox News was the first network to project that President Biden won the key state of Arizona (and thus, likely, the election). "My friend Jared Kushner called me saying, 'This is terrible,' and I could hear Trump's voice in the background shouting," Murdoch said in his deposition. "And I said, 'Well, the numbers are the numbers.'"

A spokesman for Murdoch declined comment to The Washington Post on those sections of the deposition, but pointed to a statement from Fox News saying Dominion had "cherry pick[ed]" salacious details "utterly irrelevant to the legal issues in this case." Dominion's Monday filing is part of its argument against Fox News' motion to prevent the case from going to trial.

Former President Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, have been subpoenaed by Special Counsel Jack Smith as part of his investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, people familiar with the matter told The New York Times and ABC News.

Smith is seeking their testimony before a grand jury about Trump's actions leading up to Jan. 6 and his other efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Ivanka and Kushner were both senior advisers to Trump during his presidency, and on Jan. 6, Ivanka was in the Oval Office when her father called former Vice President Mike Pence and urged him to block or delay the congressional certification of the Electoral College results. She also went with him to the "Stop the Steal" rally at the Ellipse that occurred shortly before a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol.

Ivanka and Kushner both testified before the special House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack. In one video clip of Ivanka's testimony that played during a public Jan. 6 Committee hearing, she said she believed former Attorney General William Barr when he said there was not widespread election fraud in the 2020 election.

The special counsel has also subpoenaed Pence, who is trying to use his previous role as president of the Senate to get out of testifying, claiming that the subpoena violates the "speech or debate" clause of the Constitution, the Times reports.

Congressional Democrats are intensifying their efforts to investigate former White House adviser Jared Kushner over the Trump administration official's extensive financial entanglements with Saudi Arabia. In a letter to Kushner sent Wednesday demanding he "immediately produce all responsive documents" previously requested this past spring, House Oversight and Accountability ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) pointed to evidence that the former president's son-in-law "may have acted to benefit [his] personal financial and business interests to the tune of billions of dollars from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia shortly after leaving government office."

Raskin noted that during his time in the White House, Kushner had been specifically tasked with managing the president's Middle East agenda, including allegedly shielding Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman from the international uproar stemming from the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. "Your efforts to protect the Crown Prince may have allowed him to maintain his position at the top of the Saudi government," Raskin wrote, adding that Trump and Kushner's work was subsequently reciprocated by the prince's "ability to deliver significant financial benefits to you and your father-in-law after the end of the Trump Administration."

The letter comes just days after The Washington Post reported that just one day after Trump left office, Kushner had begun work on creating a private equity firm into which a fund controlled by MBS contributed $2 billion dollars. The Saudi government has also partnered with the former president himself on the recently launched LIV Golf tour, while Trump's eponymous business has signed a separate agreement with a Saudi real estate firm for a hotel in a planned multi-billion dollar resort in neighboring Oman. As the Post noted, Kushner's firm was structured in such a way as to obscure the Saudi government's financial contributions from public scrutiny. Writing for MSNBC, columnist Zeeshan Aleem described the arrangement as an example of "breathtaking corruption" from the former president and his inner circle, writing that Kushner "may have known the financial relationship represented, at the very least, a conflict of interest," or worse still, "an attempt to cover up clues to deal-making that involved exchanging political favors for money."

Raskin's renewed interest in Kushner's relationship with the Saudi government comes as House Republicans have intensified their investigations into Hunter Biden, whom many in the GOP claim may have used his father's position to leverage financially beneficial business arrangements for the Biden family. Speaking with ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) acknowledged that he didn't "disagree with the Democrats and their criticism of the previous administration," but refused to commit to launching a similar investigation into Kushner as the one he is spearheading against the Bidens.

Citing Comer's interview with Stephanopoulos and his acknowledgment of potential conflicts of interest between Trump, Kushner, and Saudi Arabia, Raskin wrote in a press release that he'd "invited him to join today's letter [to Kushner] but Chairman Comer declined."

Former President Donald Trump nearly fired his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and his and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, from their roles as senior White House aides via tweet, according to a new book from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.

Haberman's book details how Trump floated the dismissal idea to then-Chief of Staff John Kelly and then-White House counsel Don McGahn, Insider and CNN report. As Trump was about to send out the tweet, Kelly stopped him and advised Trump to speak to Jared and Ivanka directly instead. But the president never did, and both remained in their positions throughout his presidency.

Trump has a history of firing people with tweets. In 2018, he fired former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson through a tweet, and replaced him with then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo. And in 2020, the former president fired former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper through Twitter, as well. Trump was banned from Twitter in 2021.

Haberman's book, titled Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, details the behind-the-scenes drama of Trump's presidency, as well as his rise in the real estate industry, CNN reports. Haberman interviewed over 250 people to get a clear picture of the president. The book will be released on Oct. 4.

"While coastal elites obsess over boring books chock-full of anonymously-sourced mistruths, America is a nation in decline," Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich said of Haberman's book. "President Trump is focused on saving America, and there's nothing the fake news can do about it."

In a new book, Jared Kushner reportedly reveals he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer while serving in the White House — and he didn't tell his father-in-law, former President Donald Trump.

Kushner's revelation was reported by The New York Times, which said he discloses it in a memoir that will be published next month. As the former Trump senior adviser describes it, he was pulled aside by White House physician Sean Conley on Air Force One one morning and told, "Your test results came back from Walter Reed. It looks like you have cancer. We need to schedule a surgery right away."

According to the book, Kushner's cancer was detected early in October 2019. He says he initially told Conley "don't tell anyone — especially my wife or my father-in-law," and a doctor determined he "needed surgery to remove an unusual growth" in his thyroid. Kushner writes that he scheduled the surgery for the Friday before Thanksgiving so he'd miss the least amount of work possible, and ultimately, a "substantial part" of his thyroid was removed.

Kushner's cancer diagnosis had never been revealed prior to this book. He writes that "this was a personal problem and not for public consumption," noting he never informed Trump about it, nor anyone else at the White House other than his wife, Ivanka Trump, two aides, and White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

Despite this, Kushner writes that Trump found out about it on his own and said he'd "be just fine" before the surgery, telling him, "I'm the president. I know everything."

Several members of former President Donald Trump's inner circle made virtual appearances at Thursday night's House Jan. 6 committee hearing. During the prime-time televised hearing, panel members play snippets of interviews with Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump, son-in-law Jared Kushner, former Attorney General William Barr, campaign spokesman Jason Miller, and other officials.

Barr was shown telling Jan. 6 committee investigators that he repeatedly told Trump there was no evidence to support his contention the election was stolen from him and that his allegations about vote fraud were "crazy stuff." Nevertheless, Barr said, Trump's claims "were made in such a sessional way that they obviously were influencing a lot of people, members of the public."

Ivanka Trump, who was one of Trump's White House advisers, told panel investigators that Barr's statements "affected my perspective. I respect Attorney General Barr, so I accepted what he said."

Committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) also showed a Jan. 7, 2021, text exchange between Fox News host Sean Hannity and White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany in which they agreed that Trump had to be kept away from "crazy people" and stop talking about the election. "The White House staff knew that President Trump was willing to entertain and use conspiracy theories to achieve his ends," Cheney said. "They knew that President Donald Trump was too dangerous to be left alone, at least until he left office on Jan. 20."

The clip of testimony from Kushner, another one of Trump's White House advisers, was used to demonstrate that while "some in the White House took responsible steps to try to prevent Jan. 6" and "others egged the president on," Cheney said, "others who could have acted refused to do so." White House counsel Pat Cipollone was placed in the first category for his repeated threats to resign if Trump broke the law, and Kushner was shown dismissing those threats as "whining," presumably placing him in the third category.

The main Saudi sovereign wealth fund, controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, invested $2 billion in Jared Kushner's new private equity firm six months after Kushner left the White House, where he was a key defender of bin Salman, even though the Saudi fund's investment screening committee expressed serious misgivings, The New York Times reported Sunday night, citing internal documents. Kushner was a senior White House adviser to his father-in-law, former President Donald Trump.

The screening committee's four members — current or former heads of Saudi Aramco, Dow Chemical, the Saudi Central Bank, and Saudi Industrial Development Fund — voted unanimously against investing in Kushner's fledging Affinity Fund, citing the "inexperience" of its management, an asset management fee that "seems excessive," and the fact that due diligence found the firm's operations "unsatisfactory in all aspects," the Times reports. "But days later the full board of the $620 billion Public Investment Fund" overruled the screening panel.

At the same time, the screening committee endorsed the fund's $1 billion investment with former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's new Liberty Strategic Capital, the Times reports. Mnuchin's fund is "focused on cybersecurity, financial technology, and entertainment — all sectors that fit Saudi priorities" — while Kushner's "has not publicly disclosed a theme or focus." Kushner's fund reported $2.5 billion under management, most of which "appears to be the $2 billion from Saudi Arabia," the Times reports, while Liberty Strategic Capital reports raising $2.7 billion from a total of 33 investors.

The Saudi investment with Kushner, who "has little experience or track record in private equity," is also "on more generous terms" than the smaller investment with Mnuchin, a successful investor before joining the Trump administration, the Times notes.

"Ethics experts say that such a deal creates the appearance of potential payback for Mr. Kushner's actions in the White House — or of a bid for future favor if Mr. Trump seeks and wins another presidential term in 2024," the Times reports. Among other things, "Kushner played a leading role inside the Trump administration defending Crown Prince Mohammed after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that he had approved the 2018 killing and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi columnist for The Washington Post and resident of Virginia who had criticized the kingdom's rulers."

Read more about Kushner, the Saudis, and their mutual investments at The New York Times.

Ivanka Trump, former President Donald Trump's daughter and a senior adviser during his time in the White House, spent about eight hours on Tuesday testifying before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

She testified remotely via video. The committee's chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), told reporters that Trump was "answering questions. I mean, you know, not in broad, chatty terms, but she's answering questions." He did not go into specifics on what Trump revealed, and when asked by reporters if she provided any new information to the panel, Thompson replied, "Good try."

In a letter sent to Trump before her appearance, the panel said it has evidence showing she was in contact with her father on Jan. 6, and "members of the White House staff requested your assistance on multiple occasions to intervene in an attempt to persuade President Trump to address the ongoing lawlessness and violence on Capitol Hill." The committee did not have to subpoena Trump to testify, Thompson told reporters, as it has for other people close to the former president. "She came in on her own," he said. "That has obviously significant value."

People familiar with Trump's testimony told The New York Times she did not invoke executive privilege or the Fifth Amendment. Last week, her husband, Jared Kushner, testified before the Jan. 6 committee. He also served as a senior adviser in the Trump White House, and committee member Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) said it was "really valuable for us to have the opportunity to speak to him."

Jared Kushner on Thursday appeared before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. Kushner is former President Donald Trump's son-in-law, and the first known close relative to speak with the panel.

Kushner served as a senior adviser to his father-in-law amid his time in the White House. During an interview with MSNBC, Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.), a member of the Jan. 6 committee, said Kushner appeared virtually, and it was "really valuable for us to have the opportunity to speak to him."

Luria would not go into detail about what Kushner told the panel, but did reveal that he was asked about published reports regarding the days leading up to the Capitol attack. Kushner "was able to voluntarily provide information to us to verify, substantiate, provide his own take on this different reporting," Luria said.

Kushner was traveling back to Washington, D.C., from Saudi Arabia on Jan. 6, and reportedly steered clear of the White House upon his return.

Jared Kushner is expected to appear this week before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, several people familiar with the matter told CBS News.

Kushner is the son-in-law of former President Donald Trump, and served as one of his senior advisers in the White House. On Jan. 6, 2021, Kushner was on his way back to Washington, D.C., following a trip to Saudi Arabia. He is volunteering his testimony, and will likely appear virtually.

His wife, Ivanka Trump, was at the White House on the day of the Capitol attack, and the Jan. 6 committee says she was present while her father spoke on the phone with former Vice President Mike Pence. The panel wants to know if she was part of or aware of plans to "obstruct or impede the counting of electoral votes." In late February, Ivanka Trump's spokesperson told CBS News that she was in talks with the committee to sit for an interview.

Last week, CBS News obtained text messages exchanged between former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and conservative activist Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, after the November 2020 election. Thomas encouraged Meadows to try to overturn the results, and in one message wrote, "Just forwarded to yr gmail an email I sent Jared this am." It is not clear if she is referring to Kushner.

Ken Kurson, a close friend of Jared Kushner, was arrested and charged Wednesday on New York eavesdropping and computer-trespass charges, months after he got a federal pardon from then-President Donald Trump, Kushner's father in law. Kurson, editor of The New York Observer when Kushner owned it, had been charged but not tried on similar federal charges when Trump pardoned him. This is the first instance of state prosecutors charging someone pardoned by Trump for essentially the same alleged crime, in Kurson's case cyberstalking his ex-wife during their divorce proceedings.

"We will not accept presidential pardons as get-out-of-jail-free cards for the well-connected in New York," said Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr., who filed the charges. "As alleged in the complaint, Mr. Kurson launched a campaign of cybercrime, manipulation, and abuse from his perch at The New York Observer, and now the people of New York will hold him accountable. We encourage all survivors and witnesses of this type of cybercrime and intimate partner abuse to report these crimes to our Office."

Prosecutors allege that Kurson, 52, used tracking software to spy on his wife and obtain email and Facebook passwords in 2015 and 2016, then sent a private communication between his wife and a friend to the friend's supervisor, among other trespasses. His now-ex-wife told police in South Orange, New Jersey, he "terrorized her through email and social media causing her problems at work and in her social life," the New York complaint says. It is unclear if the ex-wife is cooperating with the investigation.

Kurson did not enter a plea at his arraignment Wednesday, and he was released without bail and ordered to return to court Sept. 28. Vance's office is still investigating former Trump strategist Steve Bannon for alleged crimes he was pardoned for before his case went to trial, The Washington Post reports.

Democrats insist they have options after Senate Republicans filibustered their major voting rights bill on Tuesday night, but not even Santa is buying that on Tooning Out the News.

