Donald Trump Responds to $2 Billion Jared Kushner Allegation: ‘Totally False’ - Newsweek

President Donald Trump called allegations that his son-in-law Jared Kushner had access to $2 billion from Middle Eastern governments "a totally false story" Friday morning.

Speaking to reporters as he left the White House, Trump was asked about the Vanity Fair report, which alleged that Dutch intelligence monitored Kushner's phone and made the discovery.

"It's a false story. It's a totally false story," Trump said. "It was totally an incorrect story. It was just fake news. Amazing."

Kushner strongly denied the allegations that he had secret financial arrangements involving Middle Eastern governments, calling the claims “completely insane” and saying they “never happened.”

“We denied every one of these claims on the record, yet the author failed to provide a single shred of evidence to substantiate any of them,” Kushner, President Donald Trump’s special envoy and son-in-law, wrote on X Thursday.

The report, written by Matthew Cole and excerpted in Vanity Fair from his forthcoming book Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East, alleges that Dutch intelligence obtained screenshots of Kushner’s hacked iPhone from files found on a Russian military intelligence operative’s server and subsequently monitored his phone activity.

According to Vanity Fair, intelligence officials discovered that Kushner had accessed a United Arab Emirates (UAE)-linked bank account that had received hundreds of millions of dollars from a bank in Azerbaijan.

Kushner and his lawyers have fiercely pushed back against the reports. His lawyer, Alejandro Brito, posted on JaredKushner.com, calling the allegations “false and defamatory” and promising legal action.

The post on JaredKushner.com also shared a response to Vanity Fair about the article prior to publication.

“Mr. Kushner has no knowledge of, or involvement with, any such accounts,” the lawyer’s response to Vanity Fair, which he says was from May 2026, reads. “Any allegation that Mr. Kushner knew of, had access to, had authorizations for or engaged in or directed any conduct related to any government-funded or government-linked bank account is totally false and defamatory.”

The report alleges that roughly $750 million was transferred into an account at First Abu Dhabi Bank held by the Watani Al Emarat Foundation, a UAE government-funded charity. Kushner was allegedly a signatory on the account, giving him access to it, but was not its owner, according to the report. Cole writes that the account was intended to serve as a foreign policy fund and alleges the charity was used to support the UAE’s overseas military and intelligence operations.

The article also alleges that a separate account in Israel received roughly $1 billion intended for Kushner’s personal benefit. Cole writes that UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan arranged the transfer and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu encouraged Kushner to have the money deposited in Israel. The report says Kushner communicated with Netanyahu about transactions through then-U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.

Friedman denied having any knowledge of or involvement in UAE money allegedly made available to Kushner, as well as passing messages on Kushner’s behalf.

“I know absolutely nothing about any of these allegations,” Friedman said, according to the report, adding that the specific allegations about him or his alleged involvement in the scheme were “100% false.”

The report also quoted Kushner’s counsel as saying Kushner “has no idea” about the account.

The allegations have not been verified or confirmed.

Kushner noted the absence of bank statements, wire-transfer records, account numbers and transaction dates in the report. He also pointed to the media scrutiny, congressional investigations and special counsel investigation he faced during the period in question. He said he voluntarily cooperated with those investigations, providing more than 30 hours of testimony.

“None of these allegations ever surfaced, because none of these events ever happened,” Kushner wrote on X.

“These are outrageous fabrications being presented as investigative journalism,” he added, describing the report as “a mixture of fantasy, fiction, and advocacy.”

In a statement Thursday night, Kushner attorney Chad Mizelle said that before publication, the legal team sent Simon & Schuster a 13-page letter denying the allegations and challenging what he called a “total absence of supporting evidence.”

"Vanity Fair has now published an excerpt amplifying these false and defamatory allegations. We have seen no credible evidence substantiating any of these claims, and we question what independent verification Vanity Fair conducted before publishing them,” Mizelle wrote on X.

Mizelle also called the central allegation in the book “categorically false,” adding that the team intended to pursue legal action against those responsible.

Newsweek has contacted Mizelle for additional comment.

The White House accused Vanity Fair of publishing “baseless smears” against Kushner, calling the report defamatory.

“They’ll lodge nefarious, baseless smears against people like Jared Kushner,” Anna Kelly, White House principal deputy press secretary, wrote on X, defending his work on behalf of the administration, including efforts to bring home Israeli hostages and facilitate talks between Russia and Ukraine.

Kelly accused the outlet of having “zero evidence,” saying the report was based “on what two anonymous sources supposedly heard about, but never even saw for themselves, because these events didn’t happen.”

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung called the piece “TOTAL FAKE NEWS!”

“This bulls*** Vanity Fair article comes from a book that is complete fiction, and was fabricated from the warped mind of failed spy thriller writer,” Cheung wrote on X Thursday.

House Oversight Committee Democrats also responded to the report, saying Kushner needs to “answer these questions before the American people.”

“This is the latest in a series of serious allegations that Jared Kushner has been selling foreign policy to the highest bidder,” the group wrote on X.

The allegations in the Vanity Fair article concern Kushner’s activities during Trump’s first administration, when he served as senior White House adviser and played a central role in Middle East diplomacy. During Trump’s second term, Kushner has again taken part in high-level diplomatic efforts as an envoy, including negotiations related to the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine and discussions involving Iran. Kushner runs Affinity Partners, a private equity firm that has received investments from Middle Eastern investors.

Updated 10/27/26, 12:05 p.m. ET: This report has been updated for clarity.

Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Steven Frank, Edward T. Cummins, Gray R. Thomas.