THEY WENT TO JARED

How the president's son-in-law used his position to hop in bed with autocrats—and sell out America

- —C.M. By Samantha Michaels · Photography by Saúl Martínez By Julia Lurie · Illustrations by Vanessa Saba BY ISAAC FITZGERALD Tim Murphy WITH BILL MILLER

Consisting of 20 black-and-white slides, the PowerPoint resembled something an undergraduate would have put together.

It verged on satire—drenched in corporate pabulum, it touted “accelerating transformation through connectivity” and “aligned economic interests” that could “create previously unrealized value.” Specifics were minimal at best, but the opportunities—whatever they were—were apparently endless. The would-be investors “said they'd never seen such a joke of a deck,” one source told the Intercept.

Despite its startling amateurishness, the gist of the pitch, proffered in 2021, was clear enough. Affinity sought to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from both American investors and the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. The kingdom, eager to diversify its economy and launder its image as a repressive kleptostate, had already bankrolled professional golf, tennis, and soccer leagues; commercial real estate and luxury properties; video games and celebrity influencers; PR agencies and consultancy firms—even corporate giants like Boeing, Citigroup, and Disney. And much of that investment flowed to Westerners willing to overlook Saudi human rights abuses.

The Affinity pitch, though, was so vapid, so vacuous, so devoid of content that even Saudi officials blanched. A due diligence report conducted on behalf of the kingdom found Affinity’s operations “unsatisfactory in all aspects.” But there was one element that would get its pitch over the finish line: Taking up two full slides at the end of the presentation was a 1,200-word biography of Affinity’s founder, Jared Kushner.