Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Jared Kushner Was Warned That Matchmaker Wendi Deng Might Be A Chinese Spy

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

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

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..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

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 credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link 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.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.