Jared Kushner rejected a Vanity Fair book excerpt alleging a Russian phone hack exposed $2 billion in Middle East accounts as categorically false, after counsel cited no proof and a newspaper’s pullback.
Former Trump White House senior adviser Jared Kushner on October 22, 2026, tore into a Daily Caller report on a Vanity Fair exclusive excerpt that claimed Russian military intelligence hacked his phone and uncovered access to Middle Eastern bank accounts holding at least $2 billion.
Kushner called the charges completely insane, categorically false, and events that never happened. His legal counsel said there are no such bank accounts, said no evidence showed the phone was ever hacked, and said they intend to pursue legal action over what they labeled categorically false and defamatory allegations.
The fight is familiar terrain for the Trump family, which has faced years of investigations, media blasts, and threats of new probes whenever Democrats smell political blood in a midterm cycle. The excerpt lands as another high-stakes claim built on unnamed sources and thin paper, not the wire records, account numbers, or transaction dates Kushner says were never produced.
Vanity Fair published a Thursday exclusive excerpt from Matthew Cole’s upcoming book, “Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East,” from Simon & Schuster.
Cole’s excerpt alleged that Russian military intelligence hacked Kushner’s phone sometime between 2017 and 2018. In the narrative Cole offered, Dutch intelligence arranged for British authorities to apprehend a Russian military intelligence operative. The operative chose cooperation over arrest and gave the Dutch access to a Russian intelligence server that held screenshots of Kushner’s iPhone. Cole wrote that the Dutch later developed their own method of monitoring Kushner’s screen.
From that alleged access, Cole claimed Kushner had ties to “Alpha” and “Beta” bank accounts connected to leaders of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The Alpha account, he wrote, sat at the UAE’s largest bank and was overseen by the bank’s chairman, a brother of UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed, also known as MBZ.
Cole alleged that $750 million moved into the Alpha account, which Kushner and MBZ would oversee or partly manage in connection with an Israeli-Palestinian conflict deal effort. By spring 2018, Cole wrote, the Beta account had moved about $1 billion to Israel through Azerbaijan for Kushner. Someone who knew about the money, Cole reported, said it was for Kushner’s personal benefit.
Cole also wrote that Dutch intelligence traced funds to an Azerbaijani government-linked bank account that sent hundreds of millions of dollars to a Dubai account. One source, per Cole, said money went in “significant amounts” to individuals including a warlord, a mercenary, and a former hit man. No names for those recipients appear in the reporting.
Cole did not stop at the money trail. He argued Kushner faced federal disclosure duties tied to any such access.
"Regardless of whether he was a signatory or the owner, Jared was required by federal government regulations and the Internal Revenue Service to disclose his access to the account"
Cole added a sharper legal claim in the same vein.
"Unless disclosed to and approved by the US government and reported on his tax returns, Kushner’s access to the Alpha account may have violated US law."
An unnamed source who had spoken with both UAE and Israeli officials offered Cole a motive frame that mixed diplomacy and business.
"Jared was looking for shortcuts in his diplomacy,"
The same source continued, in Cole’s telling: “Jared promised MBZ that he’d push their agenda with Trump if they participated in a fund. He wanted normalization with Israel so that business could take off.”
Those lines are attributed claims from Cole’s project, not adjudicated findings. They sit beside a record in which Kushner says none of this ever appeared across the intense scrutiny he already faced.
Kushner did not hedge. In an October 22, 2026, post on X, he rejected the Vanity Fair excerpt point by point and stressed the absence of hard proof.
"@VanityFair posted an excerpt from a book containing outrageous and categorically false allegations. The allegations made by this author are completely insane and never happened. We denied every one of these claims on the record, yet the author failed to provide a single shred of evidence to substantiate any of them. No bank statements, wire transfer records, account numbers, transaction dates, or other verifiable details were provided to support these extraordinary accusations. During the period in question, I was one of the most scrutinized people in the world, subjected to intense media coverage, multiple congressional investigations, and a special counsel investigation. I voluntarily cooperated with these investigations, providing over 30 hours of testimony. None of these allegations ever surfaced, because none of these events ever happened. These are outrageous fabrications being presented as investigative journalism. This is not journalism. It is a mixture of fantasy, fiction, and advocacy, written by someone who is either deeply disturbed or acting with sinister intent."
He separately branded the charges “completely insane, categorically false, and never happened,” and said the work presented fabrications as investigative journalism.
