Trump is leaning on son-in-law Jared Kushner for difficult diplomacy

WASHINGTON (AP) — As the dawn rose on President Donald Trump’s second term, one key figure from his first administration stood back, content to focus on his personal business interests and not retake a formal government role.

Now, nearly a year into Trump 2.0, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner has been drawn back into the foreign policy fold and is taking a greater role in delicate peace negotiations. Talks had initially been led almost solo by special envoy Steve Witkoff, a real estate mogul who had no government experience before this year.

The shift reflects a sense among Trump’s inner circle that Kushner, who has diplomatic experience, complements Witkoff’s negotiating style and can bridge seemingly intractable differences to close a deal, according to several current and former administration officials who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal deliberations.

That role was on display this weekend as Kushner and Witkoff hosted Russian negotiator Kirill Dmitriev in Miami for talks on the latest proposals to end Russia’s war in Ukraine and they also met with Turkish and Qatari officials to discuss the fragile truce between Israel and Hamas in Gaza as they look to implement the second phase of Trump’s ceasefire plan.

The lengthy session Saturday with Dmitriev followed several weeks of shuttle diplomacy, with Witkoff and Kushner meeting most recently with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and Ukrainian and European diplomats in Germany. The American envoys were set to hold further talks with Dmitriev on Sunday, according to a White House official.

Witkoff, a longtime pal of Trump's, is seen by some inside the administration as an oversize character who has traveled the world for diplomatic negotiations on his private jet and does not miss an opportunity to publicly praise the president for his foreign policy acumen, the officials say.

Kushner has his own complicated business interests in the Middle East and a sometimes transactional outlook to diplomacy that has distressed some officials in European capitals, a Western diplomat said.

Still, Kushner is seen as a more credible negotiator than Witkoff, who is viewed by many Ukrainian and European officials as overly deferential to Russian interests during the war that began with Moscow's invasion in February 2022, the diplomat said.

“Kushner has a bit more of a track record from the first administration,” said Ian Kelly, a retired career diplomat and former U.S. ambassador to Georgia who now teaches diplomacy at Northwestern University. Kelly stressed, however, that the jury is still out on Kushner's intervention.

Trump views Kushner as a “trusted ​family member ​and talented ​adviser” who has played a pivotal role ​in some of his biggest foreign policy successes, said White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly.

Trump and Witkoff "often seek ​Mr. ​Kushner’s input given ​his experience with complex negotiations, and ​Mr. ​Kushner has been generous in ​lending his ​valuable expertise ​when asked,” Kelly added.

State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott called Kushner “a world-class negotiator.” Pigott noted that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is grateful for Kushner's "willingness to serve our country and help President Trump solve some of the world’s most complex challenges.”

In an interview with CBS' “60 Minutes” in October, Kushner spoke about his unconventional approach to diplomacy.

“I was trained in foreign policy really in President Trump’s first term by seeing an outsider president come into Washington with a different school of foreign policy than had been brought in place for the 20 or 30 years prior,” he said.

But some Democrats and government oversight groups have expressed skepticism about Kushner's role in shaping the administration policies in the Middle East while he manages billions of dollars in investments, including from Saudi Arabia and Qatar’s sovereign wealth funds through his firm, Affinity Partners.

Similarly, Witkoff has faced scrutiny for his and his family's deep business ties to Gulf nations. Witkoff last year partnered with members of Trump's family to launch a cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial, which received a $2 billion investment from a United Arab Emirates-controlled wealth fund.

“What people call conflicts of interests, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world,” said Kushner, who is not drawing a salary from the White House for his advisory role.

White House counsel David Warrington said in a statement that Kushner's efforts for Trump "are undertaken in full compliance with the law.”

“Given that Jared Kushner was a critical part of the efforts leading to the historic Abraham Accords and other diplomatic successes in the first Trump Administration, the President asked Mr. Kushner to be available as the President engages in similar efforts to bring peace to the world," Warrington said in a statement, referring to Trump's first-term effort that normalized relations between Israel and several Arab nations. "Mr. Kushner has agreed to do so in his capacity as a private citizen."

Kelly and other veterans of U.S. diplomatic encounters with the Russians over many years are also skeptical about Kushner's ability to secure a Russia-Ukraine deal because Witkoff technically remains in the lead.

“I don’t see that the Witkoff approach is going to work,” Kelly said. “He doesn’t really read the Russians well. He misunderstands what they say and reports the misunderstandings back to Washington and the Europeans.”

“They seem to have this idea that the magic key is money: investment and development," Kelly said. "But these guys don’t care about that, they are not real estate guys except in the sense that they want the land, period.”

