list out of these people who had been trashing MBS in phone calls, and said ‘these are the ones who are your enemies.’ MBS was actually bragging about it in Saudi Arabia when it happened, that he and Jared sat up until 4AM discussing things, and Jared brought him this list.”229 A second Saudi source told the Mail that Kushner and MBS “sat for several hours together. They literally laid out the future map of the entire region, that’s why they stayed up to the early hours of the morning from the afternoon before.”230
Another disturbing aspect of Kushner’s October 2017 trip to Riyadh is the subsequent revelation that during the same week Kushner was in the Saudi capital working on reshaping the geopolitics of the Middle East, another member of the Kushner clan was there as well—working on a business deal. According to the New York Times, Jared’s brother, Josh, flew out of Riyadh less than twenty-four hours before Jared flew in; Josh had been attending an investor conference at which MBS “promised to spend billions of dollars on a high-tech future for Saudi Arabia.” The younger Kushner had “frequently ducked out for more exclusive conversations with Saudi officials,” however.231 The appearance left by the synchronicity between the Kushner brothers’ travel itineraries—that “top aides” to MBS were discussing sizable investments in one Kushner enterprise just hours before receiving classified intelligence from another Kushner to help the crown prince take control of Saudi Arabia—is troubling.232 What is even more concerning, however, is that, as the Times reports, through the entirety of the 2016 presidential campaign Jared Kushner had a financial “interest in his brother’s funds” and “ties [to] his brother’s company.”233 According to the newspaper, before the election Jared Kushner was “closely involved” in Josh Kushner’s firm, Thrive Capital, “having sat on the board and investment committees of Thrive” through the beginning of the Trump administration, and having “received at least $8.2 million in capital gains from various Thrive funds while working in the White House”—meaning that, despite stepping down from Thrive’s board in January 2017, Jared Kushner stood to gain financially from any deals his brother did with MBS in the days immediately preceding or following his secret trip to meet with the Saudi crown prince.234
Within twelve months of Josh Kushner’s meetings with top aides to MBS in Riyadh, Thrive will have raised $1 billion in new funds. It is unclear how much of this came from MBS and his promised “billions” of new investments in American firms.235 A Thrive spokesman “declined to disclose whether Saudis had invested in any Thrive funds,” answering queries from the Times instead with a cryptic remark about Thrive having “received no money since the presidential election from any Saudi who had not previously invested in its funds”—inadvertently raising an additional worry for ethics watchdogs in Washington, namely that MBS had been giving money to the younger Kushner during the presidential campaign even as his emissary George Nader was offering money to another member of the Trump family, Don Jr.236 Asked by the Times whether Thrive had in fact continued receiving investments from Saudis who had already invested in Thrive pre-election, Thrive’s spokesman “declined to answer.”237
Josh Kushner’s access to top MBS aides like Yasir Al-Rumayyan in Riyadh in October 2017 raises eyebrows in the tech community as well. According to the Times, “The Riyadh conference drew Wall Street titans, and some attendees questioned how a relatively small player [Josh Kushner] enjoyed high-level access to Saudi officials.”238 Al-Rumayyan, for instance, is managing director of the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund, and his son Faisal began socializing with Josh Kushner in New York after Jared’s brother returned there from Riyadh.239
That Trump and Kushner agreed to give classified information to MBS to help him solidify his hold on power in Riyadh is seemingly confirmed when, following the crown prince’s November 2017 purge, Trump “tell[s] friends that he and Jared had engineered a Saudi coup.”240 “We’ve put our man on top!” Trump crows.241 While Kushner’s involvement in the intelligence transfer is unsurprising, given that he was at the time a “voracious” reader of the President’s Daily Brief, the PDB is in fact “intended only for the president and his closest advisers”; although Kushner is a top adviser to President Trump, it is unclear how much of the classified intelligence included in the PDB is relevant to his official role in the White House.242 According to a former White House official and a former U.S. intelligence professional familiar with Kushner’s habits,