Jared Kushner.
Somebody Was Watching Jared Kushner’s Phone Screen. It Wasn’t Who You Think.
Billions, a hitman, and a flat denial. Here are the three questions that actually settle it.
The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #1,064: Friday, October 23rd, 2026.
Let me tell you the one fact in this story that should stop you cold.
It is not the money. We’ll get to the money. It is not the Russians, either. Everybody expects the Russians.
It is this: according to a new book, the people who sat and watched everything Jared Kushner did on his personal iPhone–for months, while he was shaping Middle East policy from inside the White House–were our allies.
The Dutch. Not a hostile power. A NATO partner, quietly saving screenshots to a server of their own.
I’ve been writing about threats to this republic long enough now to know the first rule of any big story: the headline everybody runs is almost never the thing that actually matters. The headline today is “Kushner, billions, Gulf money.” Loud. Easy. Shareable.
The thing that matters is quieter. A senior adviser to a sitting president carried a compromised phone, and at least two foreign intelligence services knew it before, apparently, anyone in Washington did.
If that is true, it’s a scandal regardless of whether a single dollar changed hands. If it’s not true, a journalist and a major magazine just published the most reckless story of the year. There is no third option. So let’s lay it out, piece by piece, and you decide.
What the book actually claims
The source is investigative reporter Matthew Cole…
…whose forthcoming book is titled Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East. Vanity Fair ran an excerpt Thursday. Here is the chain of events as Cole tells it.
Step one:
In 2017, Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, broke into Kushner’s personal iPhone. Kushner at the time was a senior White House adviser with a portfolio that ran through Israel, the Gulf, China and Russia.
Step two:
Dutch military intelligence, the MIVD, flipped a Russian operative. That operative gave the Dutch access to a GRU server in Rostov that held images captured from Kushner’s phone.
Step three:
This is the part that separates this from every other spy story you’ve read…the Dutch didn’t just read Russia’s take.
Starting in early 2018, per the excerpt, they exploited a flaw in the phone and started watching Kushner’s screen themselves. No audio. Just a continuous feed of whatever he was looking at…saved image by image.
Think about what that means in plain English. Every text. Every email preview. Every banking app he opened. If Cole is right…there is a foreign archive of a White House adviser’s phone…and it was built by a friendly government.
Dutch public broadcaster NOS reports its Nieuwsuur program and the newspaper de Volkskrant spent years investigating the same claim…and spoke with multiple people… directly involved.
The MIVD, asked to comment…declined to discuss its methods or sources. That’s not a confirmation. But…it’s not the response you’d expect to a fantasy, either.
Now, the money
Here is where the story goes from espionage to something closer to a federal indictment, if any of it holds.
Cole alleges the Dutch watched Kushner log into a bank account in the United Arab Emirates.
According to the book, that account was co-managed by Kushner and UAE president Mohamed bin Zayed, and it had received hundreds of millions of dollars routed through a bank in Azerbaijan.
The excerpt goes further. It claims the rulers of Saudi Arabia and the UAE together put at least $2 billion into multiple accounts linked to Kushner during Trump’s first term… including one account connected to Israel’s central bank.
The owners of these accounts, Cole writes…were often dressed up as government bodies or charities, while the real purpose was off-the-books diplomacy…including an attempt to buy a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
One unnamed source told Cole that roughly $1 billion from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was earmarked for Kushner’s personal benefit. Another source claimed Kushner promised MBZ he’d push the Emirati agenda with Trump in exchange for participation in a fund.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
And then the detail that gives this story its tabloid gravity: Cole alleges that money moved from the account to a warlord, a mercenary, and a one-time hitman.
Pay attention to how that’s phrased. Not “Kushner paid a hitman.” The claim is that funds moved through an account he allegedly accessed. Those are different sentences, and the difference is where lawyers make their living.
One more thing the Dutch reporting raises: it isn’t publicly known whether Kushner ever disclosed a foreign account to U.S. authorities. If such an account existed and he didn’t…that’s where American anti-bribery law enters the room.
The denial–and it is a serious one
Kushner didn’t duck this.
Thursday night he went to X and called the allegations “completely insane and never happened.”
His legal team posted a longer response. The gist: every claim was denied on the record before publication…and the author produced nothing verifiable; no bank statements…wire transfer records…account numbers…or transaction dates.
