Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, is pressuring the Republican committee majority to take steps to investigate President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner over his foreign business activities.
On Thursday, Mr. Raskin sent a letter (pdf) to Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), requesting that he approve a subpoena to compel Mr. Kushner to provide records of his communications with members of the government of Saudi Arabia, as well as records of Saudi public investment in his business firm, A Fin Management LLC (also known as Affinity).
Mr. Kushner formed Affinity in 2021 after President Trump’s presidential term ended. Mr. Raskin alleged Affinity soon raised $2 billion from the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), a Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund overseen by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Democrats Question Kushner’s Saudi Ties
Democrat lawmakers began asking Mr. Kushner for his business records last year but did not pursue a subpoena to compel their release before Republicans gained control of the House in the 2022 midterms. In a June 2022 letter (pdf), then-Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) specifically asked for documents pertaining to PIF’s investment in Affinity. Ms. Maloney also asked Mr. Kushner for all records of any communications he had with the Saudi Crown Prince pertaining to his or his family’s business dealings.
In her 2022 letter, Ms. Maloney repeatedly referenced close relations between Mr. Kushner and the Saudi government and royal family throughout the Trump administration, when he served as an advisor to his father-in-law. She noted a 2017 $110 billion arms deal Mr. Kushner reportedly helped arrange between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, and 2019 Congressional reports alleging he advocated for the U.S. to share nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia.
“While you were shaping U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia, your brother Joshua Kushner’s venture capital firm, Thrive Capital Management (Thrive), was engaging in business with Saudi officials, including the managing director of PIF,” Ms. Maloney’s 2022 letter states. “Prior to entering government service, you were closely involved with Thrive, receiving millions from the fund and sitting on the fund’s board and investment committees until January 2017. Your intersecting family, financial, and political relationships led government ethics experts to question your impartiality in dealing with Saudi Arabia and whether you were playing a ‘shell game’ with your assets by selling them to your brother.”
Ms. Maloney further alleged that a presentation to pitch Affinity to investors “suggests that its business model is focused on trading on the relationships you built while working for your father-in-law in the White House.” She said the presentation made references to Middle East peace projects like the Abraham Accords, as well as the OPEC+ 2020 Production Cut—”All foreign policy matters that you either ‘led,’ ‘oversaw,’ or were ‘instrumental’ in facilitating.
Dueling Investigations
The Democrat requests to collect Mr. Kushner’s business records come as Republican lawmakers have been pursuing records of President Joe Biden’s interactions with his own family’s various business dealings, including interactions with his son Hunter Biden.
“Committee Republicans cannot claim to be ‘investigating foreign nationals’ attempts to target and coerce high-ranking U.S. officials’ family members by providing money or other benefits in exchange for certain actions’ without examining the former Administration’s plethora of foreign financial entanglements,” reads a Thursday press statement from the House Oversight Committee Democrats.
In his letter to Mr. Comer, Mr. Raskin wrote that he was encouraged by a recent comment the Republican chairman made that “what Kushner did crossed the line of ethics.” Mr. Comer made that comment during an Aug. 10 interview with CNN, before adding, “It happened after [Mr. Kushner] left office, and Jared Kushner actually has a legitimate business.”
By comparison, Mr. Comer argued that Republicans have been looking into money that flowed to various Biden family business interests “while Joe Biden was vice president.”
A spokesperson for the House Oversight Committee’s Republican majority cast Mr. Raskin’s subpoena request as an effort to draw attention away from their own investigative efforts.
“Ranking Member Raskin’s letter to Chairman Comer is nothing more than an attempt to distract from the mounting evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s influence-peddling schemes,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “If Ranking Member Raskin was truly concerned about ethics in government, then he would join Republicans in our investigation of the Bidens’ blatant corruption. However, Ranking Member Raskin is only concerned about playing Biden family defense lawyer.”