"Democrats wanted things like automatic voter registration and Election Day to be a national holiday, while Republicans wanted every polling place to be at a yacht club," Jimmy Fallon joked on Wednesday's Tonight Show. Meanwhile, "I read that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are trying to distance themselves from former President Trump because they're tired of him complaining about losing the election. When he heard that one of his kids wanted distance, Trump was like, 'Please be Eric, please be Eric.'"

"Trump's inner circle is almost as small as his hands right now — even Jared and Ivanka are said to be distancing themselves from presi-daddy," Jimmy Kimmel said on Kimmel Live. "Trump has reportedly become so distant from Ivanka, he's started calling her Eric, which is really sad. And they say that Trump is now, without his family at his side, he's become increasingly surrounded by shady groupies and enablers who take advantage of him to advance their own agendas. He's like a monkey and three giraffes away from being Michael Jackson in 2008. And while the less of him we get is good news for most of us, for some it's creating a financial strain." Those people, per Kimmel's PSA, are out-of-work Trump impersonators.

Trump slammed Alec Baldwin's Trump impersonation when he denied trying to sic the Justice Department on Kimmel and SNL, Stephen Colbert noted at The Late Show. "It is possible the only reason he didn't single out my impression is that it's so bad he didn't realize I was doing him." Trump "then complained about the election and ominously closed his statement hinting at the QAnon conspiracy theory that he will be reinstated, with this rhyme: '2024 or before,'" he said. "Nah, I think you're 2021 and done."

"Speaking of the former president, his daughter and son-in-law don't want to," Colbert said. He imagined a specific Trump complaint Ivanka and Jared are distancing themselves from — it doesn't involve the election — but "apparently the feeling is somewhat mutual, because insiders say there is jealousy from the former president about Kushner's seven-figure book deal. Early reports are that Jared's book is going to be a lot like Jared: glossy and no spine."

Former President Donald Trump reportedly predicted he'd lose the 2020 election at one point in March of that year, as the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the United States. And, without realizing it, he reportedly cast the blame on his son-in-law and trusted adviser, Jared Kushner.

"[COVID-19] Testing is killing me!," Trump reportedly shouted in a phone call with then-Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, a forthcoming book titled Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration's Response to the Pandemic That Changed History by Washington Post reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damien Paletta reveals. "I'm going to lose the election because of testing!"

Trump reportedly then wondered "what idiot had the federal government" take charge of coronavirus testing in the U.S. "Uh, do you mean Jared?," Azar responded, referring to Kushner, who just a few days before the call "had vowed to take charge of a national testing strategy with the help of the private sector," Abutaleb and Paletta write. Read more details from their book at The Washington Post.

Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days.

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In this week’s episode, we discuss:

Kushner on tour

With Donald Trump’s time in office coming to a close, he appears desperate to cement his legacy in the Middle East, be it one defined by unprecedented stability or new levels of chaos. So with senior adviser Jared Kushner heading on an 11th-hour trip to Saudi Arabia and Qatar this week, is Trump about to leave his mark?

Puberty battle

The High Court has issued a landmark judgement making it harder for children under the age of 16 with gender dysmorphia to be prescribed puberty blockers. The case was brought by Keira Bell who was given the drugs in her teens, but later decided to detransition. Campaigners against the ruling say it will make it harder for children suffering intense discomfort to access the treatment they need. So what comes next for those transgender children?

Arecibo down

On Tuesday, the vast Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico was destroyed when its 900-ton receiver collapsed onto the 1,000ft reflector dish below. Its loss was a sad day for astronomers, less because of its scientific relevance - it has been superseded by other telescopes - but because of its cultural place in the history of their field.

You can subscribe to The Week Unwrapped on the Global Player, Spotify, Apple podcasts, SoundCloud or wherever you get you get your podcasts.

President Trump had speculated about potential voter fraud for weeks, even months, in the lead up to Election Day, prompting many observers to assume he might try to challenge some results if they didn't play in his favor. As it turned out, his campaign has launched lawsuits seeking to halt vote counting in crucial battlegrounds including Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. But the plan, seemingly long in the making, apparently really only came together on Wednesday, The New York Times reports.

Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kusher, apparently spent Wednesday making phone calls in an attempt to find a "James Baker-like" figure — the attorney who oversaw former President George W. Bush's successful 2000 presidential election recount in Florida — to lead the legal effort, a person briefed on the matter reportedly told the Times.

Observers were certainly perplexed by the fact that he was cobbling it all together on the fly. Read more at The New York Times. Tim O'Donnell

Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg reportedly has a direct line to the White House.

At Facebook's outset, Zuckerberg was "completely apolitical," a former Facebook public policy director tells The Wall Street Journal in a deep dive into Zuckerberg's politics. But that all changed in 2016 amid criticism that Facebook steered the election, leading Zuckerberg to start getting closer with the company's top publishers — and the White House.

Publicly, Zuckerberg branded himself as "a work in progress, open to self-reflection and eager to understand other perspectives," the Journal writes. But "behind the scenes," was focused on ensuring the site didn't seem partisan with an emphasis on free speech, leading some Democratic officials to see him as "overly deferential to conservatives," the Journal continues. Indeed, Zuckerberg started forming close ties to conservatives with the help of the Trump-backing Facebook board member Peter Thiel and global head of policy Joel Kaplan, a former deputy chief of staff to George W. Bush.

One of Zuckerberg's newfound ties is to President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner. The two "sometimes discuss Facebook policies over WhatsApp," the Journal reports. And earlier this year, people familiar with the matter say Zuckerberg talked about the video app TikTok's U.S. presence with Kushner and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. "Zuckerberg also has forged ties with right-leaning publishers that drive engagement on the platform," including Ben Shapiro, who formerly ran the conservative Daily Wire, the Journal writes.

"Any insinuation that [Zuckerberg] encouraged the administration to ban TikTok is false," a Facebook spokesperson said. Zuckerberg declined to comment to the Journal. Read more at The Wall Street Journal.

Brad Parscale, President Trump's campaign manager since February 2018, did not find out he was being replaced by his deputy, Bill Stepien, until right before the news became public Wednesday evening — hours earlier than planned, The New York Times reports. Parscale will stay on as senior adviser for data and digital operations, similar to the role he played in Trump's 2016 campaign, but it's not clear how much Trump's campaign shakeup will actually shake up the campaign.

"Trump is often described as his own campaign manager, and his political operation, which is overseen by Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and a senior White House adviser, has been tailored to his desires," the Times reports. In fact, according to several people involved in the campaign, "Kushner has served as the de facto campaign manager" throughout the 2020 re-election effort, and he was "a key figure in replacing" Parscale, whom he handpicked in 2016.

"Jared Kushner was the campaign manager yesterday, is the campaign manager today, and will be the campaign manager tomorrow," a source close to the White House told NBC News. "Brad took the bullet for Jared."

On the other hand, Parscale's ouster has been rumored for a while, thanks to his unusually high profile — including appearing in Trump's campaign ads — and newly lavish lifestyle. Trump is also dropping to double-digit deficits in national polls, and Parscale "suffered something of a mortal wound" after only 6,000 people showed up to Trump's Tulsa rally three weeks ago, an embarrassment "Trump could not let go of," the Times reports.

