Foreign Policy

New Book Says Jared Kushner Funneled Money to Middle East Mercenaries. Kushner Denies It.

Princes and Thieves makes explosive claims about the Trump family’s role in Middle Eastern intrigue.

Matthew Petti | 10.26.2026 11:57 AM

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(Illustration: Princes and Thieves/Matthew Cole/Atria/One Signal Publishers/)

Princes and Thieves, a new book by investigative journalist Matthew Cole, may open a rabbit hole into financial connections between Middle Eastern dictators and President Donald Trump's family. Cole accuses Emirati monarch Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) of sending billions of dollars to various mercenaries and political operators, including Jared Kushner, son-in-law to President Donald Trump. Cole's reporting combines well-documented connections with secondhand accounts from anonymous sources.

On Thursday, Vanity Fair published an excerpt from the book, reporting that Dutch military intelligence hacked into Kushner's phone in 2018 and discovered hundreds of millions of dollars in bank transfers connected to MBZ. Also on Thursday, Kushner published a letter from his lawyers to Cole categorically denying the "incredible and false" allegations in the book. "Mr. Kushner never accessed foreign accounts and always followed all rules and regulations and only pursued goals that were in the best interest of the United States as directed by the President of the United States," they wrote.

Cole had originally written on his blog that the book was scheduled for release on October 27, but the publication date was pushed forward over the weekend.

The book purports to tie Kushner to a vast web of Emirati influence operations around the world. In Cole's telling, which matches other journalists' accounts, MBZ wants to reshape the Middle East and eastern Africa into an alliance of........

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