White House must reveal and resolve Jared Kushner’s financial conflicts of interest

Jared Kushner must file his legally required public financial disclosure report within 30 days of his appointment as Special Envoy for Peace, according to a letter Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sent to the White House. President Trump, Kushner’s father-in-law, announced the appointment on February 19th, following months of Kushner meeting with foreign leaders and participating in high level negotiations as a private citizen.

The announcement put Kushner in the same role as Steve Witkoff, who filed a public financial disclosure report after being appointed as a special envoy. Recently, Kushner has played a significant diplomatic role addressing Trump’s strikes on Iran and the ensuing war. Given Kushner’s significant power to set foreign policy—including on ongoing conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, the public urgently needs clarity on his role and his financial entanglements.

Kushner’s previous unofficial role raised substantial conflict of interest concerns given Kushner’s business and investments in the very countries and conflicts that he had been working on—and because Kushner had no defined position, he was not subject to any ethics laws, security clearance process or Senate confirmation.

So long as Kushner fails to file a public financial disclosure and divest from any conflicting assets, the public cannot trust that he is working in their best interest. In the first Trump administration, Kushner made hundreds of millions of dollars while serving as a special advisor, and wasted no time after leaving government service leveraging his government job for personal gain, securing billions of dollars for his investment firm from the very governments he had worked closely with in his official capacity.

For nearly five decades, senior executive branch officials and all presidential appointees have been required to file public financial disclosure statements. Jared Kushner cannot be an exception to the rule, no matter how murky the Trump administration has allowed his role to be, especially when his work directly impacts geopolitics and not only the lives of the American public but people across the world.

Header photo by World Economic Forum under a Creative Commons license.