His lawyer called the allegations false and defamatory…and…said they intend to pursue legal action, though they didn’t name against whom.
I want to be fair here, because fairness…is the only thing that makes the rest of this worth reading.
That denial has teeth.
Cole’s excerpt leans on anonymous sources and foreign intelligence material nobody outside a few agencies can inspect. CBS News noted it has not independently verified the account. “No documents” is a real criticism…not spin.
On the other side of the ledger: House Oversight Committee Democrats have already said Kushner needs to answer these questions publicly, framing it as the latest in a pattern of allegations about selling access.
That’s political…obviously. But…it means this won’t die quietly.
The three questions that actually decide this
Strip away the adjectives, and the whole thing turns on three questions. Everything else is noise.
1. Did the Dutch really have the phone?
This is the load-bearing wall. If the MIVD feed existed, then somewhere there are thousands of screenshots…and Cole’s account becomes checkable by anyone with subpoena power.
If it didn’t, every downstream claim collapses. The Dutch service’s silence is the single most interesting data point in the story. Watch it.
2. Did an account exist, and whose name was on it?
Cole says Kushner logged in. Kushner’s lawyer says he has no idea what account is being described. One of those statements will eventually be provable. Bank records don’t have opinions.
3. Was anything disclosed?
This is the question that turns a scandal into a case. A White House adviser with undisclosed foreign financial interests is not a gray area. It’s a form…and the form was either filed…or it wasn’t.
Notice what’s not on that list: whether Kushner was a good or bad Middle East envoy, whether you like his father-in-law, whether Gulf money in Washington is new (it isn’t).
None of that settles anything. The threat is never the man. It’s the mechanism…and the mechanism…here…is disclosure…the one thing that lets a citizen know who his government actually answers to.
Where this goes
Here’s my read.
Stories built on anonymous intelligence sources usually end one of two ways. Either a document surfaces…a wire record, a screenshot, a sworn statement…and the story hardens overnight.
Or no document ever surfaces…the lawsuit gets filed…discovery becomes the real battlefield, and the public forgets.
Kushner’s team has promised the lawsuit. That’s a bold move if the screenshots exist… because discovery runs both directions.
So don’t ask “is Kushner guilty.” Ask the only question that matters right now: where are the pictures? Somebody either has a hard drive full of Jared Kushner’s phone screen…or they don’t. Everything else is commentary.
And here’s your lever. The House Oversight Committee has said the questions need answering. Your representative sits in that House. Call the office. Ask one question: will you support a public accounting of foreign financial disclosures for senior White House advisers, past and present? Don’t argue. Just ask…and write down the answer.
Q&A: Ten things the article didn’t get to
1. Who is Matthew Cole, and why does his byline matter?
Cole is a veteran national-security reporter. He spent years at NBC News and The Intercept, covering special operations, the intelligence community, and the Gulf, and co-authored Code Name: Johnny Walker.
He is not a political pundit with a book deal. That doesn’t make him right. It means the denial has to answer a reporter who has worked these agencies before, not a stranger.
2. What is the MIVD, and has it done anything like this before?
The MIVD is the Dutch military intelligence service, the smaller sibling of the civilian AIVD.
The Dutch have a record here. In 2018, Nieuwsuur and de Volkskrant revealed that the AIVD had penetrated the Russian hacking group Cozy Bear in 2014…watched the hackers through their own security camera…and tipped off the Americans before the 2016 election interference.
If the Kushner claim sounds far-fetched, know that the Dutch have pulled off something nearly as strange…and the same two newsrooms broke that story too.
3. Did Washington have any reason to worry about Kushner’s phones before this
Yes, on the record. In early 2018 his interim security clearance was downgraded during a broader White House review; Trump later directed that he receive a full clearance over objections from career staff.
Around the same time, reporting surfaced that he had been communicating with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over WhatsApp…which raised records-law and security questions.
And…in 2020, after the Jeff Bezos phone hack was linked to a message from MBS, a U.N. special rapporteur publicly urged Kushner to check and replace his own phone. The warning signs were in plain view.
