A new book containing incendiary claims about Jared Kushner’s financial dealings during Donald Trump’s first term has ignited a political and media firestorm.

The book by author Matthew Cole is called Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East and was released in the US this week. An excerpt was published by Vanity Fair last Thursday, and immediately drew a furious response from Kushner, who called its claims “completely insane”. The book contains numerous allegations about Kushner, whose father-in-law is Trump and who has served as one of his top diplomatic envoys in the Middle East – the most explosive of which are claims linking him to huge bank accounts allegedly funded by Gulf states.

Kusher denounced the book on his site last week, and writing on X: “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.” He has demanded that Vanity Fair retract the excerpt and has threatened legal action against the book’s publisher, Simon & Schuster.

He added: “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.”

The Guardian contacted Kushner’s legal counsel from Clare Locke as well as Chad Mizelle for comment and received no response.

Cole’s sources are predominantly anonymous and he does not print images of emails or other documentation to support his reporting. Extensive footnotes indicate sources of information, including confidential interviews.

In the book, the top intelligence official in the United Arab Emirates, Ali Al Shamsi, is reported to have called Kushner “the most expensive employee we’ve ever had”. The book details alleged payments into two “slush fund” bank accounts allegedly set up for Kushner by Emirati prince Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) and Saudi Arabian prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) during Trump’s first term. The Guardian contacted the Saudi Arabian and Emirati embassies for comment and did not receive a response.

In the book, Cole claims the accounts were partially managed by Kushner on an iPhone hacked by Russian and Dutch intelligence.

But despite the Emirati spymaster’s opinion of Kushner, Cole alleges that the New Jersey real estate scion was not entirely trusted. Cole describes a dangerous world in which blackmail is as common a tool of statecraft as torture and murder, as in the cases of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, killed on the orders of MBS in Turkey in 2018, and the Emirati journalist and poet Habib Al Sayegh, whose killing by agents of MBZ in 2019 is described by Cole.

Kushner continues to steer US foreign policy despite having no official role, with questions about his business interests accompanying him as he travels the world with New York real estate magnate Steve Witkoff, this week seeking peace in Ukraine, if on terms favorable to Russia.

In response, an attorney “who has represented President Trump in multiple defamation lawsuits”, Alejandro Brito, told Cole that, “during his time working for President Trump, Kushner ‘always represented and sought the interests of the United States and the President of the United States and did not make any agreements or arrangements with leaders or officials in foreign countries that were not agreed by the President of the United States and in the best interests of the United States.’” He further said that “[a]ny allegation that Kushner knew of, had access to, had authorization for or engaged in or directed any conduct related to any government-funded or government-linked bank account is totally false and defamatory”.

Brito told Cole that “‘there are no accounts and never were.’” Cole writes that the Dutch government refused to comment in response to his questions about the alleged hacking of Kushner’s phone.

According to Cole, MBZ and MBS wanted Kushner to help achieve their “vision of a new Middle East, one in which Israel would become an integral part of the region, recognized diplomatically by Gulf Arabs today and eventually by the rest of the Arab world; the Palestinians would end their conflict with Israel and accept a peace built on prosperity; Islamic extremism would be defeated; and Iran’s expansionism and militancy would retreat, either by persuasion or force.”

Nearly 10 years later, the US and Israel are planning new strikes in their eight-month war with Iran; Saudi Arabia is at war with Houthi rebels in Yemen, and Israel has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians in Gaza since the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023.

Kushner entered Trump’s first administration with his wife, Ivanka Trump, as close presidential advisers. MBZ and MBS, Cole claims, saw a chance to secure the best access money could buy. Cole alleges that in early 2017 the two princes “proposed to give Kushner a fund, a bank account, which the two leaders, working with Jared, would use to identify and pay for projects and foreign policy goals to advance for President Trump’s benefit”.

According to Cole, an idea to fund Trump’s proposed wall on the US border with Mexico apparently did not work out but the author claims that “MBZ and MBS initially, and then MBZ alone, put at least $2bn into at least two banks for Kushner.” Classifying the accounts as “Alpha” and “Beta”, Cole claims the Alpha account was held at First Abu Dhabi Bank, the largest in UAE, and contained “roughly $750m” to be “used as a foreign policy fund” overseen by Kushner and MBZ and meant to help end the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Cole quotes a source who says he knew of the UAE’s alleged deal with Kushner as saying: “‘Jared was looking for shortcuts in his diplomacy.’” Cole writes: “This person held discussions with both senior UAE and Israeli officials about the secret financial arrangement between Kushner, the UAE, and, at least initially, Saudi Arabia. ‘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,’” the source alleged.

The same source claimed that “a slush fund – a shared pool of money for off-the-books diplomatic objectives – was a common form of Gulf Arab government corruption … ‘The Emiratis and the Saudis do this once a year. A billion or two is nothing for them, and if it gets them what they want, it’s money well spent.’”

Citing “a person briefed on the Beta account”, Cole claims it contained “roughly $1bn” and at the suggestion of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was moved by MBZ to the Israeli Central Bank via Azerbaijan, a favored conduit for laundering money.

“It is … unclear how Kushner used the money the UAE deposited into the Beta account for him,” Cole alleges, “but according to the person with knowledge of the money, its allocation was for Kushner’s personal benefit.”

Kushner’s attorney, Brito, told Cole his client “had no financial relationships with any foreign countries or leaders”, adding that his “complete financial disclosures are publicly available in his OGE [office of government ethics] form 278e filings during this period.”

Cole alleges that the “Alpha” account established for Kushner in Trump’s first term was drained by failed schemes and Kushner’s access was cut off. “It is unclear if the Israeli government allowed Kushner access to the Beta bank account” after the end of Trump’s first term, Cole writes.

Cole also examines the widely reported story about how Kushner ultimately secured Qatari investment in 666 Fifth Avenue, a marquee Manhattan property, thereby profiting from interests on both sides of a bitterly divided Middle East, given Saudi Arabia and UAE’s rivalry with Qatar. (Kushner has denied engaging in any conflicts of interest.)

In Trump’s second term, Kushner’s diplomatic work has been dogged by questions about another massive financial asset: a $2bn investment by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund in Kushner’s Affinity Partners private equity firm, made after Trump left power in 2021. Cole quotes an unnamed Arab official and Affinity investor who claimed: “We don’t pay Jared because he’s a savvy investor. We pay him to keep him happy. That keeps his father-in-law happy.”

Cole writes: “Deep relationships with MBZ, MBS, Emir Al Thani [of Qatar], and Bibi Netanyahu were useful as [Kushner] shuttled between capitals, trying to find a way to end the daily slaughter in Gaza. But as it had been when he was a government employee, there was little record of what his investors were negotiating with him.”

In his epilogue, Cole writes that Kushner “declined multiple requests for an on-the-record interview for the book”, adding that he “first contacted him with a list of questions in May 2026 and followed up via email twice more, asking additional questions.”

Through his lawyers, Kushner denounced all of Cole’s reporting. Also on X, Chad Mizelle, a Trump administration lawyer who identified himself as “Jared’s attorney”, said: “The central allegation in this book is categorically false. These are not questions of interpretation or competing recollections: there are no bank accounts. They don’t exist. These are egregious and defamatory claims without a shred of evidence to substantiate them.”