Jared Kushner's 'unusual' reliance on foreign funds shocks other investors

Technically, it wouldn't be accurate to say that all of the investment money flowing to Jared Kushner since he left the White House has come from foreign sources, such as the governments he worked with while serving former President Donald Trump. The real number is as you mentioned New York times On Tuesday, donations were “only” at 99%, and the vast majority of the $3 billion raised so far comes from authoritarian governments.

It's an arrangement — in which Kushner exploits relationships established while his father-in-law was president — that makes at least the appearance of impropriety. It's also far from the norm, experts say.

In 2022, just six months after leaving the White House, Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund Invested $2 billion At Kushner's newly formed private equity firm, despite suspicions among fund employees that Trump's son-in-law has little experience in the field. Kushner has also accepted investments from state-run funds in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Kushner, who does not rule out working in a second Trump administration, has in turn invested some of that money in a foreign venture, last month announcing a $500 million real estate project in Serbia in the same location that Trump himself had previously sought. Building a luxury hotel.

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

“A lot of people are leaving government and becoming lobbyists or starting consulting firms,” he said. But no one they remember had ever received so much money, so quickly, from foreign governments — especially ones they worked for while working for a president.

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

Steve Ratner, an economic analyst who leads an investment firm himself, Comment He has never seen an American private equity firm so dependent on foreign exchange. “This is extraordinary and unprecedented,” he told MSNBC. “I've never seen anything like this before.”