Parscale is close with Trump's adult children, though, and his company is the conduit to paying Eric Trump's wife and Donald Trump Jr.'s girlfriend. Several campaign aides emphasized to the Times that "Parscale was being asked to stay on, unlike others who have been let go from the Trump orbit."

Russell Crowe surprised his longtime friend Nicole Kidman by revealing for Variety's "Actors on Actors" issue that he shmoozed with Jared Kushner, of all people, at Hugh Jackman's 50th birthday party in New York City in 2018. Crowe, who once described former President Barack Obama as "the light and the future," joked that part of the reason he bothered talking to Kushner at all was because "nobody else" at the party "was talking to him."

Admittedly, Crowe had other motives for having "a very long conversation" with Kushner; at the time, he was preparing to play the late Fox News founder Roger Ailes in The Loudest Voice. Kushner "had a very direct relationship with Roger," Crowe explained, adding that their talk "gave me that contemporary insight that [The Loudest Voice book] could not give me."

Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, added America's coronavirus response to his weighty portfolio on Monday, at the request of Marc Short, Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff, The New York Times reports. Kushner, who shares Trump's "jaundiced view" that the coronavirus problem is "more about public psychology than a health reality," took the lead on Trump's sloppy Oval Office address Wednesday night.

"There was some frustration among other White House aides at the sudden involvement by Kushner, who they viewed as simply parachuting in and whose vast portfolio — including Middle East peace negotiations, immigration, and the re-election campaign — has been the subject of mockery in some circles," The Washington Post adds. Before the speech, Kushner's primary job with coronavirus, Politico reports, was to research the virus and talk to "relevant parties" to help Trump decide whether to declare a national emergency.

"It appears that one of these 'relevant parties' is an emergency room doctor called Kurt Kloss, father of Jared's sister-in-law Karlie," the model, Matt McDonald reports at The Spectator. "And Dr. Kloss sought the advice of other medical professionals on Kushner's behalf ... in a Facebook group with almost 22,000 members." He posted some of the exchanges, including one in which Dr. Kloss lays out his relationship to Kushner and explains he "was asked by Jared through my son in-law for my recommendations." He compiled the recommendations in a public Facebook post.

"With such a long to-do list, can Kushner really be blamed for seeking help?" McDonald asks. "Even if it does result in a boomer crowdsourcing advice on a Facebook group that could inform U.S. government policy."

Perhaps Kushner should have also boomer-crowdsourced ideas for Trump's speech, for which "Republicans close to the White House privately laid blame at the feet of Mr. Kushner," the Times reports. "A person close to Mr. Kushner described that as unfair, saying that he was merely helping out and that it becomes easier to blame him when things are difficult."

At some point on Wednesday, President Trump decided to deliver a prime-time Oval Office address on the coronavirus outbreak, setting off "a frantic scramble to arrange airtime on television networks, iron out logistics for his delivery, and prepare a draft of what he would say," The Washington Post reports. "Trump — who believed that by giving the speech he would appear in command and that his remarks would reassure financial markets and the country — was in 'an unusually foul mood' and sounded at times 'apoplectic' on Thursday as he watched stocks tumble and digested widespread criticism of his speech," the Post adds, citing a former senior administration official.

The speech was mostly written by Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, and senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, according to the Post, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, and The New York Times. Miller isn't involved in Trump's coronavirus task force, and "Kushner hasn't attended a single task force meeting," the Journal reports. The speech was "based on extensive dictation from the president and suggestions from Vice President Mike Pence," and it "was being rewritten up until the time it was fed into the teleprompter."

"The hastily drafted 10-minute speech had undergone last-minute edits from the president" and Miller "after other aides had left the room," Bloomberg News reports. "Among the changes they made: Deleting a sentence where Trump said he and Melania were sending their prayers and love to people suffering from the illness." The copy fed into the teleprompter contained two significant errors and Trump inserted a third, prompting an immediate post-speech cleanup effort.

The speech itself "caused a divide inside the White House," the Journal reports. Kushner thought Trump needed to do it, while senior adviser Kellyanne Conway told colleagues "it was a terrible idea." Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was also against the speech, urging Trump to "wait at least a day or two so as to provide officials with more information," the Times reports. Along with Kushner, Ivanka Trump and Hope Hicks favored the speech. Trump's final product, like "much of his presidency," the Post says, "was riddled with errors, nationalist and xenophobic in tone, limited in its empathy, and boastful of both his own decisions and the supremacy of the nation he leads."

Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, put together an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan that earned praise from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, immediate dismissal by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and unanimous rejection by all 22 Arab League member states, including several U.S. allies. The plan is "100 percent the ideas I personally heard many times from Netanyahu and his negotiators," said former Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat. "I can assure you that the American so-called peace team have only copied and pasted Netanyahu's and the settlers' councils plan."

But Netanyahu's allies among Israel's commentariat, rather than lauding Kushner, "started on Sunday what looked like an orchestrated campaign" against him, "attacking him for stopping the Israeli prime minister from annexing parts of the West Bank" and apparently using "many of the same talking points," Israeli journalist Barak Ravid writes at Axios. Kushner has said publicly several times that Israel shouldn't annex any part of Palestinian territory until at least after Israel's March 2 elections. "Netanyahu — who promised to annex the Jordan Valley and the settlements as soon as this week, hoping it would help his election campaign — was forced to back down," Ravid reports.

Among the common points these commentators make is that Trump risks losing his evangelical Christian base if Kushner messes this up by pressuring Netanyahu into waiting on annexation. Talk radio host Yaakov Bardugo even appeared to threaten Trump on Israel's Army Radio: "With all due respect to Kushner, there are millions of evangelicals in the U.S. and Netanyahu can mobilize them against Trump like he did to Obama."

Just call him the crown prince of hacking.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos reportedly had his phone hacked after receiving what was apparently an infected video file over WhatsApp from none other than Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in 2018, sources told The Guardian. An analysis of Bezos' phone reportedly revealed that following a seemingly friendly conversation between the two men, the video file sent by the crown prince corrupted Bezos' phone and made large amounts of data vulnerable, eventually leading to embarrassing leaks.

The Guardian didn't receive word on what may have been pulled from Bezos' phone following the alleged incident, but the news that Saudi Arabia's future king was possibly directly involved with the infiltration is a major revelation in its own right. Saudi Arabia has previously denied targeting Bezos' phone, but previous investigations had determined with "high confidence" that Riyadh was behind the efforts.

There's another wrinkle to the already-head scratching story, though. It's been reported by The Intercept that the prince chatted regularly on WhatsApp with White House adviser Jared Kushner, who's also President Trump's son-in-law. That's now raising some speculation that those conversations may have taken a similar turn to Bezos. Read more at The Guardian. Tim O'Donnell

Some of the world’s biggest names in finance and politics are attending a Davos-style Saudi investment conference this week, a year on from a mass boycott of the event following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The killing of Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian columnist for The Washington Post, in October 2018 caused a wave of business and political leaders to pull out of the subsequent summit, officially known as the Future Investment Initiative.

