Jared Kushner calls new book's claims of a hacked phone and secret foreign accounts 'completely insane'

Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and a former senior White House adviser, is forcefully denying allegations in a forthcoming book that he had access to secret bank accounts funded by Gulf leaders while he served in the first Trump administration.

“The allegations made by this author are completely insane and never happened,” Kushner said in a statement reported by CBS News. His attorney called the claims “false and defamatory” and said they intend to pursue legal action against those responsible, without saying whom.

None of the book’s central claims have been independently verified. CBS News said it had not independently verified the excerpt. The allegations rest largely on unnamed sources, and Kushner, his lawyer and the White House all reject them.

What does the book claim?

The book is “Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East” by journalist Matthew Cole. Vanity Fair published an excerpt on Oct. 22. According to the excerpt and CBS News’ summary of it, Cole alleges that:

• Dutch intelligence learned in late 2017 that Russian military intelligence had hacked Kushner’s iPhone, and by early 2018 the Dutch had their own access, letting them see his screen as he used it.
• Through that access, Dutch spies allegedly saw Kushner log in to a UAE bank account that had received hundreds of millions of dollars from a bank in Azerbaijan.
• The leaders of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia put at least $2 billion into accounts linked to Kushner, including about $750 million into a UAE account where he was allegedly a signatory, and roughly $1 billion that the book says was moved to an account at Israel’s central bank.
• Citing a person with knowledge of the money, the excerpt says that last account was intended “for Kushner’s personal benefit.”

The excerpt says the money was described as being for off-the-books diplomatic goals, such as a deal to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Cole writes that undisclosed access to such accounts may have violated U.S. disclosure, foreign-agent or bribery laws. Those are the author’s claims; no charges or official findings have been reported.

What does Kushner say?

Kushner’s response has been sweeping. “We denied every claim on the record, yet the author provided not a single shred of verifiable evidence to substantiate them,” he said, according to CBS News. “No bank statements, wire transfer records, account numbers, transaction dates, or other verifiable details were provided to support these extraordinary accusations.”

On his website, Kushner posted an August letter from his lawyer, Alejandro Brito, to the book’s publishers with point-by-point responses to Cole’s questions. Among them:

• “There are no accounts and never were,” the letter says, adding that Kushner does not know the Emirati official or charity the book links to the UAE account.
• Kushner “does not know if his iPhone was hacked or monitored while serving in the White House,” the letter says, noting that he received regular counterintelligence briefings and was never told of this.
• The letter says all agreements Kushner negotiated, such as the Abraham Accords, “were authorized and disclosed,” and that he complied with all applicable laws.

Vanity Fair’s excerpt also includes denials. Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, whom the book says passed messages for Kushner, said, “I know absolutely nothing about any of these allegations,” calling the claims about him “100% false.”

How did the White House respond?

The White House referred CBS News to a statement from communications director Steven Cheung, who called the book “complete fiction” in a post on X, using an expletive to describe the Vanity Fair article. “He presents no evidence or even a shred of documentation. Just mysterious words from unnamed sources,” Cheung said.

Why does this matter?

Kushner played a lead role in Middle East policy during the first Trump administration, CBS News noted, and was central to deals involving Israel and the Gulf states. More recently, his lawyer’s letter points to his role in efforts to end the war in Gaza. Any claim that foreign governments paid for influence over a U.S. official would be serious, which is why the lack of documents and the firm denials are central to the story.

The book’s publisher is One Signal Publisher/Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, according to Vanity Fair. Kushner’s lawyer wrote that the publishers had said they have “full confidence in the book” after a legal review.

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