Jared Kushner’s unofficial role in Trump administration sparks ethical questions |
His only official job title at the White House is son-in-law. But Jared Kushner has staged a remarkable — and sometimes controversial — comeback to US President Donald Trump’s inner circle.
Four years after leaving the White House, Kushner has played a key role in the Gaza and Ukraine peace talks alongside Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff.
This week, the 44-year-old husband of Trump’s daughter Ivanka also emerged as an investor in a bid by Paramount to buy Hollywood giant Warner Bros. If successful, the purchase could mean the Trump family partially owning CNN, the president’s most-hated news channel.
Kushner and Ivanka served as special advisors in the first Trump White House, where critics of the president hoped they would serve as a moderating influence. At the time, Kushner helped secure the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and four Arab nations, and was instrumental in drafting the Peace to Prosperity proposal for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which was not implemented.
After Trump’s 2020 election loss, Kushner and Ivanka, who are Jewish, decamped to Florida, buying a home on a Miami island nicknamed the “Billionaire’s Bunker.” Kushner vanished into the private sector, insisting he would not return for a second administration.
Since then, he has founded an investment company largely funded by the same Middle Eastern countries that he dealt with in the first Trump term — and has become a billionaire, according to Forbes.
That has raised ethical questions about possible conflicts of interest, which Kushner has denied and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has branded “frankly despicable.”
But it has not stopped Trump, who has long mixed business and politics with family, from bringing him back.
“We called in Jared,” Trump