The journalist was assassinated while visiting the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, in an attack that the CIA reportedly concluded was ordered by the kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Salman has said he takes “full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia” but has denied any involvement.

The murder “triggered Riyadh’s biggest diplomatic crisis since the 2001 attacks on the US”, with a host of executives refusing to attend the Saudi conference, says the Financial Times. The World Economic Forum, which organises the Davos summit in Switzerland, sent out a press statement last year objecting to the use of the nickname “Davos in the Desert” and noting that there was no association between the two.

However, many of those who steered clear of the Saudi event are back this year, the newspaper notes.

Al Jazeera agrees that the annual summit, launched in 2017, is “set for a reboot this year, as global outrage over the killing fades”. The news site adds that a strong turnout will “further rehabilitate de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s global image”.

Around 300 speakers from 30 countries are expected to attend, including five presidents, a British MP and heads of global banks.

Although some big names have decided to stay away, those set to return are doing so “even though little has been done to prosecute those responsible for the murder”, says Quartz. Although 11 people have been put on trial, Human Rights Watch says that the prosecution does not meet international standards and that Saudi authorities have “obstructed meaningful accountability”.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro are due to speak at this week’s summit, which runs from today until Thursday.

Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, is also “apparently over [the] Khashoggi killing” and is to speak on a panel at the conference, says Quartz. The moderator will be Stephen Schwarzman, chief executive of the leading investment firm Blackstone, who was among the attendees who pulled out of last year’s event.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will also return. He will be joined by a host of former prime ministers - including the UK’s David Cameron, France’s Francois Fillon, Italy’s Matteo Renzi and Australia’s Kevin Rudd - along with Conservative MP Graham Stuart and American musician will.i.am.

“As the conference kicks off, the challenge for the crown prince is to turn the glitz and celebrity into inward investment as Riyadh struggles to deliver on an ambitious plan to overhaul its oil-dependent economy,” says the FT.

President Trump doesn't think criminal justice reform is the ticket to another four years in the White House, Politico reports.

Jared Kushner, a White House senior adviser who doubles as Trump's son-in-law, reportedly urged the president this spring to highlight the passage of last year's First Step Act — a sweeping, bipartisan criminal justice reform bill — during his upcoming re-election campaign. But Trump reportedly told Kushner that he didn't think his voting base would care that much about it. In fact, Politico notes it likely lacks appeal to some members of his base, especially in rural parts of the country, where Trump supporters tend to respond better to hard-line, partisan crime rhetoric.

"It was clear he thinks it's a total dud," a person familiar with the spring meeting said. "He made it abundantly clear he doesn't think it's talking worth about."

That actually might not be a new development, either. Sure, Trump has touted the bill and brings it up at social events, in response to reporters, and when speaking to religious groups, but it's reportedly never been all that high on his priority list. "It would be difficult to say it's a change of heart," an anonymous White House official said. "I don't think his heart was ever really in it."

The official added that some Trump aides questioned why he endorsed the bill in the first place. Another White House official, however, told Politico that the idea Trump doesn't care about the First Step Act is "false" and he the president is "clearly proud of all of his record-setting accomplishments." Read more at Politico.

Nepotism is a funny thing: We all like it, and we all hate it. We like it on a small scale — say, when we can patronize a family-run bakery or hire a plumber whose business name ends with "& Sons" — and we very much like it when it happens to us, as when a friend hooks you up with a job at their work. But we hate nepotism when it happens on a large scale — and by "large" I mean involving significant quantities of money or power, especially state power — and we especially hate it when it doesn't work.

President Trump's employ of his favorite daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, as senior advisers in the White House fits both latter bills. The couple vaulted from a cushy life of family-provided luxury in New York City to a cushy life of family-provided power in the nation's capitol. And aside from Kushner's admirable work in pushing federal prison reform across the desk of a president with a terrible record on justice, it is not clear that Trump fille and her husband are doing the country any good.

Part of that is because it is not clear what they are doing at all. We cannot judge their job performances because we have no concrete notion of what those jobs are. "Senior adviser" is an empty, malleable title with no fixed responsibilities. It is not the title these two should have.

Why, for example, is Ivanka the recipient of an apology from Britain's trade minister over embarrassing diplomatic cables that leaked this past weekend? Why is Ivanka meeting with the British trade minister at all? Is Trump's trade war in her advisory portfolio? Does she have thoughts on tariffs?

Or consider her presence at the G20 summit at the beginning of this month, where a viral video showed the first daughter awkwardly attempting to join a conversational circle of French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Theresa May, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and the IMF's Christine Lagarde. The president declared Ivanka's performance at the conference of world leaders "amazing," but why was she there? What diplomatic authority does she wield? Can she make policy decisions or merely influence and schmooze?

"She's not secretary of state, but she's acting like she has the same clout as Mike Pompeo," University of Virginia politics professor Jennifer Lawless mused to The Washington Post. "She is not a formal diplomat, but she's the one having formal conversations."

"Deputy President" Kushner's duties are likewise uncertain. Reportedly inducted into his position with an (embittered?) invitation by then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to do "whatever you want," Kushner seems to have done exactly that. Per his father-in-law, his scope includes Veterans Affairs, diplomacy with China and Mexico, criminal justice reform, the exceedingly vague "White House Office of American Innovation," the national opioid epidemic, and peace in Israel-Palestine — you know, just a few little jobs that only require about a billion hours in the day plus multiple lifetimes' worth of diverse expertise which Kushner, 38, cannot possibly possess.

"We should have excellence in government," Kushner has opined from the West Wing. "The government should be run like a great American company. Our hope is that we can achieve successes and efficiencies for our customers, who are the citizens." The sentiment is good, but the analogy isn't quite right: If the federal government is like a business, the American people are not so much its customers as its board of directors. And the board really needs more information on what two of the president's most controversial hires actually do.

As simply not having the president's daughter and son-in-law working in the White House doesn't seem to be an option at the moment, the next best scenario is giving Ivanka and Jared real jobs. They need established roles with clear responsibilities that allow us to have concrete expectations. "Senior adviser" means nothing and everything. Something like "press secretary" or "communications director" — both recently refilled but historically transitory — is far more defined. We can't judge how the presidential children are doing in a slippery adviser role, but we can evaluate a press secretary against press secretaries past.

Trump himself could be open to formalizing his family's roles. He has repeatedly considered his daughter for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, declining to nominate her because, he tweeted, he "can already hear the chants of Nepotism!"

That's true, but the nepotism is already happening. At least as U.N. ambassador Ivanka would be subject to the scrutiny of Senate confirmation and a rubric of known expectations once in office. This is not to say Ivanka Trump or Jared Kushner are qualified for this job or any other of the 1,200 Senate-confirmed positions the Trump administration has only partially filled. But if we can't get rid of the nepotism, we might at least try to make it measurable.

The Trump administration’s long-awaited ‘economic plan’ to revive the Middle East peace process has been met with widespread scepticism, anger and derision.

CNBC says the plan, the details of which are to be thrashed out over day and a half of seminars in Bahrain, had “been billed as the first part of Washington’s long-delayed broader political blueprint to revive the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process”, which will be unveiled at a later date.

