Jared Kushner Was Warned That Matchmaker Wendi Deng Might Be A Chinese Spy
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump with Wendi Deng Murdoch Image by Getty Images
By Nathan Guttman January 16, 2018
Shortly after assuming his job as senior adviser to the president, Jared Kushner received an unusual warning from intelligence officials. His close friend, Wendi Deng Murdoch, Kushner was told, may be serving Chinese interests.
The Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, reported that Deng Murdoch, a successful Chinese businesswoman and ex-wife of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, was friendly with Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump. Other publications have reported that she helped the couple reunite after a split in 2008. In the past, British press published reports that Deng Murdoch also had a romantic affair with former prime minister Tony Blair.
The U.S. intelligence officials, according to the Journal, told Kushner that Deng Murdoch may be trying to use their friendship to promote Chinese business interests and also noted she had ties to the Chinese government and may be trying to advance a large-scale Chinese funded building project in Washington which the U.S. viewed as an intelligence risk.
Contact Nathan Guttman at [email protected] or on Twitter @nathanguttman
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Dive In
-
Fast Forward Trump says he and Netanyahu are ‘on the same side of every issue’ following talks on Iran, tariffs
-
Fast Forward California school board members accused of antisemitism during contentious meeting
-
Fast Forward Over 100 Chicago-area rabbis and cantors condemn Trump’s campus crackdown
-
Fast Forward An Israeli think tank used AI to analyze 4,400 American synagogue sermons. Here’s what it found.
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture This Jewish New Yorker survived the Holocaust and the Hungarian Revolution, and is still helping others today
-
Fast Forward Trump says he and Netanyahu are ‘on the same side of every issue’ following talks on Iran, tariffs
-
Fast Forward California school board members accused of antisemitism during contentious meeting
-
Fast Forward Over 100 Chicago-area rabbis and cantors condemn Trump’s campus crackdown
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.