For the first half of the year, Kushner stayed out of the spotlight, even as he pushed, unsuccessfully in some cases, to install some former associates — those with whom he worked on negotiating the Abraham Accords — into powerful roles in the new administration, according to the current and former administration officials.

Kushner had told Trump and others that while he would not be joining the second-term White House, he stood ready to offer his counsel if it was desired. That is a role he also played on a few occasions during the Biden years as the Democratic administration tried, without success, to expand the Abraham Accords.

Although Kushner remained an informal sounding board for Trump and top advisers, he resisted getting directly involved, even as the president expanded his peacemaking pursuits, until it became clear to him and others that the job might be too much for Witkoff to seal on his own, the officials said.

As Trump’s efforts to forge an agreement to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza faltered over the summer, Kushner came in, trading on his experience and contacts in negotiating the Abraham Accords to help Witkoff push Trump’s plan over the finish line.

Agreed to in late September after frantic talks surrounding the annual U.N. General Assembly, the 20-point plan is still a work in progress, but its implementation is being coordinated by Kushner and numerous members of his Abraham Accords team.

“We always bring Jared when we want to get that deal closed,” Trump told Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, shortly after the agreement. “We need that brain on occasion.”

As soon as the Gaza plan was finalized, Kushner said he was returning to his family and day job in Miami, where he heads a multibillion-dollar private equity firm. His involvement in high-stakes peacemaking was only temporary, Kushner said, joking that his wife, Ivanka, might change the locks if he did not get home soon.

“I’m gonna try to help set it up, and then I’m gonna hopefully go back to my normal life,” Kushner said in October.

But within weeks of shepherding the Gaza ceasefire, Trump turned again to his fixer-in-law to dive into the Russia-Ukraine negotiations. They had been deadlocked for months despite persistent efforts by the White House to lure both Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy into an agreement.

Trump hinted then that he would continue to lean on Kushner when the stakes are highest, just as he has done.

FILE - Jared Kushner speaks during a news conference following a military briefing with U.S. Vice President JD Vance at the Civilian Military Coordination Center in southern Israel, Oct. 21, 2025. (Nathan Howard/The New York Times via AP, Pool, File)

FILE - Russian Presidential foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov, left, U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, center, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, foreground right, and Russian Direct Investment Fund CEO Special Presidential Representative for Investment and Economic Cooperation with Foreign Countries Kirill Dmitriev, behind Witkoff, arrive to attend talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Senate Palace of the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Dec. 2, 2025. (Alexander Kazakov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)

FILE - White House special envoy Steve Witkoff, right, and Jared Kushner wait for the arrival of President Donald Trump at Teterboro Airport in Teterboro, N.J., en route to attend the Club World Cup final soccer match, July 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

FILE - Special envoy Steve Witkoff, left, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, center, and Jared Kushner attend a meeting with Ukrainian officials, Nov. 30, 2025, in Hallandale Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Terry Renna, File)

FILE - Jared Kushner with his wife, Ivanka Trump, acknowledges applause at the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in Jerusalem, Oct. 13, 2025. (Saul Loeb/Pool via AP, File)

DHARAMSHALA, India (AP) — Sonam Tashi refuses to let his son inherit the same fear.

Once active in the Free Tibet movement in Kathmandu, he found himself silenced. Unable to secure identity papers for his son, he left for the Tibetan capital in exile in India this year where his son will begin an education he can't have at home.

There he joined a rare protest in a city so reminiscent of what Kathmandu once was — where monks walk freely and the Dalai Lama’s portrait is not a risk.

An investigation by The Associated Press found that much of the Chinese technology used to surveil Tibetans in Nepal originally came from American companies. Despite warnings that Chinese firms were copying or outright stealing their designs, these firms built, customized, and expanded China’s surveillance apparatus over the past quarter-century.

Born in Nepal to Tibetan refugees, Tashi spent years on the frontlines of protest, a regular presence outside the Chinese embassy in Kathmandu. In the early days, arrests were brief — just a day or two — but by 2015, police were holding protesters for weeks. The crowds thinned. Eventually, Tashi was one of the last still showing up.

Surveillance trailed them beyond the protests.

Police began showing up hours before any gathering could start, demanding answers to questions they shouldn’t have known to ask: What are you doing tomorrow? Where are you going?

Cameras multiplied — around Tibetan settlements, in temples, even near private homes. In Boudha, the comfort of lingering beneath the stupa’s all-seeing eyes curdled.

