Jared Kushner and Steve Mnuchin cashed in fast on their Trump-era work, raising $3.5 billion from Arab states for private funds, report says

• Kushner and Mnuchin raised $3.5 billion from Arab states since leaving office, per the NYT.
• Saudi Arabia put $2 billion and $1 billion respectively into Kushner and Mnuchin's funds, it said.

Jared Kushner, former senior advisor to President Donald Trump, and former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin raised a combined $3.5 billion from Arab monarchies within six months of leaving the office, The New York Times reported.

Shortly after President Donald Trump left office, Mnuchin launched his own fund, Liberty Capital, and Kushner followed soon after, launching Affinity Partners in July.

Within six months, Affinity Partners had reportedly secured a $2 billion investment from the Saudi sovereign-wealth fund.

Liberty Capital raised more than $1.5 billion from the sovereign-wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Qatar, within three months of Mnuchin leaving office, The Times reported.

Political commentators and ethics experts were concerned that the investments may be a way for the investors to gain footing with those close to Trump, should he run for and win the 2024 election. Trump is yet to declare whether he will run.

The Times reported that Kushner and Mnuchin made a string of visits to the Middle East while still in office, meeting those who would ultimately invest billions in their funds.

Kushner made three trips to the Middle East shortly after the November 2020 US election, The Times said, including a January 5 meeting with leaders of the Gulf states in Saudi Arabia.

On January 5, 2021, Mnuchin started his own Middle East tour, with scheduled stops with the heads of the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait, The Times reported.

All three were future investors in his funds.

Kushner managed to secure the $2 billion investment from the Saudis despite The Times reporting that fund's internal investor screening board warned against the investment.

The board flagged that its background check found that Affinity Partners was "unsatisfactory in all aspects" and that there were "public relations risks" given Kushner was a former senior adviser to Trump, The Times said.

But the panel was overruled by the board of the fund, The Times reported. The chairman of the board is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country's de facto leader who has formed a close bond with Kushner since 2017.

According to The Intercept, Affinity Partner's pitch deck to investors boasted of its strong links to Saudi Arabia, also citing the success of the Abraham Accords, a groundbreaking project founded by Kushner while in office to forge new ties between the UAE, Israel, and the US.