Kushner goes to Moscow: Trump's son-in-law re-emerges as White House dealmaker

As Donald ruff was candidature for a bring back to the edward d. White domiciliate in early 2024, the political news website Axios held its annual summit involving talks with movers and shakers in Washington, as well as business and media executives.

One of the interviews featured Jared Kushner, who Axios had floated weeks earlier as possible secretary of state candidate in a potential 2025 Trump administration. Kushner, the son-in-law of Trump, did his best to dispel such talk.

"I’ve been very clear that my desire at this phase of my life is to focus on my firm," Kushner, the CEO of investment fund Affinity Partners. "I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity as a family to be out of the spotlight."

If Kushner wanted out, what is clear now — as the U.S. Engages in more negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war — is that they've pulled him back in, to paraphrase the most iconic line from the polarizing The Godfather Part III.

On Tuesday, Kushner accompanied the U.S. Special envoy for peace missions, Steve Witkoff, to the Kremlin in Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Witkoff has previously met with Putin a reported five times, raising concerns for not bringing a U.S.-based translator and, according to Democrats and even a few Republicans, being susceptible to Russian talking points.

It is believed to be the first time Kushner has met with Putin.

The idea of Kushner as secretary of state seemed curious at best, if not fanciful. During Trump's first term, Kusner had his finger in a number of pies — from energy policy to Middle East diplomacy to North American trade talks — all while never having faced confirmation hearings from the Senate, the usual path for those engaged in high-level talks for the State Department.

The political neophyte received credit from many foreign policy analysts in the first Trump term for helping to engender the Abraham Accords, diplomatic agreements between Israel and United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.

"I think my disadvantage was that I didn't have any context, and my advantage was that I didn't have any context," Kushner told Harvard University Middle East Initiative program in March 2024. "So I would always take a first principles, results-oriented apprach with the goal of 'how do you maximize human potential?'"

U.S. Envoys meet with Israeli leadership to discuss next ceasefire phase

There were also lowlights. Kushner in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic oversaw a shambolic effort involving unpaid volunteers that unwittingly saw the federal government compete with states for needed medical supplies.

Kushner's re-emergence in a second Trump administration occurred months ago as he worked alongside Witkoff to help the U.S. Negotiate what was finalized in October, an Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal.

Speaking to Israel's Knesset in October, Trump said in reference to Kushner, "We need that brain on occasion."

"We always bring Jared when we wanna get that deal closed," Trump said.

It was an interesting development given that 18 months before Hamas and other militans launched their deadly attack in southern Israel, Kushner in a Wall Street Journal op-ed declared, "We are witnessing the last vestiges of what has been known as the Arab-Israeli conflict."

That seemingly complex, history-laden conflict, Kushner added, was "nothing more than a real-estate dispute between Israelis and Palestinians."

Kushner's return to the scene comes with not even a White House adviser title, and more than a few questions. When Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, served as advisers during his father-in-law's first term, they reported at least $172 million US in outside income, according to the non-profit watchdog, Citizen For Ethics.

As well, his Affinity group, which has acquired stakes in video game company Electronic Arts and co-founded an AI startup — it's actually called Brain Co. — has received considerable cash during Kushner's time away from politics from Saudi, Qatari and Emirati investors.

Democratic lawmakers last year called for a probe into the $2 billion Kushner's equity fund received from Saudi Arabia, sensing the potential for a conflict of interest, but they would soon lose control of the Senate.

Kushner, for his part, said in a podcast last year he made it clear to his Middle East business partners not to expect any favours should Trump return to power.

With respect to Eastern European negotiations, Reuters in late November was the first to report a meeting the previous month in Miami involving Witkoff, Kushner and Kirill Dmitriev, who heads a Russian sovereign wealth fund. Few inside the State Department and White House were briefed on that encounter, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, and it informed a 28-point peace plan that set off alarm bells across Europe for being slanted to Russian interests.

Since then, Kushner has also been seen at the table for talks with Ukrainian officials.

Kushner was not heavily involved in Trump's first term in Russian diplomacy, though he does mention speaking to Dmitriev in his 2022 memoir, Breaking History, though the talks were centred on keeping Russia apprised of Middle East talks leading up to the Abraham Accords.

Kushner admitted in the book to shying away from any first term diplomacy with Moscow after meeting with multiple interviews with the team of special counsel Robert Mueller, who was investigating contacts between Russia and the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.

The most damaging allegation for Kushner in the Mueller probe concerned a report that, between Trump's win and first inauguration, he suggested to then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak establishing a back channel for talks using Russian diplomatic facilties. Kushner in his memoir emphatically denied that, suspecting a damaging leak from the office of then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson, who was said to have resented Kushner's adviser status.

A number of American officials have spoken to Ukraine and Russian counterparts in hopes of ending the war, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has seemingly only been intermittently involved.

Keith Kellogg, a retired army lieutenant general who has long been in Trump’s orbit, is said to be winding down his envoy role, according to reports this month from Reuters and The Associated Press. While Kellogg has been one of the few administration officials to have visited Kyiv, he's also pressured President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to hold overdue elections as soon as possible.

U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has emerged as a new voice in the talks. The former Yale Law School classmate of Vice-President JD Vance, Driscoll was involved in talks with Russian officials in Abu Dhabi last month.

Vance and Driscoll also spoke with Zelenskyy days later, where Driscoll is said to have commented on the "remarkable" perfomrance of the Ukrainian military in nearly four years of war.

Then there's Witkoff, a wealthy donor to Trump and longtime friend. As Trump's second inauguration neared, reports emerged that Kushner was acting as an informal adviser on Middle East issues for Witkoff.

After Trump capped his remarkable political comeback, which included pledges on the campaign trail to quickly end the Russia-Ukraine war, his approach to Ukraine and Zelenskyy has veered from conciliatory to combative. Just last week, Witkoff accused Ukraine's leaders of displaying "zero gratitude" for U.S. Efforts to end the war.

Now Kushner is back. He has often made veiled criticisms of the efforts of career diplomats, and he described his approach to negotiations to the New York Times in October.

"You have to be able able to kind of get the bottom line out of them, and then see who do you think is playing games, and how much room do you have to push things?" said Kushner.

"It’s just different being deal guys — just a different sport."

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