A House panel is looking into why Saudi Arabia put money into Jared Kushner’s new company.
The House Oversight Committee is looking for documents about the $2 billion investment by a Saudi fund in the private equity firm started by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former adviser.
On Thursday, a House committee said it was looking into whether Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former President Donald J. Trump and a former adviser, used his position to get a big Saudi Arabian wealth fund to put $2 billion into his new private equity firm.
Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a Democrat from New York who leads the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, sent a letter to Mr. Kushner on Thursday giving him two weeks to give documents about the Saudi fund’s investment in his company, Affinity Partners, last year. She also asked for any personal letters between Mr. Kushner and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of the Saudi kingdom, during or after Mr. Trump’s time in office.
In the eight-page letter, Ms. Maloney said that the committee is looking into “whether your personal financial interests improperly affected U.S. foreign policy while your father-in-law, former President Trump, was in office.”
In a statement, a spokesman for Mr. Kushner said, “Mr. Kushner followed all legal and moral rules while making six peace deals in the Middle East, both while he was in government and after he left.”
“He is proud to be one of many people in the private sector who are working to make it easier for Americans, Israelis, and Arabs to connect with each other so that regional progress can continue,” the statement said.
A spokesman for the Saudi government and the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which made the $2 billion investment, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Due to redistricting, Ms. Maloney, an experienced lawmaker from Manhattan’s Upper East Side, will have a tough primary against Representative Jerrold Nadler, a longtime colleague and fellow Democrat from Manhattan’s Upper West Side. As chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Mr. Nadler was a key figure in both of Mr. Trump’s impeachment hearings. He has also run for office based on his reputation as a critic of the Trump administration.
In her letter, Ms. Maloney talks about the news, first reported by The New York Times in early April, that the Saudi government’s main sovereign wealth fund invested $2 billion in Mr. Kushner’s firm, even though one of its own internal committees was against it because Mr. Kushner didn’t have enough experience in investing. This investment happened less than six months after Mr. Kushner left his job in the White House. In that job, he was in charge of a lot of the government’s diplomatic work in the Middle East.
During his time in government, Mr. Kushner became close with Prince Mohammed, even though the prince was being criticized for his record on human rights and Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the war in Yemen. Later, when Public Investment Fund officials were not sure about the $2 billion investment in Mr. Kushner’s private equity firm, a board led by Prince Mohammed voted to go ahead with it anyway.
Ethicists are worried about the Saudi fund’s investment in Jared Kushner’s company, which, based on filings, seems to make up the vast majority of the fund’s $2.5 billion in assets. Massachusetts Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren has asked the Justice Department to “take a really hard look” at whether or not Mr. Kushner broke any laws.
In her letter from Tuesday, Ms. Maloney said that the parent company of Affinity was founded on Jan. 21, 2021, the day after Mr. Kushner left the White House. “Your close relationship with Crown Prince bin Salman, your support for Saudi Arabia during the Trump administration, and PIF’s decision to fund the majority of your new business venture only six months after you left the White House,” she wrote, “give the impression that your foreign policy work was in exchange for something.”
Instead of saying that an existing law had been broken, Ms. Maloney wrote that the investigation would try to find out if stricter laws are needed to stop former public officials from doing business with their former government colleagues.
The House Oversight Committee has looked into both the Trump administration and its relationship with Saudi Arabia in the past. In 2019, it looked into why the White House gave Jared Kushner a security clearance even though intelligence officials had raised red flags. It also released reports on whether or not the administration was willing to share nuclear power technology with Saudi Arabia.