Now 49, Tashi is focused on his 10-year-old son. Once an organizer, he’s now just a father trying to get his son out — before the net pulls tighter. On a winding bus ride toward the Indian border, Sonam stared out the window as terraced hills gave way to forest, thinking about what comes next.

“There are cameras everywhere,” he said. “There is no future.”

This surveillance has helped silence Nepal’s once-vibrant “Free Tibet” movement. Thousands of Tibetans once fled to Nepal every year, but last year, the number was down to the single digits, according to Tibetan officials in Nepal.

Across the world, in Washington, D.C., Namkyi’s eyes hold the loneliness that haunts Tibetans in exile.

Arrested at 15 and sentenced to three years in prison for protesting Chinese rule, Namkyi traveled to the U.S. to recount her story of what it means a lose a home.

Dressed in black, with two small pins — Tibetan and American — on her coat, she recounts how under withering surveillance, silence has become survival for Nepal's dwindling Tibetan community.

“They know they are being watched,” she said.

Her eyes shine, not with certainty, but with the fragile hope that being heard might one day matter.

—

This is a documentary photo story curated by AP photo editors.

A tear rolls down the cheek of Namkyi, a Tibetan former political prisoner who was arrested at 15 an imprisoned for protesting Chinese rule, as she recounts her story during an interview at the Office of Tibet in Washington, Oct. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Namkyi, right, a Tibetan former political prisoner who was arrested at 15 for protesting Chinese rule, watches as Tsultrim Gyatso, China Director at Office of Tibet, untangles the Tibetan flag over the office entrance in Washington, Oct. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Namkyi, right, a Tibetan former political prisoner who was arrested at 15 for protesting Chinese rule, shows the route she took when she escaped and crossed into Nepal to Tsejin Khando, with the International Campaign for Tibet, Oct. 8, 2025, at the Office of Tibet in Washington. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Namkyi, right, a Tibetan former political prisoner who was arrested at 15 for protesting Chinese rule, waits in the office of House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, for a meeting with his staff while joined by Tsultrim Gyatso, right, China Director at Office of Tibet, in Washington, Oct. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Namkyi, right, a Tibetan former political prisoner who was arrested at 15 for protesting Chinese rule, walks past National Guard troops on patrol with Tsejin Khando, with the International Campaign for Tibet, to a meeting, Oct. 7, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Namkyi, a Tibetan former political prisoner who was arrested at 15 for protesting Chinese rule, looks out toward the Washington Monument while driving to a meeting, Oct. 8, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Namkyi, a Tibetan former political prisoner who was arrested at 15 and imprisoned for protesting Chinese rule, is photographed at the Office of Tibet, Oct. 7, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Sonam Tashi takes part in a demonstration to commemorate the anniversary of the 1959 uprising in Tibet against the Chinese rule, in New Delhi, India, March 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Tibetan monks are silhouetted as they walk past a mural at the Tsuglakhang temple in Mcleodganj near Dharamshala, India, March 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Sonam Tashi, right, and his son, Kunga Tenzin, pass photographs of Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama at the entrance of the Tsuglakhang temple in Mcleodganj near Dharamshala, India, March 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

A Tibetan nun cleans copper lamps at Tsuglakhang temple in Mcleodganj near Dharamshala, India, March 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Sonam Tashi talks on his mobile phone from Tibetan Children's Village school in Mcleodganj near Dharamshala, India, March 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

An exiled Tibetan cleans his balcony at Mcleodganj near Dharamshala, India, March 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Sonam Tashi and his son, Kunga Tenzin, eat breakfast at a roadside stall in Mcleodganj near Dharamshala, India, March 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Sonam Tashi, right, and his son, Kunga Tenzin, wait for transportation for Mcleodganj after reaching Dharamshala, India, where Tashi hopes the Tibetan government in exile can help his son access education, March 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Sonam Tashi, right, and his son, Kunga Tenzin, take their luggage from a bus after reaching Dharamshala, India, where Tashi hopes the Tibetan government in exile can help his son access education, March 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Tibetan flags hang above a street to commemorate the anniversary of the 1959 uprising in Tibet against the Chinese rule, in Mcleodganj near Dharamshala, India, March 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Tibetan prayers hang from a footbridge at Majanu ka Tila, an exile Tibetan settlement, in New Delhi, India, March 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Sonam Tashi sits on a bus in New Delhi as it leaves for Dharamshala where he hopes the Tibetan government in exile there can help his son access education, March 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Sonam Tashi and his son, Kunga Tenzin, bottom right, prepare to board their bus to Dharamshala in New Delhi, India, March 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Sonam Tashi takes a walk in a temple at the Tibetan Children's Village school in Mcleodganj near Dharamshala, India, March 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)