The $5 Billion Bribe: How Jared Kushner Turned the White House Into His Personal ATM
The $5 Billion Question Trump Does Not Want You to Ask
Here is something the White House does not want sitting on your kitchen table this morning. The same person negotiating with Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar on behalf of 340 million Americans has his hand out to those exact governments asking for five billion dollars in private cash.
That person is Jared Kushner. He is the President’s son-in-law. He holds no confirmed government position, no security clearance you or I could verify, no Senate accountability, and no meaningful oversight. He sits in the room when decisions are made about war, peace, oil, and the lives of American service members.
After four decades of practicing law and watching how money and power actually moves in this country, I can tell you with certainty that what is happening right now is the most aggressive, in-your-face corruption scheme in modern American history. It makes Teapot Dome look like a parking ticket. It makes Watergate look quaint. And most Americans still do not realize how deep the rot goes, because the people doing it have stopped pretending to hide it.1
I am going to walk you through what is actually happening, why it matters to your family, and what voters just did in Hungary that should give every American reading this a reason to keep fighting. Stay with me.
The Kushner Cash Grab
Let me give you the plain facts. In March 2026, the New York Times reported that Jared Kushner is soliciting five billion dollars in new investment for his private equity firm, Affinity Partners, from the governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. His team has already met with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which is controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Representatives from Kushner’s firm were reportedly pitching investors at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, during a trip he made as part of the official Trump administration delegation.
Kushner previously promised he would not raise new capital during his father-in-law’s second term. In a December 2024 podcast, he claimed his firm had enough money to last four years and did not need another dime. Now he wants five billion more, and he is asking the very governments whose interests he is supposed to be balancing against America’s.
Congressman Robert Garcia and Senator Ron Wyden estimated that Affinity Partners has already collected roughly 129 million dollars in fees from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund between 2021 and 2025. The Saudi government initially invested two billion dollars in Kushner’s firm shortly after the first Trump administration ended. The Saudi Public Investment Fund’s own professional staff reportedly advised against that original investment. The Crown Prince overruled them. That should tell you everything about whose interests are being served.
Now consider what this man is also doing. Kushner sits at the center of the most consequential negotiations of this decade. U.S. policy on Iran. U.S. policy on Gaza. U.S. policy on oil. U.S. policy on advanced chip exports. All of it flows through conversations he has with the same Gulf leaders who are writing him checks. He communicated with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during the first Trump term using WhatsApp, an unsecured consumer app, creating no reliable record for the American people or any future investigator.
He is not subject to the Senate confirmation process. He is not subject to the standard security clearance review. He is not a confirmed appointee with defined duties. He is a private citizen cosplaying as a diplomat, negotiating matters of life and death for your kids, and simultaneously building the single largest personal fortune any White House advisor has ever accumulated through foreign government contracts.
Tell me with a straight face that this is not a bribe. You cannot.
Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari, shares similar concerns from the floor of Congress.
The Witkoff Story Is Just as Bad
Kushner is not operating alone. Steve Witkoff, the billionaire real estate developer and close Trump friend, serves as Special Envoy to the Middle East and Russia. Witkoff co-founded a cryptocurrency company called World Liberty Financial with the Trump family.
In January 2025, four days before Trump’s inauguration, an investment firm connected to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the national security advisor of the United Arab Emirates, paid 500 million dollars for a 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial. The deal sent roughly 187 million dollars directly to the Trump family. Another 31 million dollars flowed to entities linked to the Witkoff family.
Several months later, the Emirati royal’s sovereign investment fund, MGX, used World Liberty’s stablecoin to execute a two billion dollar investment in the crypto exchange Binance. That single arrangement could generate up to 80 million dollars a year in interest for World Liberty Financial.
Two weeks after that deal, the White House announced it would sell the UAE hundreds of thousands of the most advanced AI chips in the world, despite explicit national security warnings that the technology could leak to China. The chip deal was brokered in part by the same Sheikh Tahnoon who had personally paid the Trump and Witkoff families. Career officials inside the administration raised alarm bells. They were ignored.
Witkoff’s financial disclosure has not been certified by the Office of Government Ethics seven months after he filed it. That is a red flag the size of a parade float. Ethics counsel at the Democracy Defenders Fund has stated publicly that OGE does not decline to certify unless there is an indication of past misconduct or unresolved conflicts. Witkoff is subject to criminal conflict of interest statutes. Those statutes exist because the founders of this country understood exactly what happens when public officials serve two masters.
