Jared Kushner denounced a Vanity Fair book excerpt alleging Russian intelligence hacked his phone and exposed access to $2 billion in Middle Eastern accounts as outrageous fabrications with zero evidence.
The Daily Caller reported that Vanity Fair published a Thursday exclusive excerpt from Matthew Cole’s upcoming book claiming Russian military intelligence hacked the former Trump White House senior adviser’s phone sometime in 2017 or 2018.
Cole’s account says the intrusion opened a window onto purported Middle Eastern bank accounts holding at least $2 billion and tied to figures in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Kushner answered the same day with a flat, public rejection.
On X he called the charges completely insane, categorically false, and events that never happened. His legal counsel went further, stating the central bank-account claim is false because the accounts do not exist and that no evidence of a phone hack has been produced.
The dispute lands against a familiar backdrop of intense scrutiny of the Trump orbit, including Democratic vows of fresh family probes if they regain House power, as when Raskin vowed subpoenas of the Trump family.
Cole’s book, titled “Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East,” alleges Dutch intelligence later obtained screenshots of Kushner’s iPhone from a Russian intelligence server after British authorities apprehended a Russian military intelligence operative.
The excerpt describes an “Alpha” account at the UAE’s largest bank, whose chairman is identified as a brother of UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed, and a “Beta” account. Cole writes that $750 million was transferred into Alpha and that by spring 2018 Beta had moved about $1 billion toward Israel through Azerbaijan.
Dutch intelligence, per the book, also traced hundreds of millions of dollars from an Azerbaijani government-linked bank account into a Dubai account. Cole asserts the funds were for Kushner’s personal benefit and that access may have required disclosure to the federal government and the IRS.
One source who had spoken with UAE and Israeli officials told Cole that Kushner “was looking for shortcuts in his diplomacy” and “promised MBZ that he’d push their agenda with Trump if they participated in a fund,” adding he “wanted normalization with Israel so that business could take off.”
“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. 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.”
Those are the author’s claims. They arrive without the bank statements, wire records, account numbers, or transaction dates Kushner says were never supplied.
Kushner posted his rebuttal on October 22, 2026, the day before the Daily Caller write-up. He stressed that he had already lived under wall-to-wall media coverage, multiple congressional investigations, and a special counsel probe, and that he voluntarily gave more than 30 hours of testimony.
“.@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.”
That record of prior scrutiny matters. Claims of secret foreign money webs did not surface then, Kushner notes, because the events did not occur. Families already forced to prepare legal defenses against politicized investigations know the pattern well, including moves such as when Trump prepared PAC millions for family legal defenses.
Chad Mizelle, identified as Kushner’s legal counsel, stated the book’s central allegation is false: “there are no bank accounts.” He also said no evidence has been produced that the phone was hacked and that the team intends to pursue legal action against groups publishing what he called categorically false and defamatory allegations.
Mizelle pointed to a concrete media retreat. The Jerusalem Post took down its own reporting on Cole’s claims after identifying “significant factual questions about the alleged financial transactions.”
When a major outlet pulls coverage over factual problems, readers are entitled to treat the remaining spectacular narrative with caution. Unverified offshore-account stories have a long history of traveling farther than the paperwork behind them.
Business and regulatory headlines involving the broader Trump family continue on separate tracks, from finance to technology, including when the Trump family crypto firm won a conditional bank charter.
The excerpt’s intelligence thread runs through Dutch services, British authorities, and an unnamed Russian military intelligence operative who allegedly chose cooperation after apprehension. Dutch officers, Cole writes, first saw screenshots on a Russian server and later developed their own method of monitoring Kushner’s screen.
No U.S. government confirmation of the hack, the accounts, or any legal violation appears in the available reporting. Cole’s suggestion of possible disclosure violations remains the author’s assertion, not a charging document or agency finding.
Names, dates, and dollar figures make for vivid reading. Without primary financial records attached, they remain allegations in a book excerpt released years after the supposed 2017, 2018 window.
Foreign-policy results under Trump have included concrete prisoner releases and pressure campaigns abroad, such as when Trump brought home American Stephen Hubbard from a Russian prison with no swap. Those outcomes rest on public acts, not anonymous server screenshots.
Kushner’s team keeps returning to the same gap: no bank statements, no wire transfer records, no account numbers, no transaction dates. Mizelle’s blunt line, there are no bank accounts, matches that demand for proof.
Political opponents have already signaled appetite for fresh examinations of Trump world finances and family dealings. Separate preparation of defense resources, including reports that Trump set aside PAC millions ahead of possible Democratic family investigations, shows how routine the threat of process-as-punishment has become.
Extraordinary claims about secret billions and foreign intelligence coups still require extraordinary evidence. So far the public has been given a narrative, a denial, a newspaper takedown, and a promise of lawsuits, not the underlying ledgers.
Readers can watch whether Cole or his publishers ever produce the missing records. Until then, the gap between accusation and documentation remains the clearest fact on the table.
Unverified blockbusters against Trump-world figures keep arriving dressed as investigation; the ones that collapse under basic questions deserve the same hard standard every time.