Jared Kushner’s Massive Ties to Company Backing IDF Exposed

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has made serious bank off of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, while simultaneously leading the U.S.-backed peace negotiations, CNN reported Thursday.

Shortly before Trump’s return to office last year, Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners doubled its investment in Phoenix Financial, a Tel Aviv-based firm that has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, as well as at least eight other companies that have seen massive gains as a result of Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza.

Affinity Partners doesn’t benefit from any of these companies directly but has reaped massive rewards from its investment in Phoenix Financial. In July, Affinity cashed out a quarter of its stake for more than $340 million, which is more than five times the worth of its initial stock purchase.

Kushner himself has described Phoenix as Affinity’s “best investment,” and his firm remains the financial group’s largest shareholder, with a 7.4 percent stake worth more than $1 billion, CNN reported. Last September, Kushner told Forbes that he maintained a “very active dialogue” with Phoenix leadership, and met with them every few weeks.

Kushner has served as a top Middle East adviser during Trump’s second term and has floated his own wretched idea for what Israel ought to do with Gaza’s “waterfront property.”

Kushner’s financial entanglements are a clear cause for concern when it comes to his role as a volunteer envoy leading peace negotiations in Israel, Iran, and Ukraine, Cynthia Brown, chief ethics counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told CNN.

“There are always people who profit from war or government policies. The difference is that the people profiting should not be the people making the decisions to make that policy. And that is what is happening here,” Brown said.

Kushner’s attorney told CNN that he had “never participated in or directed Phoenix’s decisions” and had “no involvement in the decision to purchase, hold or sell any of the nine companies.” They insisted that “any suggestion that Jared’s diplomatic work influenced Phoenix’s investments in the companies you identify, or vice versa, is incorrect.”

His attorney confirmed that Kushner “regularly spoke with Phoenix management about the company, broader market trends and potential strategic opportunities” this time last year, but had wound down the frequency of their meetings as he has become “substantially more engaged in volunteer public-service and diplomatic efforts.”

But that doesn’t mean that Kushner’s involvement through Affinity Partners isn’t a damning conflict of interest. The president’s son-in-law has previously used his gig as special envoy as an opportunity to try to raise funds from foreign governments and individuals in the Middle East.

President Trump has been denied yet another chance to carve his name into something he didn’t make.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with the Institute of Peace in a Wednesday court order temporarily preventing President Trump from placing his name onto the building—something former employees of the Institute alleged was coming in an emergency injunction last month, especially given that he had already placed his name on the building’s exterior sign (in removable letters) last December.

Beyond the naming, Trump attempted a complete hostile takeover of the Institute—using Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (and private security) to fire and escort workers out of the building in March of 2025. That takeover was blocked in federal court in May, but lifted in June. This most recent blockage will be retried in November.

Trump has been moving like some middle schooler carving his name into a desk with a pocket knife on the last day of school. He’s unsuccessfully tried to place his name on the John. F. Kennedy Center and was alleged to be looking into doing the same with Ford’s Theatre, where President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. The White House denies any plans to actually carve the President’s name into the Institute of Peace—an independent organization established more than 40 years ago. But Trump’s baseless, relentless claims to any old building justifies the sense of urgency accompanying the emergency injunction from the Institute’s employees.

President Trump has yet to publicly comment.

President Donald Trump is edgy with all kinds of media these days.

In an interview with Time magazine, published Thursday morning, Trump snapped at reporter Eric Cortellessa after he was asked a question about the health situation of Senator Mitch McConnell, who went missing from the Senate all summer. Trump went off on a tangent about President Joe Biden and lost it at Cortellessa, dropping an expletive.

“It was a disappointment to a lot of Republicans. So that’s just—well, Sleepy Joe gave pardons to everybody. He gave them to Fauci. He gave them to this. But you mean I’m not allowed to give them, but Sleepy Joe’s allowed to give them? This ain’t gonna be much of a story. Here we are doing this. You haven’t asked me one fucking positive question. All of this. What about this? What about that? What about that? What about this? All negative,” Trump said.

In the same stream of thought, Trump complained that Cortellessa hadn’t asked him about Venezuela, even though he had, at length, earlier in the interview.

“Do you notice you haven’t asked me a question about Venezuela?” Trump asked, to which Cortellessa said, “We did earlier.” Trump replied, “No, no, I brought it up, and then you said—”

“You beat us to it. But yeah,” Cortellessa said.

Among other gems in the interview is that Trump regrets all of his Supreme Court picks, failing to remember they saved him from prosecution.

“Yeah. What can I do? I put them in. They voted against me too often. I was very—I gave them the position of a lifetime, and they vote against me often. They vote for me too,” Trump said.