Trump Is Now Suing the Government He Runs
If you think the Kushner and Witkoff stories are wild, consider this one. In January 2026, Donald Trump personally sued the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department for 10 billion dollars. The lawsuit claims damages over the 2019 and 2020 leak of his tax returns by a Booz Allen Hamilton contractor named Charles Littlejohn, who is already serving a five year federal prison sentence for that crime.
The President of the United States is demanding 10 billion dollars from the agencies he controls. He oversees the Treasury. He oversees the IRS. He oversees the Justice Department lawyers who would defend the government in that lawsuit. He oversees the settlement authority. Trump himself admitted to reporters, in his own words, that he is “supposed to work out a settlement with myself.”
On April 17, 2026, Trump’s lawyers filed a joint request with DOJ attorneys asking the federal court to pause the case for 90 days so the two sides could negotiate a “resolution.” Translation: the President is quietly working out how much money he is going to transfer from your tax dollars into his own bank account.
Legal experts across the political spectrum have explained that the damages formula under 26 U.S.C. Section 7431 is one thousand dollars per unauthorized disclosure by a government employee. Not per news article. Not per mention. The 10 billion dollar number was reached by counting media citations of the leaked returns, a legal theory that any first year law student could dismantle in about 15 minutes.
The 10 billion dollar sum is roughly two thirds of the entire annual budget of the IRS. It would double Trump’s personal net worth in a single stroke. He has said he will donate the money to charity, a charity of his choosing that he has never specified. Even if he did, such a donation would become a massive personal tax deduction, meaning you would pay him the money and then pay him again by subsidizing his charitable write-off.
This is not a policy dispute. This is a heist, executed in slow motion, through the legal filings of the very government the thief runs.
The White House Ballroom and the D.C. Arch
You are watching grocery prices climb, gas hovering well above what you paid five years ago, rent eating half your paycheck, and insurance premiums spiking. At the same time, Trump is spending taxpayer and donor money on a gaudy new ballroom at the White House and a triumphal arch in Washington, D.C. He wants a monument to himself. He throws state dinners for billionaires. He rolls out the red carpet for foreign dictators who just cut checks to his son-in-law’s fund.
He talks about America First. Read the fine print. It is America Last, Trump Family First, Billionaire Donors Second, and everyone else fighting for the scraps.
These are the same people telling you that Medicaid has to be cut because it is too expensive. These are the same people telling teachers, veterans, and firefighters to accept less. These are the same people who just passed tax policy that flows most of its benefits to the top one percent. And you, the working parent, the small business owner, the retiree on a fixed income, are paying for their party.
Why This Should Terrify You
I want you to understand something. When a public official takes money from a foreign government and simultaneously makes decisions that affect that government, the Constitution has a name for it. Article I, Section 9 calls it an Emolument, and it is flatly prohibited. Article II, Section 1 repeats the prohibition for the President. The framers of this country, men who had just fought a war against a corrupt British crown, wrote that language in because they understood the exact scenario we are living through right now.
They knew what happens when leaders treat the government like a private wallet. The country stops being a country. It becomes a criminal enterprise with a flag.
This is not about partisan politics. This is about whether your grandchildren inherit a republic or a racket. When Kushner negotiates with Iran and takes Saudi money at the same time, American service members pay the price. When Witkoff brokers chip deals with the UAE and collects crypto payments from Emirati royals, American national security pays the price. When Trump sues himself for 10 billion dollars of your money, you pay the price.
The Hungarian Lesson
Here is the part that should light a fire under every American reading this. On April 12, 2026, the voters of Hungary ended the 16 year reign of Viktor Orban, the authoritarian strongman who turned his country into a piggy bank for his cronies. Orban rewrote the constitution. He captured the courts. He seized the media. He gerrymandered districts. He bought elections with state resources. He did everything an aspiring autocrat could do to make his hold on power permanent.
Peter Magyar’s Tisza party beat him anyway. The opposition won a two thirds supermajority, the largest mandate any Hungarian party has received in the post-communist era. Voter turnout hit the highest level since the fall of the Soviet bloc.