“This aspect of proceedings also does not lack boldness,” admits The Times’s Richard Spencer.

Donald Trump’s son-in-law and envoy, Jared Kushner, envisages a $50 billion investment fund to break the decades-long deadlock. Half of this would go to the Palestinian territories and the other half to Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan “possibly whether they want it or not” says Spencer. There is also plans to raise $5 billion to spend on a transport corridor to connect the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

However, it is “an economic blueprint that shreds decades of diplomacy and which even its mooted financial backers seemed reluctant to embrace”, says The Guardian’s Martin Chulov.

“There has been no sign of a political dimension to the proposal,” he writes, with “critics across the region suggest[ing] the US was replacing the long-agreed ‘land for peace’ formula with a blunt new ‘money for peace’ that attempted to buy off the Palestinian cause”.

Nancy Okail, the executive director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, said: “The Palestinian issue is primarily political, and pouring money into it won’t solve it. Kushner’s plan is indicative of his lack of understanding of the history and dynamics in the region, offering a simplistic and unviable, immoral non-solution to a longstanding, complex issue.”

Neither Israeli not Palestinian governments were represented at the launch, but Reuters reports that the Palestinian leadership “has previously reiterated its disdain for the plan”, which has been almost two years in the making.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was scathing about its prospects of success.

“Money is important. The economy is important. But politics are more important. The political solution is more important,” he said.

Al Jazeera says there will now be “close scrutiny as to whether attendees such as Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Gulf Arab states show any interest in making actual donations to a US plan that has already elicited bitter criticism from Palestinians and many others in the Arab world.”

In a blow to the White House, hours before the conference dinner, the US’s most staunch ally in the region, Saudi Arabia, reiterated its support for the two-state solution.

Riyadh said that any peace deal should be based on the Saudi-led Arab peace initiative that has been the Arab consensus on the necessary elements for a deal since 2002.

That plan calls for a Palestinian state drawn along borders which predate Israel’s capture of territory in the 1967 Middle East war, as well as a capital in East Jerusalem and refugees’ right of return - points rejected by Israel.

The Jerusalem Post says “it is not clear whether the Trump team plans to abandon the ‘two-state solution,’ which involves creation of an independent Palestinian state living side by side with Israel”.

The United Nations and most countries back the two-state solution and it has underpinned every peace plan for decades, “but Trump’s team has consistently refused to commit to it, keeping the political stage of the plan a secret” says the paper.

Canada’s Globe and Mail said “any such solution would have to settle long-standing issues such as the status of Jerusalem, mutually agreed borders, satisfying Israel’s security concerns and Palestinian demands for statehood, and the fate of Israel’s settlements and military presence in territory in Palestinians want to build that state”.

The Trump administration has said an investment-driven pathway forward for the Palestinians was a necessary precondition for ending the decades-old conflict, however, with Palestinians refusing to engage with the White House over its alleged pro-Israel bias a political solution looks as far off as ever.

Stephen Colbert enjoys interviewing people but also likes watching interviews, he said on Monday's Late Show. "Well, there was a really interesting interview this weekend with presidential son-in-law and Victorian ghost-boy Jared Kushner." Colbert started off with Kushner half-fielding Axios reporter Jonathan Swan's question on whether President Trump is a racist. Kushner said no, adding, "You can't not be a racist for 69 years then run for president and be a racist."

Colbert kind of agreed: "He's right, you don't just become a racist at 69 years old. But Trump was 67 when he called all Mexicans murderers and rapists, 43 when he campaigned for death sentences for the Central Park 5, and a boyish 27 when the DOJ sued him and his father for racist housing policies." When Swan asked about Trump's birtherism, "Jared's brain went to its panic room," he said, showing the clip. "Wow, Jared has not been taken to the woodshed like that since he was carved by Geppetto."

Kushner said he thinks Trump's legacy will be bringing people into government "who are not 'qualified' by conventional standards." Colbert laughed at Kushner's air quotes: "Fun fact: Not 'qualified' by 'conventional standards' is actually the first line of Jared's résumé. I'm joking, of course — he doesn't have a résumé."

"Despite his important role in the administration, Kushner rarely does on-camera interviews," Trevor Noah said at The Daily Show, and now we know why. He explained some shortcomings of Kushner's first-hand theory of racism, but he found it kind of "refreshing that Jared didn't just lie, like Kellyanne Conway or Sarah Huckabee Sanders would. Because you know if one of them got asked that question, they would be like, 'No, Trump wasn't racist for birtherism — Obama was racist for being born in Kenya.' But seriously, how is Jared so bad at lying? He's around Trump all the time. You would think that he would practice." Watch below. Peter Weber

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner has expressed uncertainty over whether Palestinians can self-govern.

In a rare television interview, Kushner, who is spearheading a White House effort to draft a new peace proposal for the Israelis and Palestinians, was asked whether he believed the Palestinians were capable of governing themselves without interference from the Israeli authorities.

He replied: “That’s a very good question. That’s one that we’ll have to see. The hope is that they, over time, will become capable of governing.”

Speaking to HBO, the son-in-law of Donald Trump refused to be drawn on whether the White House plan would include a two-state solution.

Referring to the Palestinians, he said it would be a “high bar” for them to expect freedom from Israeli military and government interference. But he added: “I do think they should have self-determination. I’m going to leave the details until we come out with the actual plan.”

He added that the Palestinians “need to have a fair judicial system ... freedom of press, freedom of expression, tolerance for all religions” before their territories can become “investable”.

Asked whether he understood why the Palestinians might not trust him, Kushner said: “I’m not here to be trusted” and added that he believed the Palestinian people would judge the plan based on whether “they think this will allow them to have a pathway to a better life or not”.

Bloomberg points out that Kushner is “notoriously press-averse” and that the interview “represents some of his most extensive public remarks since joining his father-in-law’s administration”.

During it, he was also asked repeatedly whether the "birtherism" conspiracy that former president Barack Obama was born in Africa, in which Trump played a leading role, was racist.

Kushner avoided answering directly, saying: “I wasn’t involved in that.” But he added that the Democrats' claim that Trump is a racist does a “disservice” to people who experience “real racism”. New York magazine commented that Kushner’s “defence unwound with great speed”.

The person identified as "Senior White House Official 1" in the transcript of testimony by a government whistleblower is President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, The Washington Post reports.

During her interview last month with House Oversight Committee staffers, Tricia Newbold from the White House's personnel security office said she and other career officials determined that "Senior White House Official 1" had too many "significant disqualifying factors" to receive a security clearance; they were specifically concerned about his private business interests, personal conduct, and potential foreign influence, people who viewed committee documents released this week told the Post. Newbold said they were overruled by the office's former director, Carl Kline, a Trump appointee.

Newbold also said that since last year, 25 people have received clearances or access to national security information, despite warnings about their criminal conduct, drug use, financial problems, and foreign ties.

Earlier this year, several news outlets reported that even though intelligence officials raised the alarm about Kushner, Trump ordered his former chief of staff, John Kelly, give his son-in-law top-secret security clearance.

