gizmodo.com
Remember when President Donald Trump put his son-in-law in charge of negotiating a grand bargain in the Middle East, back in his first term? Understandable if not, given that no grand bargain emerged and the region is more on fire than ever courtesy of the U.S. and Israel’s disastrous war with Iran, the atrocities of the Israeli-Palestinian war in Gaza, and a raging conflict between Yemen’s Houthi rebels and a Saudi-led coalition.
Yet Jared Kushner is more than one of the many ghouls who have clambered over a track record of failure right back into Trump’s second-term White House, where he’s still a top envoy. He also got owned by the Dutch, according to an excerpt from Matthew Cole’s new book, _Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East_ , published in Vanity Fair.
According to Cole, Dutch intelligence services captured and flipped a Russian hacker operating for the GRU (Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency) in late 2017. By the end of the year, the operative had given them access to a GRU server containing screenshots of Kushner’s iPhone X, and the Dutch spies were able to reverse-engineer the original method the GRU used to penetrate the phone’s then-state-of-the-art security. This gave them access to a continual image feed (albeit without audio) of the phone’s screen.
This roughly overlaps with the timeline during which Kushner was allegedly using a personal cell phone instead of a secure government device, using his private email (allegedly routed to Trump Org servers in 2017) to conduct official government business, and receiving Top Secret intelligence without a permanent security clearance, by the way.
In early 2018, Dutch intelligence personnel began monitoring Kushner’s phone and identified him logging into a Dubai-based bank account that had received around $750 million. This is the Alpha account. According to Cole, the Alpha account belonged to the United Arab Emirates-based (and government-funded) Watani Al Emarat Foundation, and was held at the First Abu Dhabi Bank. That bank is, in turn, chaired by the brother of UAE leader Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ).
Cole reported Kushner and MBZ partly managed the account as a slush fund, or what a source described to him as “a shared pool of money for off-the-books diplomatic objectives,” and that MBZ and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) contributed the money.
The royals had originally discussed putting more than $10 billion into a broader fund that could have helped pay for Trump’s border wall “in an effort to secure a second term in the White House,” Cole wrote, but that plan fizzled out, so they settled on lesser Kushner-facilitated schemes.
Cole also learned of another account, which unlike Alpha may not have been known to the Dutch. MBZ allegedly transferred about $1 billion to a separate Israeli Central Bank account, Beta, that one source characterized as an allocation “for Kushner’s personal benefit.” Here emerges one of the most bizarre details: According to Cole, Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu recommended Kushner use the Israeli Central Bank in the first place. This situation ended up with Kushner being required to notify Netanyahu before using the Beta account for any transfers or transactions.
If true, that effectively means the leader of a foreign country had oversight of a billion dollars meant for Kushner. Kushner allegedly sent notices of any account activity to Netanyahu via the U.S. ambassador to Israel, David M. Friedman.
The money allegedly went through convoluted trails, including Azerbaijani banks that provide “well-established but unadvertised” services moving large amounts of money. Kushner also allegedly helped negotiate a deal involving a third payment, in which the UAE effectively bought a promise of Israeli military support against any Iranian attack on the UAE.
All told, MBZ and MBS allegedly transferred at least $2 billion into accounts intended for Kushner’s use, whether it was striking international deals or “personal benefit.”
Cole argued failing to disclose the accounts may have violated federal ethics and tax rules. A former Mueller prosecutor told Cole that if Kushner made any promises in exchange for the money, it might be a violation of federal bribery laws and the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Two of Trump’s national security advisers, a chief of staff and a former CIA director told Cole that they were unaware of any presidential authorization that would let Kushner access a foreign government’s bank accounts.
The Dutch findings eventually leaked, with a source telling Cole about them in spring 2020. Neither the GRU nor Dutch intelligence seems to have been looking at Kushner as a friend, and for the Dutch to retain access, they presumably had to leave the U.S. in the dark on Russian penetration of his phone. Dutch agencies limited intelligence-sharing ties with their U.S. counterparts last year over human rights concerns.
Counsel for Kushner denied the accusations to Cole, saying he has “no idea” about the Israeli bank account and “there are no accounts and never were.” They also denied that Kushner had ever entered any agreements with foreign leaders or officials that were not “agreed to by the President of the United States and in the best interests of the United States.”
In a further statement posted on Thursday, Kushner said the allegations are “completely insane and never happened,” and called them “outrageous fabrications being presented as investigative journalism.” Kushner also suggested the report is a “mixture of fantasy, fiction, and advocacy, written by someone who is either deeply disturbed or acting with sinister intent.” The Daily Beast reported his counsel has threatened a lawsuit. Friedman has also denied any knowledge or involvement.
It’s not clear whether Kushner ever learned his phone was hacked before Cole reached out for comment.
