Trump family cashes in on Saudi deals as Kushner’s fund backs Israeli arms-linked finance

By Layla Kanafani | Pamphlets | October 13, 2026

Donald Trump’s family is making money from Saudi business deals while the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, negotiates the future of Gaza through a private investment empire bankrolled by Gulf monarchies. That empire holds a stake worth more than $1 billion in an Israeli financial firm whose portfolio includes major suppliers to Israel’s military.

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund committed $2 billion to Kushner’s Affinity Partners shortly after he left Trump’s first White House. An October 1 CNN investigation has since documented how Affinity became the largest shareholder in Phoenix Financial, an Israeli institution with at least $456 million invested across nine companies linked to Israel’s war machine.

The result is an obscene convergence of political power and private capital: a presidential relative discusses war and peace with governments whose money supports his business, while that business participates in the financial system backing the weapons industry of one of the combatants.

Saudi billions built Kushner’s investment empire

Kushner created Affinity Partners in 2021. Within months, the Saudi Public Investment Fund, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, committed $2 billion. The New York Times reported that Saudi fund advisers had objected to the proposal, citing the firm’s inexperience, but the investment went ahead. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates subsequently supplied additional capital.

This was no ordinary investor meeting a new fund manager. Kushner had been Trump’s chief White House adviser on Middle East policy and cultivated close relations with the Saudi crown prince. His private firm secured a staggering commitment from that same monarchy after his government service ended.

Jared Kushner in June 2025. White House photograph by Andrea Hanks; U.S. government work (public domain).

An Israeli financial giant holds military-linked stocks

Affinity acquired a stake in Phoenix Financial in 2024 and roughly doubled it just before Trump returned to the White House in January 2025. According to CNN’s examination of Israeli financial records, Phoenix held at least $265.1 million in shares of Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, as well as holdings in Next Vision, Bet Shemesh Engines, Reshef Technologies and other companies supplying military equipment.

Among the products associated with those companies are drone cameras, aircraft engines, shell fuzes, armored-vehicle components and demolition equipment. CNN identified at least $456 million in Phoenix holdings across nine military-linked companies, using records that covered only part of its overall portfolio.

In July 2026, Affinity sold about a quarter of its Phoenix stake for more than $340 million. CNN reported that the firm remained Phoenix’s largest shareholder, with a 7.4 percent holding worth more than $1 billion. Affinity does not directly own the nine arms-linked stocks identified by CNN, and the reporting did not establish that Kushner’s diplomatic decisions caused gains in those investments. The conflict of interest is the coexistence of the roles, not a proven secret order to buy a particular stock.

Trump’s business expands in the Saudi kingdom

The president’s immediate family is pursuing its own Gulf payday. In January 2026, the Trump Organization announced $10 billion in Saudi real-estate projects with DarGlobal, including a $7 billion Trump-branded development in Diriyah associated with a massive Saudi sovereign-fund-backed development, and a $3 billion project in Jeddah. Such figures describe project values, not money personally paid to Trump, but the branding arrangements create direct commercial interests in a monarchy whose rulers depend on Washington.

Trump’s White House separately announced in November 2025 that Saudi Arabia was raising its promised investment commitments in the United States toward $1 trillion alongside expanded defense cooperation. The administration describes these agreements as good for American jobs and security. Yet the same presidency is the source of enormous new opportunities for the Trump family’s private businesses.

Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Diriyah on May 13, 2025. Official White House photograph by Daniel Torok; U.S. government work (public domain).

Gaza is not a real-estate development opportunity

Kushner has negotiated with Israeli leaders over Gaza, helped shape the Trump administration’s ceasefire framework and publicly presented plans for the territory’s reconstruction. He has done so as an informal, unpaid adviser rather than an ordinary federal official subject to the same financial disclosure requirements.

The White House says Kushner’s business interests are separate from his volunteer diplomatic work. That denial does not remove the structural conflict: an investor with a substantial financial stake in Israel’s economy is helping determine policy toward an occupied, devastated Palestinian territory.

A year after the 2025 ceasefire, the Associated Press reported that major parts of the agreement remained unfulfilled, Israeli military control had expanded, and more than two million Palestinians still faced severe deprivation. Gaza’s population does not get to shop for a better deal. The people making diplomatic and investment decisions do.

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on July 7, 2025. Official White House photograph by Daniel Torok; U.S. government work (public domain).

Call it what it is: government by the moneyed class

The Saudi monarchy supplies capital. Israeli military contractors supply weapons. Trump’s government supplies diplomacy, arms partnerships and political cover. The Trump family and its associates move through all three worlds as private dealmakers and public power brokers.

No court has established that the Saudi investment, the Phoenix stake or the Trump Organization’s property agreements constitute a criminal bribe. But criminal conviction is not the only standard for judging a government. Public office should not become a commercial asset whose holders can profit from the states and corporations affected by their decisions.

Trump sells himself as a champion of ordinary Americans against a corrupt establishment. His family’s Gulf empire shows the opposite: political access and capital reinforcing each other at the top, while workers bear the costs of war, displacement and public spending. It is not a failure to separate business from politics. It is the ruling class turning politics into business.

Sources

CNN, October 1, 2026 — https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/01/us/jared-kushner-israel-gaza-investments-invs-vis

Financial Times, January 2026 — https://www.ft.com/content/c4937ce2-dc1e-444a-8410-5665aa68cb2d

Associated Press, October 10, 2026 — https://apnews.com/article/f6c105e8f72d8b478d78312142d888ed

White House, November 18, 2025 — https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/11/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-solidifies-economic-and-defense-partnership-with-the-kingdom-of-saudi-arabia/

PBS Frontline, June 30, 2026 — https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/mohammed-bin-salman-saudi-arabia-investments-kushner-mnuchin-trump/