The White House is pushing back on a new book, Kushner Inc., detailing Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner's role in President Trump's administration. Its author, Vicky Ward, told The Late Show's Stephen Colbert on Monday that "if Sarah Huckabee Sanders wants to get into a credibility ratings battle with me, I'll take her on."

Trump is "very ambivalent" about having his daughter and son-in-law working in his White House, Ward told Colbert, and "he hates it when they get negative press." If that's true, Colbert said, "why do you think the president doesn't get them out of there?" Ward said then-Chief of Staff John Kelly tried to force them to resign, on Trump's orders, and "they came to resign, and Trump couldn't do it. ... He cannot send his daughter home."

Some of Trump's supporters argue "his daughter and her husband may be his undoing, that they are far more dangerous to him than Robert Mueller," Ward said. For example, she said, Kushner's role in firing James Comey as FBI director was much greater, more public, and more apparently self-serving than is widely known. "Is there anybody left to check the influence of Jared and Ivanka?" Colbert asked. Ward said yes, first lady Melania Trump, "the only person in my book who has ever successfully stood up to Ivanka Trump and won."

Ward revisited the Melania-Ivanka standoff in an ABC News The Investigation podcast posted Tuesday, and she suggested a motivation for Jared and Ivanka's misbehavior: "Most people go into government for public service. They do seem to have gone in for self-service." Ward said she doesn't know if "these two will be held accountable," but it could happen via "a combination of Congress and prosecutors or, you know, their path, their trajectory will continue as it has, which seemingly is remarkably unstoppable." Listen below. Peter Weber

Donald Trump Jr., the presidential son with the good judgment, decided Tuesday evening to comment on the college admissions bribery scandal that has ensnared — and in some cases briefly jailed — 33 wealthy parents, including actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman.

Well, you know what they say about glass houses. Trump père biographer and Bloomberg Opinion executive editor Tim O'Brien threw a few stones back at Trump fils:

He wasn't done:

You can read more about President Trump's auspiciously timed Penn/Wharton benefaction at The Daily Pennsylvanian and about Jared Kushner's father Charles Kushner's 1998 pledge of $2.5 million to Harvard University at ProPublica. ProPublica editor Daniel Golden uncovered the Kushner story in a 2006 book, The Price of Admission, which, he writes, "exposed a grubby secret of American higher education: That the rich buy their under-achieving children's way into elite universities with massive, tax-deductible donations."

Which is to say, there's a legal way to do what Loughlin, Huffman, and those 31 other parents allegedly did to get their children into elite universities, but you're not going to be able to do it with mere "Hollywood" money.

When President Trump brought on John Kelly as his chief of staff in 2017, he reportedly had a task for him: "Get rid of my kids."

This is according to the new book Kushner Inc., in which reporter Vicky Ward describes the president asking Kelly to remove Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner from the White House early on in his tenure as chief of staff, telling him to get his children "back to New York," per The New York Times. The president reportedly fumed that they "didn't know how to play the game" and were generating negative news coverage.

Kelly, the Times writes, told Trump it would "be difficult" to fire them, so instead, the two came up with another solution: They would simply "make life difficult enough to force the pair to offer their resignations."

This, of course, never happened, and it ended up being Kelly who offered his resignation in December 2018. Trump's desire to fire his daughter and son-in-law, according to this report, has "come and gone in waves."

The book Kushner Inc, according to the Times, will also portray Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner as being the president's "chief enablers" and describe them "disregarding protocol and skirting the rules when they can." Kushner is already denying the account through his lawyer, whose spokesman said in a statement that it's "a book of fiction."

The White House is refusing to give the House Oversight Committee files on the security clearance process for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, but committee Democrats obtained some of the files in early February from a White House source, Axios reports.

The leaked files detail the process under which Kushner and Trump were granted security clearances between the spring of 2017 to the spring of 2018, when, according to recent reports, President Trump overruled the concerns of intelligence agencies, his chief of staff, and the White House counsel to grant his daughter and son-in-law top-secret clearances.

The documents are "part of the puzzle that we would be asking for" from the White House, a senior Democratic aide told Axios, "so we appreciated having this up front."

The House Intelligence and Oversight Committees are in the beginning stages of an investigation into how President Trump's White House handles security clearances. After The New York Times and The Washington Post reported Thursday evening that Trump had personally overruled intelligence officials and his staff to give Jared Kushner top-secret clearance, House Democrats focused on Kushner being Trump's son-in-law. "There is no nepotism exception for background investigations," Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told the Post. Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) noted that Congress is watching.

On CNN Thursday night, former Gov. Chris Christie (R) was on the same page, telling Chris Cuomo this story highlights "the biggest problem with having family in official positions in the White House, because it's much harder to be objective." He and Cuomo agreed that the story is damning and likely accurate. "And again, Chris, it goes back to the familial relationship," Christie said. "It goes back to the idea that for any other staff member, I think the president would have a much easier time saying 'Listen, no, I'm not getting involved.'"

But Cuomo said focusing on the nepotism is "a step sideways from the actual problem," namely that Trump "has no problem lying to the American people about things he thinks he needs to." Christie said Trump really has a tendency to "lie about things that he hasn't needed to lie about — that's worse in many respects." He mentioned the Stormy Daniels hush-money payment. But regarding the Times report, "there's no way to defend" Trump's behavior, "and I'm not going to," Christie said, "and I have to assume its true because the White House didn't deny it, nor did Jared's lawyer." Watch below. Peter Weber

Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, added to his weighty portfolio by becoming Trump's point man on negotiating an end the government shutdown. He "was confident in his ability as a good-faith negotiator who could find a compromise," maybe even a grand immigration bargain, "buoyed by his success in helping pass a criminal justice bill," The New York Times reports. But a generous epitaph after Trump temporarily reopened the government with no border wall money might be "Jared Tried."

It turned out that "negotiating a broad immigration deal that would satisfy a president committed to a border wall as well as Democrats who have cast it as immoral proved to be more like Mr. Kushner's elusive goal of solving Middle East peace than passing a criminal justice overhaul that already had bipartisan support," the Times reports. Democrats also never believed Kushner could speak for Trump or get around his immigration backstop, Stephen Miller.

Kushner consistently misread the politics, too, assuring "colleagues that public opinion would move to their side and that Speaker Nancy Pelosi would emerge as the one who looked unreasonable and intransigent," the Times says. Similarly, Kushner "inaccurately believed that moderate rank-and-file Democrats were open to a compromise and had no issue funding a wall as part of a broader deal."

Kushner's divide-and-conquer-the-Democrats plan "sounds insane" in this case, New York's Jonathan Chait writes. In fact other White House advisers called it insane, even "delusional." Not that this is over. Ultimately, "Trump was willing to table debate over wall funding because he is convinced he can win support from some Democratic lawmakers over the next three weeks," The Washington Post reports. And Kushner, the Times adds, has told Trump "he should spend the next three weeks trying to achieve a broader immigration package."

You can watch Capitol Hill reporters deliver an early postmortem on the shutdown and Kushner's efforts on MSNBC. Peter Weber

Chris Christie quite literally has enough problems with Jared Kushner to fill a book.

