Vanity Fair was tight-lipped Monday on its decision to publish an inflammatory book excerpt accusing President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner of overseeing secret bank accounts funded by Middle Eastern leaders to the tune of at least $2 billion — as questions about the piece’s accuracy and credibility mounted.
The mag was silent despite Kushner lawyer Chad Mizelle’s demand that it take down the excerpt from journo Matthew Cole’s new book “Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East.”
“We formally put Vanity Fair and Condé Nast on notice regarding the false and defamatory allegations published about our client, Jared Kushner,” Mizelle, a former Justice Department chief of staff, wrote on X Saturday.
“Serious questions are now being raised about the credibility of this reporting, including by independent journalists,” he added.
“Despite repeated requests, the author has failed to produce a single bank statement, wire transfer record, account number, or other verifiable evidence supporting these extraordinary accusations.”
Vanity Fair never reached out to Kushner to fact-check the article or even ask him for comment before publishing the piece last Thursday, according to sources close to him.
A Vanity Fair rep failed to answer a Post inquiry Monday asking why it didn’t reach out to Kushner or whether it did its own fact-checking of the piece — or simply relied on the book’s publisher, Simon & Schuster.
Meanwhile, Kushner is expected to sue both Simon & Schuster and Cole as early as this week, with a potential suit against Vanity Fair to follow.
Simon & Schuster released Cole’s book on Sunday — two days ahead of the originally scheduled release date.
In a Thursday letter to Vanity Fair and its parent Condé Nast, Kushner’s attorneys at Clare Locke LLP called the article “defamatory,” adding that the allegations against their client are “false” and “outrageous.”
Kushner and his legal team pushed back hard on Simon & Schuster and Cole, denying the book’s claims in a separate 13-page letter.
Kushner echoed the sentiment on X, writing Thursday: “The allegations made by this author are completely insane and never happened.
“We denied every claim on the record, yet the author provided not a single shred of verifiable evidence to substantiate them,” he added.
In the excerpt, Cole alleged that Kushner oversaw secret bank accounts funded by leaders from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. At least $2 billion was allegedly funneled into accounts in Azerbaijan and with Israel’s Central Bank, with about half of the funds intended for Kushner’s “personal benefit,” according to the journo.
But critics have questioned Cole’s reporting, with the Bank of Israel telling reporter Neria Krause that it was not aware of any such arrangement. Cole’s article even notes the central bank does not offer personal accounts.
The article’s assertion that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu played a role in accessing the purported central bank account drew scrutiny from Axios’ Barak Ravid, who noted accounts there “are under significant monitoring by career civil servants.”
The piece also claimed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman moved “roughly $1 billion to Israel via Azerbaijan for Kushner.” It included a convoluted back-story in which Dutch spies allegedly cottoned on to a Russian scheme to monitor Kushner’s phone — leading the Dutch to track it, too, according to Cole.
On Friday, The Jerusalem Post removed an article about Cole’s reporting, citing “significant factual questions about the alleged financial transactions.”
This is not the first time Kushner has pushed back against questionable reporting. Earlier this month, he put out a lengthy “fact check” to a New Yorker piece that takes up “familiar accusations” linking his diplomatic efforts in the Trump administration to his own private equity firm’s bottom line.
The latest controversy comes at a delicate time for Vanity Fair and Condé Nast, which is scrambling to hire a CEO after Roger Lynch resigned last month.
Meanwhile, the magazine has come off a turbulent year under its new boundary-pushing editorial director Mark Guiducci, who got heat last year for hiring scandal-scarred political reporter Olivia Nuzzi. Nuzzi had been fired from New York Magazine in 2024 for not disclosing a relationship with then-2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom she interviewed for the glossy.
Three months after landing the Vanity Fair gig, she was let go as a fresh wave of scandals were revealed by her ex-fiancé and fellow journalist Ryan Lizza.
The Post has sought comment from Cole and Simon & Schuster.
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