Jared Kushner Denies Book Claims of Hacked Phone and Billions in Foreign Funds

Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President Trump, is rejecting a report that alleges a hacked iPhone, foreign intelligence agents and billions of dollars in transfers from Middle Eastern governments. The claims come from an upcoming book by journalist Matthew Cole, and Kushner has called them baseless.

The book is titled "Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed's Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East." It asserts that Kushner had access to more than $2 billion in what it calls "slush money funds" from leaders in the region, allegedly meant to buy "influence within the U.S. government."

An excerpt published Thursday in Vanity Fair covers Kushner's years as a senior White House adviser in the first Trump administration. In that role he took a leading part in U.S. Middle East policy and helped negotiate major foreign policy deals involving Israel, the Gulf states, China and Russia. CBS News has not independently verified the excerpt.

According to the excerpt, Dutch intelligence agents learned in 2017 that Russia had hacked Kushner's iPhone. They reportedly found this out after turning a Russian spy, and then gained access to the device themselves. The account says that when Kushner used the phone, the agents could see his screen, and their service began capturing every image he viewed.

The report alleges the Dutch spies watched him log into a United Arab Emirates account that had supposedly received hundreds of millions of dollars from a bank in Azerbaijan. It also claims the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the UAE put at least $2 billion into several bank accounts tied to Kushner, one of them held at Israel's Central Bank.

Per the excerpt, the owners and managers of those accounts were often presented as official government bodies or charities. The money, it says, was actually intended for "off-the-books diplomatic objectives," such as brokering a deal to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The report further claims Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman placed roughly $1 billion in at least one account, citing a "person with knowledge of the money" who said its allocation was for Kushner's personal benefit.

Kushner and his legal team issued sharp statements Thursday night denying everything. "The allegations made by this author are completely insane and never happened," Kushner said. He added that his side denied every claim on the record, yet the author offered "not a single shred of verifiable evidence." He noted that no bank statements, wire transfer records, account numbers or transaction dates were provided.

His attorney described the claims as "false and defamatory" and said they plan to pursue legal action against those responsible, without saying who that would include.

CBS News asked the White House for comment and was directed to a statement from Steven Cheung, assistant to the president and White House director of communications. Writing on X, Cheung called the Vanity Fair article's source book "complete fiction" and said it was fabricated by a "failed spy thriller writer." He said the book presents no evidence or documentation, only "mysterious words from unnamed sources."