The former New Jersey governor is set to publish Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the Power of In-Your-Face Politics, which presumably spills a lot of dirt about President Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law. If the title wasn't evidence enough, Politico printed a section of the book Friday, describing what Christie calls Kushner's plan "to derail my appointment as transition chairman."

In the spring of 2016, Christie stopped by Trump Tower to look over a press release announcing his appointment as Trump transition chair, he says in the Politico excerpt. Trump had just told Christie he was "really happy" about the appointment when they "heard a soft voice coming from just inside the open office door," Christie writes. It was Kushner, who Christie says he "didn't really know" at the time — except for the fact that he'd prosecuted Kushner's father in a massive tax evasion scheme a decade earlier.

As Trump told Kushner that Christie would be running the transition, "Jared's face remained stubbornly blank," Christie wrote. Kushner started to say Trump was "rushing" on this decision, but soon revealed his real gripes: Christie "tried to destroy my father," Kushner said, via Christie's recollection. Kushner spewed "very raw feelings that had been simmering for nearly a dozen years," maintaining his "soft quiver" of a voice the whole time, as Christie describes it.

Trump didn't seem convinced by Kushner's "decade-old rantings," Christie said, and offered they all work out the problem over dinner. Kushner turned him down, and Christie went on to become the transition chair. But that was far from the end of Kushner's "little game," Christie ominously finished. Read the whole excerpt from Let Me Finish at Politico.

President Trump responded to the murder of 11 Jewish congregants in Pittsburgh on Saturday with a forceful condemnation of the "evil anti-Semitic attack" and "the scourge of anti-Semitism." Those solemn remarks — sandwiched in between a suggestion that the Tree of Life synagogue should've had "protection" and a joke about his "bad hair day" — followed "the importuning of his Jewish daughter and son-in-law to craft a powerful statement of outrage at anti-Semitism," The New York Times reports.

After reading the statement, Trump immediately "went back into partisan mode, assailing his enemies," and "by the evening's end he was tweeting about baseball," the Times reports, continuing:

The White House is right that the accused Pittsburgh synagogue shooter and the "far-right faction with which [he] identifies does oppose Trump as a pro-Jewish sellout, citing such betrayals as his support for Israel and the marriage of his daughter to a Jewish man," Jonathan Chait says at New York, but the shooter "does identify with some of Trump's goals and rhetoric, because Trump has inspired the racist far right to a degree surpassing any modern American president." You can read more about Trump's shooting response and long, complicated "relationship with Judaism" at The New York Times.

Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post writer and critic of the monarchy of Saudi Arabia, hasn't been seen since he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last week. Turkish officials believe Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi operatives who then dismembered his body to hide the evidence. In what The Washington Post describes as "another piece of evidence implicating the Saudi regime in Khashoggi’s disappearance," anonymous U.S. intelligence officials told the paper that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman once "ordered an operation to lure" Khashoggi from the U.S., where he's a resident, back to his native country.

While Khashoggi's alleged murder in the midst of a softened U.S.-Saudi relationship may be a "looming diplomatic crisis" for President Trump, it's more of a "personal reckoning" for Jared Kushner, The New York Times writes. The president's son-in-law and senior adviser has had dinner with bin Salman both in Washington and the Saudi capital of Riyadh. He encouraged selling $110 billion of weapons to the Saudi military. And he apparently hoped bin Salman would approve of his forthcoming Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. The crown prince, meanwhile, once reportedly bragged about having Kushner "in his pocket."

But even before Khashoggi was allegedly assassinated, Kushner's relationship with the crown prince had reportedly been fraying. Congress' reluctance to sell the full $110 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia may have already led to a falling out between the two men, the Times says. While Kushner declined to comment to the paper, a person close to him attested to his efforts on behalf of Khashoggi, saying the White House advisor had relayed a letter from the Post publisher to bin Salman and has taken other "unspecified steps."

Read more about Kushner's debacle at The New York Times.

After spending years aiding the Trump administration, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are worried they'll never get back into the liberal paradise of New York City. So Kushner anonymously told the world that he's part of an internal White House "resistance," hoping the couple's Hamptons buddies would forgive them for their time in Washington.

That's Ann Coulter's theory behind which White House senior official wrote last week's bombshell New York Times op-ed, she told The Daily Beast in an interview published Thursday. And his purported authorship is just one of the conservative commentator's many problems with President Trump's son-in-law:

As Coulter laments in her newest book, Resistance Is Futile!, "Trump hasn't shot Kushner, and he probably won't, since he doesn't even realize that Kushner is wrecking his presidency." Read more about Coulter's Kushner vendetta at The Daily Beast.

A US government official says the White House is investigating a $500 (£352m) loan to the family firm of Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, asking if it broke ethics codes or criminal law.

The New York Times reported last month that Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies, accepted $184m (£130m) from Apollo Global Management and $325m (£230m) from Citigroup last year, after Kushner met officials from the two firms.

It also said Joshua Harris, a founder of Apollo, was advising Trump administration officials on infrastructure policy and held several meetings with Kushner.

As Donald Trump’s son-in-law and key adviser, “Kushner plays an influential role in domestic and foreign policy decisions”, says The Guardian.

The acting director of the Office of Government Ethics, David Apol, said he had “discussed this matter with the White House Counsel’s Office in order to ensure that they have begun the process of ascertaining the facts necessary to determine whether any law or regulation has been violated”.

In a letter to the ethics agency, which is responsible for investigating potential conflicts of interest within Washington, Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi said the loans “raise serious ethical questions that need to be investigated”.

He also asked whether Kushner’s actions “constitute a breach of his ethical obligations to the American people”.

Citigroup has denied there was any impropriety, saying last week the loan was “completely appropriate” and the transaction was already in the works in 2016, before Kushner met Citigroup’s CEO Michael Corbat in 2017.

According to a letter sent to members of Congress this month and seen by The Wall Street Journal, an attorney for Apollo also denied it provided the loan after its executive met Kushner.

Despite selling off most of his family business assets following Donald Trump’s election, Kushner “still maintains a stake in some company’s properties, including those that received the loans subject to a probe”, Fox News says.

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior White House adviser, has been stripped of his top-secret security clearance after Trump's chief of staff John Kelly ordered changes to the security clearance system.

The Washington Post reports that several concerns had been raised inside the White House over Kushner’s contacts with “certain foreign government officials”, which contributed to the rejection of his application for permanent security clearance.

National security adviser H.R. McMaster reportedly requested intelligence briefings on conversations where foreign leaders discussed interactions with Trump officials, including Kushner.

The request was made after McMaster learned that Kushner had contacts with foreign officials without informing or coordinating with the National Security Council.

According to CNN, at least four countries had sought to take advantage of Kushner’s complex international business dealings, lack of experience and apparent financial problems.

Mexico, Israel, China and the United Arab Emirates are all believed to have discussed those as possible leverage points when dealing with Kushner, according to “current and former US officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter”, CNN says.

The New York Times says the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed, saw Kushner as a “target of influence”, noting that the United Arab Emirates has been a “particularly influential player” in policy areas Kushner has directly overseen.

The security downgrade is expected to sharply impact Kushner’s role as senior advisor to Trump, and will see his access to some of the most sensitive material, including the presidential daily brief, cut off entirely.