WASHINGTON — Jared Kushner is helping finance Paramount Skydance’s $108 billion hostile bid for Hollywood rival Warner Bros. Discovery, placing the former White House adviser at the center of a takeover battle stretching from Wall Street to Washington, according to newly filed securities documents. Ethics experts say the unusual role for the president’s son-in-law — who is channeling Middle Eastern sovereign wealth money through his Affinity Partners private equity firm into the deal — could test already strained norms separating presidential power from family business interests, Dec. 9, 2025.
Why Jared Kushner’s financing raises red flags
Paramount is offering Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders $30 a share in cash, valuing the company at about $108.4 billion and topping Netflix’s previously agreed $82.7 billion mix of cash and stock for the studio and streaming assets. The Paramount bid, backed by tens of billions in bank financing, would also swallow legacy cable networks such as CNN and Discovery that Netflix left outside its deal.
In an analysis by Reuters legal reporters, former government ethics officials said the arrangement revives long-running concerns that Jared Kushner’s business interests could intersect with decisions made in the Oval Office or at agencies his father-in-law controls. While U.S. presidents are largely exempt from federal conflict-of-interest laws, those experts argue that relying solely on informal norms is inadequate when a family member stands to profit from a decision on a politically sensitive media merger.
Paramount has stressed that Affinity Partners and sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar are buying only non-voting equity and have agreed to forgo board seats or other governance rights to ease national-security concerns. A regulatory filing summarized by Axios nevertheless underscores how central Jared Kushner’s capital is to making the all-cash offer possible.
Middle Eastern money, media power, and the regulatory squeeze
Any eventual sale of Warner Bros. Discovery — whether to Paramount or Netflix — will face review by the Justice Department’s antitrust division, which will weigh whether further consolidation in streaming and film would harm competition. Some lawmakers and advocacy groups are already warning that, with Jared Kushner on one side of the bidding war, even a routine merger review could be seen as politically tainted.
Reporting from Washington has described finger-pointing inside the capital as Paramount’s campaign has grown more aggressive, with speculation that the administration might favor the Ellison-Kushner offer over Netflix’s rival bid. Trump has publicly denied directing regulators in the case, but his past comments suggesting an interest in who controls major media outlets have only deepened skepticism among watchdogs.
Warner Bros. Discovery’s board had already struck a deal to sell most of its studio and streaming operations to Netflix before Paramount went hostile, leaving shareholders until early January to decide whether to back the richer Ellison-Kushner bid instead. Employee groups at both companies have warned that either transaction will trigger sweeping layoffs and further consolidation across Hollywood.
A long trail of ethics questions around Jared Kushner
The uproar over Jared Kushner’s latest deal is part of a much longer story about his post-White House business model. A 2022 investigation in The Washington Post detailed how Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund committed $2 billion to his then-new Affinity Partners firm shortly after he left government, even as internal Saudi advisers questioned the fund’s track record and the optics of the investment.
Since then, Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden and other Democrats have pressed for documents about Affinity’s investors, fee structure, and returns, citing concerns that foreign governments could be effectively paying for access. Last year, a Senate inquiry described in The Guardian noted that the fund had deployed only a fraction of its capital while collecting tens of millions of dollars in management fees from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies.
Jared Kushner has repeatedly insisted that his ventures comply with all laws and ethics rules, telling a CBS interviewer last year that he saw no conflict in accepting billions from Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund after leaving the White House. He has also signaled that he does not plan to take a formal role in a second Trump administration, even as he remains active in Middle East diplomacy and large-scale investments.
For critics, the Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery fight shows how those blurred lines between Jared Kushner’s diplomacy, foreign money, and media ambitions can collide in one blockbuster deal. Supporters of stricter rules say the episode underscores the need to extend federal conflict-of-interest protections to the president and immediate family members — before the subsequent multibillion-dollar merger lands on the president’s desk.
