Vicky Ward Investigates published a piece a few days ago detailing an extensive relationship between Jared Kushner and the Saudi reigning prince, where the 2 might best be characterized as “partners in crime”.
The story published by Vicki Ward
I’m told it was Kushner and Kushner’s allies who blocked top-level U.S. government support for MBS’s cousin, former Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef (MBN)—a long-time intelligence and counter-terrorist asset for the U.S.—when MBN attempted a legal coup d’état in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2017. MBN believed he had enough support from the so-called “Council of Ministers” to back him in a regime change.
If successful, both King Salman and MBS (then deputy crown prince) would have been unseated and replaced by MBN. My sources tell me it was Kushner and his allies in the White House who got word to MBS of bin Nayef’s plans, and the plot was abruptly stopped. (As I’ve mentioned before, a spokesperson for Kushner has denied passing on intelligence to the Saudis).
But, according to three sources with knowledge, it was this meddling in Saudi royal affairs that caused U.S. intelligence officials to go “apoplectic” and prevent Kushner from getting a top-level security clearance.
I should note that so far as I know, Vicki Ward’s conclusions haven’t been independently verified by other news organizations. But if her report is correct, it is Jared Kushner who is responsible for the ascent of MBS to be the ruler of Saudi Arabia, and he did it by leaking US Intelligence against the wishes of the CIA and other US Intelligence agencies. And his action removed MBN, the Saudi royal who was most favored by the US Intelligence community, in other words the Saudi royal viewed as an asset by the CIA.
So this is reportedly why Kushner never received the security clearance he wanted, because he had knifed the CIA with his unauthorized leak.
It’s not hard to draw a line from Kushner’s reported action on behalf of MBS in 2017 and the bloody murder of Jamal Khashoggi that occurred in 2018, the year following MBS ascension to power in Saudi Arabia. And of course also the bloody war in Yemen that refuses to end.
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has done a fairly long commentary on this, but it’s behind the TPS paywall. He interviewed a highflying hedge fund type who had attended a recent multi-day investment conference in Saudi Arabia, who had numerous dinners with the Saudi royals as part of the event. He said that Jared Kushner and MBS were literally inseparable at every dinner, Kushner seated exactly next to MBS at every event.
This extract from Josh Marshall’s piece:
In each of these ways the U.S.-Saudi alliance, which goes all the way back to the 1940s, seems to have been replaced by a Saudi-Trump alliance. (The oil price bonanza is funding a manic building and spending spree in Saudi Arabia which is the backdrop to these billionaire confabs I describe above.) Or perhaps we can see it more broadly as a transnational layer of authoritarian or authoritarian-friendly billionaires and princelings running the show separate from the actions and decisions of elected governments.
And of course much of this journalism was done by Marshall and Ward seeking an explanation for the absurd $2 billion Saudi investment in Jared Kushner’s post White House investment fund, elevating corruption to a level previously unseen in any western democracy.
Kushner has no background that would justify a billions of dollars investment. Prior to defiling the WH, his biggest accomplishment was losing a literal shitload of money by buying an overpriced office building at 666 6th Avenue in NYC.