That posture matches a broader pattern in which Trump-world figures prepare for lawfare while critics reload old narratives. Readers tracking how Trump earmarks PAC millions for family defense already know the family treats these cycles as legal and political combat, not casual press spats.
Chad Mizelle, identified as Kushner’s legal counsel, backed the denial in public statements summarized and partly quoted in the coverage. Mizelle said the book’s central allegation is false, stating “there are no bank accounts.” He said no evidence had been produced that his client’s phone was ever hacked.
Mizelle also pointed to the Jerusalem Post. That outlet, he said, took down its own reporting on Cole’s claims after identifying “significant factual questions about the alleged financial transactions.” Mizelle said the team intends to pursue legal action against groups publishing “categorically false and defamatory allegations.”
A newspaper pulling copy over factual questions is not a footnote. It is a public signal that the transaction story did not clear even a second outlet’s bar once editors looked harder. Cole’s excerpt still advances possible IRS and U.S. government disclosure problems. Kushner’s side answers that the accounts do not exist and that the phone-hack claim lacks proof.
Democratic leaders have already telegraphed what comes next whenever a family-linked story breaks at scale, including when Democrats signal sweeping Trump probes as a governing priority if they regain the House.
Kushner’s core rebuttal is process as much as substance. He notes that during the period in question he faced wall-to-wall media coverage, multiple congressional investigations, and a special counsel investigation. He says he voluntarily cooperated and gave more than 30 hours of testimony. In his account, none of Cole’s bank-and-hack storylines surfaced then because none of the events happened.
That gap matters. Extraordinary accusations about secret Alpha and Beta accounts, $750 million into one vehicle, roughly $1 billion moved toward Israel through Azerbaijan by spring 2018, and side payments to a warlord, a mercenary, and a former hit man would normally leave a paper trail. Kushner says the author supplied none of the ordinary proof: no bank statements, no wire records, no account numbers, no transaction dates.
House Democrats have separately mapped aggressive oversight aimed at Trump’s circle if they retake power, a track covered when House Democrats prepare sweeping probes targeting Trump and his allies. Allegation packages that arrive without documents still feed that machine.
Strip the excerpt to its load-bearing parts and the structure is clear. A Russian military intelligence hack is alleged in a 2017, 2018 window. A captured operative supposedly opened a server of iPhone screenshots. Dutch services supposedly kept watching. Alpha and Beta accounts supposedly tied Kushner to UAE and Saudi leadership money. Funds supposedly moved through Azerbaijan and Dubai. A source supposedly called the cash a personal benefit. Another source supposedly described diplomatic shortcuts tied to a fund and Israel normalization.
What the published account, as relayed, does not deliver is primary bank paper, official U.S. confirmation of the accounts, or on-the-record Dutch or British statements printed in the seed coverage. Cole’s legal warning about disclosure and possible U.S. law violations is his written framing. Mizelle’s answer is blunt: no accounts, no hack evidence, and a defamation fight ahead.
Family-adjacent controversies have a way of recycling through the same press and political channels, whether the subject is security pressure or money stories, as when coverage turned to how Donald Trump Jr. repays a Russian businessman tied to a lavish wedding bill. The method is steady: flash a dramatic claim, lean on anonymous color, and dare the target to spend years proving a negative.
On one side stands Cole’s Vanity Fair excerpt and book rollout: a hack narrative, dual accounts labeled Alpha and Beta, multi-hundred-million and billion-dollar flows, UAE and Saudi political tie-ins, and a suggestion that IRS and federal disclosure rules may have been breached.
On the other stands Kushner’s on-the-record denial, his counsel’s statement that the accounts do not exist, the claim that zero evidence shows a phone hack, the Jerusalem Post’s takedown after “significant factual questions about the alleged financial transactions,” and a promised legal offensive against publishers of the charges.
Those positions are disputed in full. The excerpt asserts a secret money web exposed by foreign intelligence. Kushner calls that web a fantasy. Readers get quotes, a timeline of claims, and a clear record of what was not attached: the ordinary financial documents that would turn a book allegation into a proven case.
Pressure on the Trump orbit does not arrive only as subpoenas. It also arrives as security drama and institutional strain, including episodes when the Secret Service puts officials on leave as threats against the family intensify. The information war runs on a parallel track.
When a blockbuster charge about $2 billion and a presidential adviser’s phone rests on screenshots nobody publishes and accounts nobody documents, the burden stays with the accuser, not with the man already searched for years who says the whole thing never happened.
