Kushner Legal Team Targets Book Author

Jared Kushner’s legal team is preparing a lawsuit against journalist Matthew Cole following the release of an excerpt from Cole’s new book. The suit aims to address what Kushner’s attorney called false and defamatory claims regarding Kushner’s financial ties to Middle Eastern leaders. The move comes after a Thursday publication in Vanity Fair detailed specific allegations that Kushner’s camp has now formally rejected.

The book, titled Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East, asserts that Kushner had access to more than $2 billion in funds from Gulf states. The author describes these as slush money intended to purchase influence within the U.S. government. The excerpt focuses on Kushner’s years as a senior White House adviser during the first Trump administration, a period when he helped negotiate major foreign policy deals involving Israel, the Gulf states, China, and Russia.

Central to the allegations is a claim that Dutch intelligence agents discovered in 2017 that Russian spies had hacked Kushner’s iPhone. The report states that Dutch agents gained access to the device after turning a Russian spy and subsequently watched Kushner log into a United Arab Emirates account. The book claims this account received hundreds of millions of dollars from an Azerbaijani bank. It further alleges that leaders from Saudi Arabia and the UAE deposited at least $2 billion into several accounts tied to Kushner, including one held at Israel’s Central Bank.

According to the text, the owners of these accounts were often presented as official government bodies or charities. The author argues the money was actually meant for off-the-books diplomatic objectives, such as brokering a deal to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The report specifically cites a person with knowledge of the money who said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman placed roughly $1 billion in at least one account for Kushner’s personal benefit.

Kushner issued a statement Thursday night calling the allegations completely insane and claiming they never happened. He noted that his team denied every claim on the record while the author offered not a single shred of verifiable evidence. Kushner pointed out the absence of bank statements, wire transfer records, account numbers, or transaction dates to support the narrative.

His attorney said the plans include pursuing legal action against those responsible, though the lawyer did not specify exactly who that would include. The White House also reacted to the news, directing CBS News to a statement from Steven Cheung, assistant to the president and White House director of communications. Cheung called the book complete fiction on X, describing it as a fabrication by a failed spy thriller writer that relies on mysterious words from unnamed sources.

The Vanity Fair excerpt has not been independently verified by CBS News. The legal team’s decision to move toward litigation marks a formal escalation of the dispute over the financial history presented in Cole’s work.