4. Is there a known, legal Gulf money trail to Kushner?
There is…and…it’s not disputed. After leaving the White House, Kushner founded Affinity Partners, a private equity firm.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund committed about $2 billion to it in 2021, reportedly over the objections of the fund’s own screening panel…with the UAE and Qatar also investing.
That’s the backdrop every reader should hold in mind: the question the book raises isn’t whether Gulf money reached Kushner. It’s whether some of it reached him…while he still held a White House badge.
5. What is Kushner doing right now?
He is back in the arena. He has been working alongside envoy Steve Witkoff on Gaza, is involved with the Board of Peace that Trump launched to oversee postwar Gaza, and has been tied to Iran negotiations.
This isn’t a story about a former official. It’s a story about a current negotiator…which is why foreign governments are reading it as closely as you are.
6. Where does Benjamin Netanyahu come into it?
Newsweek’s summary of the excerpt says the book claims Kushner communicated with Netanyahu about transactions…with a then-U.S. official in the chain.
That part of the account is thin in public reporting so far…and I treat it as reported… not confirmed. If it holds, the account tied to Israel’s central bank…stops being a footnote…and becomes a second front.
7. What laws would actually be in play if the allegations were true?
Three come to mind. The Ethics in Government Act requires senior officials to disclose financial interests; an undisclosed foreign account would be a false filing.
The federal bribery statute covers a public official receiving something of value in exchange for official acts. And…the Foreign Emoluments Clause bars officials from accepting payments from foreign states….without consent of Congress. None of this applies…unless the account and the access are proven. All of it applies…if they are.
8. Why wouldn’t an ally just tell the United States?
Nobody has explained that…and it’s the question that nags me. Intelligence services protect sources and methods above almost everything; burning a flipped GRU operative to warn an American official is a real cost.
It’s also possible the Dutch did share something…and the record isn’t public. Until someone with oversight authority asks the question under oath, the honest answer is: we don’t know.
9. Can Congress do anything, or is this a Democratic press release?
The Oversight Committee Democrats are in the minority…so they can send letters…not subpoenas.
What can move: the Senate and House intelligence committees can request what U.S. agencies knew about a compromised device carried by a senior adviser…and that request doesn’t require anyone to believe Cole. It only requires caring whether a White House phone was hacked.
10. What’s the one thing to watch next week?
Two things, really. Whether the lawsuit Kushner’s team promised is actually filed…and against whom.
And…whether Vanity Fair or Cole releases a document…any document…beyond anonymous sourcing. A filed lawsuit opens discovery. A released document ends the “no evidence” defense. Either one…changes the story more than any amount of talk.
#HoldFast
Back soon.
-Jack
Jack Hopkins
P.S. One detail worth sitting with. If the book is right, the first people to know that a senior American official’s phone was compromised weren’t the FBI, the NSA, or the Secret Service. They were a Russian hacker…and the Dutch officer who turned him. Whatever happens to the money story…that one…ought to keep some people in Washington up at night.
Sources
The hacked-phone story (October 2026)
Kushner rebukes “completely insane” report over hacked phone, secret talks — Newsweek
Explosive report claims Kushner’s hacked phone showed transfers to warlord and hitman — Raw Story
MIVD zag op gehackte iPhone hoe Trumps schoonzoon vele miljoenen ontving — NOS / Nieuwsuur (Dutch)
Background used in the Q&A
Dutch spies caught Russian hackers on tape (AIVD / Cozy Bear, 2014) — AP via KATV
Dutch spies “watched as Russians hacked US Democrats” — Gulf News / AFP
Hackers AIVD leverden cruciaal bewijs over Russische inmenging — de Volkskrant (Dutch)
White House downgrades Kushner’s security clearance (Feb. 2018) — AP via KTVU
Jared Kushner–Saudi crown prince WhatsApp contacts (2018) — The Intercept
Jared Kushner raised $2B from Saudi prince MBS (Affinity Partners / PIF) — The Real Deal
Report: Jared Kushner’s firm received $2B Saudi investment — Straight Arrow News
Witkoff, Kushner to meet with Netanyahu in Israel (Board of Peace, Jan. 2026) — Bloomberg
This will be interesting to watch develop. There is a sloppy, hubris to Trump and his cronies. Using Whatsapp, and Signal for top security conversations. Thanks for the article Jack.
He’s a slimy little fuck.. needs to be taken down