The House Oversight Committee is looking into whether Jared Kushner used his position as White House adviser to secure a $2 billion investment from a Saudi Arabian wealth group.
On Thursday, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the chairwoman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, addressed Kushner a letter giving him two weeks to submit papers relating to the sale.
According to a New York Times article, Kushner’s newly established private equity business Affinity Partners received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s state-owned sovereign wealth fund six months after leaving the White House.
Despite being alerted by a team of economics specialists who analyze the Saudi wealth fund’s investments for their ‘inexperience’ and ‘public relations risks,’ Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former White House senior adviser, obtained the enormous contract.
‘Your support for Saudi interests was unwavering, even as Congress and the rest of the world closely scrutinized the country’s human rights abuses in Yemen, the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi assassins tied to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Saudi Arabia’s crackdown on political dissidents at home,’ Maloney wrote in her letter to Kushner.
‘This investigation will inform the Committee about whether federal ethics laws should be strengthened to prevent senior public officials from taking advantage of their position within the federal government to reap a financial windfall—before, during, or after government employment.’
A veteran GOP strategist said that the investigation was ‘utterly unreasonable.’
‘It is traditional for people who gain expertise in a certain field while in government to then specialize in that area in their post government lives,’ the strategist told DailyMail.com.
‘There are so many examples. Off the top of my head I can think of Karl Rove, George Stephanopoulos, Jen Psaki, Al Gore, Timothy Geithner, Jack Lew and Anita Dunn to just name a few.’
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the State and Defense departments for data from Kushner’s official trips to Saudi Arabia in September, November, and January 2021, soon before Trump’s departure.
‘If Jared Kushner used taxpayer funds to advance his business dealings with Saudi Arabia, Americans should know,’ CREW said.
Kushner was recognized for his close personal relationship with Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader Mohammed bin-Salman and for assisting him in securing a $110 billion arms contract during his time in the White House. During the international uproar over the murder of US-based writer and MBS critic Jamal Khashoggi, he was one of the Saudi royal family’s staunchest advocates within the administration.
He was also one of the architects of the Abraham Accords, a historic peace treaty between certain Arab governments and Israel that MBS backed.
However, the Saudi panel reportedly judged Kushner’s Affinity Fund to be ‘unsatisfactory in all aspects’ when it came to his experience leading a new private equity firm.
The panel was particularly concerned about Kushner’s lack of domestic investors and limited areas of competence.
Despite this, the $2 billion was approved by the $620 billion Public Investment Fund (PIF), which is purportedly led by MBS, just days after business experts highlighted their concerns at a June 30 meeting.