How did they do it. A broad coalition set aside small differences. Ordinary citizens organized at the neighborhood level. Journalists dug into the money. Lawyers challenged fraudulent rules. Voters showed up in numbers that overwhelmed every dirty trick Orban deployed. J.D. Vance personally flew to Budapest days before the election to campaign for Orban. That intervention became a campaign gift to the opposition.
Hungary proved that democratic backsliding can be reversed. It takes three things from you. Follow the money. Organize with your neighbors. Show up and vote in every single election, from school board to President. Make corruption shameful again.
What You Can Do Right Now
Call your Representative. Call both Senators. Tell them you want hearings on Kushner’s Affinity Partners fundraising, on Witkoff’s World Liberty Financial holdings, and on Trump’s IRS lawsuit. Demand subpoenas. Demand sworn testimony. Demand full financial disclosure from every special envoy, family member, and unconfirmed advisor operating in and around the White House. Here are a few links and resources to help you do this.2
Support the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs Democrats who are already pushing these investigations. Representative Robert Garcia, Senator Ron Wyden, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Senator Chris Murphy are doing the work. They need cover fire from the public.
Register. Vote. Bring three neighbors with you in November 2026. Volunteer for a campaign. Donate five dollars a month to a candidate you believe in. Write to your local paper. Post the facts on social media. Show up at town halls. Take your kids with you so they see what civic courage looks like in practice.
The Bottom Line
Trump, Kushner, Witkoff, and their inner circle are running the most profitable grift in American history, and they are doing it in broad daylight because they believe you are too tired, too distracted, or too overwhelmed to stop them. They are counting on your silence. They are counting on your cynicism. They are counting on your exhaustion.
Prove them wrong.
The Hungarians did it after 16 years of one-man rule. The Americans can do it in November. This country was built by people who refused to bow to kings, refused to pay tribute to corrupt elites, refused to accept that their government was not theirs. You carry their blood and their fight.
Pay attention. Share this article. Call your representatives. Register to vote. Organize with your neighbors. When Democrats retake the House this fall, the subpoenas need to fly. Every dollar Trump and his family have steered from the Treasury into their own pockets needs to be accounted for under oath.
Kushner needs to sit in a congressional hearing room and answer every question. Witkoff needs to explain every crypto transaction. Trump needs to explain why he is suing his own IRS for your money.
This is your country. Take it back.
Mitch Jackson, Esq.
Teapot Dome was the biggest political corruption scandal in American history before Watergate. It happened in the early 1920s during the administration of President Warren G. Harding, a Republican.
Here’s what went down. The federal government owned several oil reserves that were set aside specifically for the U.S. Navy to use in case of a national emergency. One of those reserves was a rock formation in Wyoming shaped like a teapot, which is where the name comes from. Two others were in California at Elk Hills and Buena Vista.
President Harding’s Secretary of the Interior, a man named Albert B. Fall, quietly transferred control of those Navy oil reserves from the Department of the Navy to his own Interior Department in 1921. Then, without competitive bidding and without telling the public, Fall leased the Teapot Dome reserve to oilman Harry Sinclair of Mammoth Oil, and leased the Elk Hills reserve to Edward Doheny of Pan American Petroleum.
In exchange, Fall personally received roughly $400,000 in bribes. Doheny sent him $100,000 in cash delivered in a little black bag by his son. Sinclair sent him cattle, bonds, and more cash. In 2026 dollars, the total take was somewhere around $8 million. Fall suddenly started paying off debts, buying new land for his ranch, and living well beyond his government salary. That’s what tipped off investigators.
The Senate opened an investigation in 1922, led by Senator Thomas Walsh of Montana, a Democrat who spent two years digging through the paperwork. The scandal broke wide open in 1923 and 1924.
Here’s why Teapot Dome matters historically. Albert Fall became the first sitting or former Cabinet official in American history to be convicted of a felony and sent to federal prison. He served nine months for accepting bribes. The Supreme Court later ruled the oil leases invalid and returned the reserves to the government. The scandal also produced a landmark Supreme Court case, McGrain v. Daugherty in 1927, which established that Congress has broad constitutional authority to compel testimony and conduct investigations. That ruling is still the foundation for every congressional subpoena issued today.
Really fine essay, Mitch. You could not present a more compelling or more timely argument. For me, much of this atmosphere of decay and corruption goes back to the Citizens United decision.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/us-republican-party-gop-whigging-out-you-make-call-ned