Kushner rejects Vanity Fair claims of a Russian phone hack and $2 billion foreign money web

Jared Kushner dismissed as completely insane Vanity Fair claims that Russian spies hacked his phone and exposed a $2 billion Middle East money web.

The Daily Caller reported that Vanity Fair published a Thursday excerpt from Matthew Cole’s upcoming book alleging Russian military intelligence hacked the former Trump White House senior adviser’s phone between 2017 and 2018.

The excerpt claimed that hack exposed purported access to Middle Eastern bank accounts holding at least $2 billion. Kushner and his legal counsel rejected the entire narrative as false and unsupported.

Cole’s book, titled “Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East,” is set for release through Simon and Schuster. The excerpt framed the alleged accounts as tied to leaders in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and to diplomacy around Israel.

Book excerpt sketches a spy-to-server chain without hard banking proof

According to the excerpt, Dutch intelligence arranged for British authorities to apprehend a Russian military intelligence operative. That operative then allegedly gave the Dutch access to a Russian intelligence server holding screenshots of Kushner’s iPhone.

The book further claimed Dutch intelligence later developed its own way to monitor Kushner’s screen. Those details sit at the center of Cole’s account of how outsiders supposedly saw Kushner’s private communications.

None of that chain came with bank statements, wire records, account numbers, or transaction dates attached in the reporting Kushner challenged. He made that gap the core of his public response the day before the Daily Caller story landed.

Readers tracking years of Russia-related political combat will recognize the familiar pattern of extraordinary spycraft claims colliding with thin documentation, a fight that still echoes in court as Trump presses a Supreme Court bid over Clinton-era Russia litigation.

Alpha, Beta, and a claimed $2 billion pipeline

Cole’s excerpt alleged Kushner had access to accounts labeled “Alpha” and “Beta.” Alpha, it said, sat at the UAE’s largest bank and was overseen by the bank’s chairman, described as a brother of UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed, often called MBZ.

The book claimed $750 million was transferred into Alpha. It also alleged Beta moved about $1 billion to Israel through Azerbaijan by spring 2018.

Dutch intelligence, in Cole’s telling, traced funds to an Azerbaijani government-linked bank account that sent hundreds of millions of dollars to a Dubai account. The excerpt cast the money movement as tied to Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy and regional dealmaking.

An unnamed source who had spoken with UAE and Israeli officials was quoted in the book offering a motive.

"Jared was looking for shortcuts in his diplomacy. 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."

Cole also wrote that federal rules and the Internal Revenue Service would have required disclosure of account access, and he floated possible legal exposure if that never happened.

"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."

That is an author’s assertion, not a charging document, indictment, or agency finding in the material published with the excerpt.

Kushner’s October 22 denial leaves no room for half-measures

Kushner answered on X on October 22, 2026. He did not parse the claims. He rejected them outright.

"@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 boiled the same point down elsewhere as “completely insane, categorically false, and never happened.”

His posture matches a broader insistence on personal and institutional security after years of political combat, including recent hard lines on site protection such as jail threats for vandals at repaired national landmarks.

Counsel says the accounts do not exist

Chad Mizelle, Kushner’s legal counsel, went further on the money claims. He said the book’s central allegation is false because “there are no bank accounts.”

Mizelle also said no evidence was produced that his client’s phone was ever hacked. He stated an intent to pursue legal action against groups publishing what he called “categorically false and defamatory allegations.”

He added that the Jerusalem Post took down its own reporting on Cole’s claims after identifying “significant factual questions about the alleged financial transactions.” A major outlet pulling related coverage is not a minor footnote when the accusations run to billions of dollars and foreign intelligence services.

Questions about hidden money trails and weak documentation are the same integrity issues that surface when Congress probes weakened fraud safeguards and concealed evidence in other political-finance fights.

Heavy scrutiny already defined the years in question

Kushner’s defense rests heavily on process history. He noted he faced intense media coverage, multiple congressional investigations, and a special counsel probe during the period Cole describes.

He said he cooperated voluntarily and gave more than 30 hours of testimony. In his account, allegations this large would have surfaced in that environment if they were real. They did not, he argued, because the events did not happen.

That is a direct clash with Cole’s narrative. One side presents an intelligence-enabled window into secret accounts and diplomatic shortcuts. The other side says the window, the accounts, and the transfers are inventions offered without verifiable banking detail.

Technology and cyber risk remain live policy arguments in Washington, including debates captured when Obama attacked Trump on AI rules, but a book excerpt is still not a server log, a wire record, or a sworn charging paper.

What the public record still does not show

The Daily Caller account does not include primary bank documents, named account numbers, or U.S. government confirmation of the alleged hack. It also does not name the Russian operative, fix the exact apprehension date, or identify the UAE bank beyond “largest.”

Unnamed sources drive key motive and money-path claims inside the excerpt. Cole’s legal-risk language about IRS and federal disclosure rules is presented as the author’s conclusion, not as a prosecutor’s filing.

So the public is left with a classic standoff. A glossy magazine excerpt alleges Russian military intelligence, Dutch monitoring, UAE and Saudi-linked accounts, $750 million into Alpha, and about $1 billion moved toward Israel by spring 2018. Kushner calls it fantasy. His lawyer says the accounts are not there and promises legal action. Another newsroom already retreated from related copy over factual questions.

White House messaging fights continue on a separate track, including personnel moves like the choice of a new press secretary, while this dispute stays fixed on one basic demand: show the records or stop selling the plot as settled fact.

Extraordinary charges about secret foreign billions still require evidence ordinary Americans can test, and a media culture that skips that step is not doing accountability work.