Trump also defended his barring of Politico, CNN, and MS NOW from the White House grounds, but he seemed unclear about U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly’s order blocking the ban.

“Well, the court actually said that, if you look at the judge’s decision, he’s been a very anti-Trump judge, which is very interesting. But if you look at his decision, he really said process. He talked about—come back to us with process,” Trump said, to which Cortellessa noted that Kelly was a Trump appointee.

“Yeah, he was. He was. It’s one of those things,” Trump said. Cortellessa asked if Trump thought he was ignoring Kelly’s order, to which Trump claimed he wasn’t.

“I’m not ignoring his order. I’m just saying that when I don’t have to go out of my way, these people write only bad stories. When they say orders, what order? I’m not even aware,” Trump said. White House communications director Stephen Cheung interjected to note that “the judge basically ordered them to renew their access back to the White House, but that’s different than allowing the pool into the events in the Oval Office or on Air Force One.”

“He actually said to the premises of the White House?” Trump replied, dumbfounded.

The entire interview showcased Trump’s narcissism and clear cognitive decline, with him going on tangents, lashing out unprompted at critics, and complaining about the “fake news” going after him constantly. Trump loves the attention, but it’s been clear for a long time that he is unable to handle the duties and scrutiny that comes with being president.

Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers has surrounded himself with people tied to the Living Word Church sex abuse scandal, but he’s not willing to publicly address the matter.

The former FBI agent dodged one such question while collecting a local endorsement in Saginaw on Wednesday, where a reporter asked why two pastors from the Living Word Church were on Rogers’s Faith Leadership Coalition, months after three elders at the church’s Midland chapter were sent to prison for sexually abusing children.

The dubious personnel inclusions involved Brian Ford of Living Word Church in Ludington as well as Tim Cross, the founding pastor of Living Word Church in Muskegon. Ford defended former pastor James Randolph at trial, before he was sentenced to at least 25 years for first degree criminal sexual conduct.

But when asked why Ford remained on his team, Rogers was suddenly much more interested in discussing left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, and the commentator’s connection to Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed. (El-Sayed has worked to distance himself from Piker in recent months.)

“This is a guy that came to our students and preaching that we deserved 9/11, that’s a story,” Rogers said, according to ABC News 12. Rogers did not confirm or deny if Ford was still a member of his Faith Leadership Coalition.

He did, however, briefly address his prior connection to Cross, who resigned from Rogers’s team earlier this year after he admitted he initially did not believe the sex abuse victims.

“Our volunteers, the people that volunteer for us, one of those folks have stepped away from his volunteer work, someone is still in the faith volunteer work, we think the most important part here is about who is stepping up and who is surrogates,” Rogers told reporters.

Rogers was in Saginaw to collect an endorsement from Democratic Sheriff William Federspiel, though the local Democrats immediately rebuked Federspiel’s support. Saginaw County’s Democratic Party Chair, Brandell Adams, told ABC News 12 that Federspiel was simply a “Democrat in name” who was furthering his “track record of endorsing losing candidates.”

Democratic dreams of midterm victory are alive in Mississippi and Kansas—two states that have been conservative strongholds for decades.

Republican Senator Tim Scott admitted as much while speaking with Semafor about the Kansas Senate race between Republican Roger Marshall and Democrat Adam Hamilton on Wednesday.

“It’s a very competitive state, more competitive than I’d like to see it,” the South Carolina Senator said in a surprisingly candid comment. “But the fact of the matter is that we’re going to win in Kansas.… It’ll be closer than I want it to be.”

President Trump won Kansas by about a 16 percent margin in 2024. Kansas Democrats haven’t sent someone to the Senate in more than 90 years. Scott speaking about their once in a lifetime moment of weakness in the state speaks to both Marshall’s weaknesses as a candidate and the larger, widely unpopular Trump administration record that he and every other GOP candidate is being forced to defend.

Scott’s comment comes as Senate candidate and former district attorney Scott Colom’s campaign begins to pick up steam in Mississippi, further reaffirming that even traditionally deep blue states and districts may not be as safe as they seem.

“The wave doesn’t have to be humongous for us to capture Mississippi,” Colom said to The Washington Post. He’s met with Senate leaders Chuck Schumer, Cory Booker, and Ralph Warnock. “If we try, we win these voters.… They’ve been written off, not just by Cindy Hyde-Smith but also by other people in the Democratic Party. And I’m just not going to write them off.”

While Colom and Hamilton both have uphill battles in spending and messaging, it’s clear that the tide is turning against this current iteration of the GOP. Only time will tell if the Democrats can successfully take advantage.