Jared Kushner – and three Arab monarchies – are at the heart of the Paramount-WBD bid | Mohamad Bazzi

Source Body Text

On Monday, Paramount Skydance launched a $108bn takeover bid for Warner Bros Discovery, the entertainment giant that owns Hollywood movie studios, along with CNN, HBO and other media businesses. The bid is led by David Ellison, son of the tech billionaire Larry Ellison – a prominent Donald Trump supporter and Republican donor. Netflix had already prevailed over Paramount in a previous bidding competition for the purchase, but Trump announced on Sunday that he would “be involved” in his administration’s review of the Netflix deal. The president suggested the sale “could be a problem” because Netflix is already dominant in the US streaming market. Paramount left out a significant fact in the press release announcing its offer: the bid includes funding from the private equity firm owned by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, as well as three Arab monarchies, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which collectively have billions of dollars in ongoing ventures involving the Trump family business. Those details were buried in required paperwork filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In an interview with CNBC on Monday, David Ellison, Paramount’s CEO, argued that his company’s offer would face less scrutiny from US regulators because Paramount is smaller than Netflix and has a friendly relationship with the Trump administration. In the president’s transactional and often corrupt approach to governance, it also certainly helps that Paramount’s bid directly involves Kushner and the Arab petrostates that have struck lucrative business deals with the Trump Organization. Presidents are not meant to exert influence over the US regulators who review corporate mergers, but Trump is disdainful of most precedents that seek to limit presidential power and he has inserted himself into the Warner Bros negotiations. It’s also the latest example of Trump using his vast power to enrich his family and supporters through his personalized politics, where he blurs government and business interests. In Trump’s world, personal access is more important than institutional process – a system favored by many authoritarian leaders. Kushner’s involvement in the Paramount offer is troubling because of his significant foreign financial dealings, especially with the three autocratic Arab states that have invested billions of dollars since 2021 to enable him to launch and expand his private equity firm, Affinity Partners. (As of March 2024, nearly 99% of the $3bn his fund had at the time came from foreign sources.) After serving as a senior White House adviser in Trump’s first term, Kushner declined to take an official role in the second Trump administration, saying he wanted to focus on running his business and to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. But since September, Kushner has resurfaced as a high-level, yet unofficial, peace envoy for Trump, first helping broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and more recently at the center of negotiations to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. Unlike during Trump’s first term, Kushner has avoided becoming a lightning rod of criticism for the administration – and most scrutiny of his personal and financial ties to foreign leaders, especially Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Even though he doesn’t hold any government position, Kushner has been acting as one of America’s most powerful diplomats, with a direct line to his father-in-law. And the deals Kushner is negotiating on behalf of the US government can overlap with his business interests, with little consequence since he’s operating as a private citizen. For example, the Gaza agreement that Kushner helped broker includes a framework for postwar reconstruction which will likely involve the three Arab states – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE – that are the main financial backers of Affinity Partners. The same three countries, through their sovereign wealth funds and other entities, are now part of Paramount’s hostile takeover bid of Warner Bros. And Kushner is once again at the center of an international business deal that will ultimately require the Trump administration’s approval. Aside from pressuring regulators to take a hard line while reviewing the rival Netflix offer, Trump and his aides could tip the scales in Paramount’s favor in other ways: they can dismiss concerns about the Middle Eastern funds that are part of Paramount’s bid. Together, the three funds controlled by the Saudi, Qatari and UAE governments pledged to contribute $24bn toward the deal, providing nearly three-fifths of the $40.7bn in total equity outlined in Paramount’s bid. Normally, that would give these three players a majority stake in the new company – and would trigger a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, a panel of federal regulators that evaluates large foreign investments for potential national security risks. Paramount insists that the three foreign funds, along with Kushner’s investment firm, have agreed to waive their governance rights in the newly merged company, including appointing board members. Paramount argues that means the arrangement poses no national security concerns and does not need to be examined by the Committee on Foreign Investment. But the panel, which is made up of various government agencies including the homeland security, justice and treasury departments, can still decide to investigate whether the deal poses a threat of increased foreign control of US media assets. Several Democrats in Congress are rightfully raising the alarm about Kushner’s role in the Paramount bid and the potential for foreign influence, especially if the Trump administration pressures regulators to avoid evaluating the role of foreign funding. As Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate banking committee and a longtime antitrust crusader, put it: US officials must judge the deal “based on the law and facts, not who sucked up the most to Donald Trump”. Kushner is already involved in another foreign deal that must be reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment. In late September, as he was helping negotiate the Gaza ceasefire, Kushner and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund announced that they had reached a $55bn agreement to acquire Electronic Arts, a US-based video game publisher that specializes in sports gaming. The acquisition aligns with Saudi Arabia’s recent strategy of buying global sports assets, including soccer teams and other franchises. But the Saudi fund’s previous investments in US sports prompted a congressional investigation in 2023 into foreign funding, particularly of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf league. While the Electronic Arts offer is supposed to undergo a formal review by the Committee on Foreign Investment, Kushner’s role is likely to ease its passage through that panel and with other US regulators. And so far there’s little resistance in Congress, aside from calls for an investigation by Warren and Richard Blumenthal, a fellow Democrat in the Senate. Beyond the involvement of Kushner’s firm and Arab states that do business with the Trump family, the Paramount deal appeals to Trump’s transactional interests in another way: if Paramount succeeds in taking over Warner Bros, it could lead to a CNN network that is more sympathetic to Trump and his Maga movement ahead of crucial midterm elections next year. Trump has made clear that he prefers Paramount, where the Ellison family is the largest shareholder, to acquire Warner Bros, especially if it enabled the Ellisons to control CNN, which has been a thorn in Trump’s side for years. Last month, the Guardian reported that Larry Ellison, who is often in touch with senior White House officials, had discussed firing several CNN hosts that Trump loathes, including Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar. The Ellisons have already shown deference to Trump since they took control of Paramount over the summer, and began making changes to one of its main media properties, CBS. In October, Paramount bought the Free Press, a conservative news website founded by Bari Weiss, for $150m and installed her as editor-in-chief of CBS News, reporting directly to David Ellison. Weiss, a prominent critic of “woke culture”, has led an overhaul of CBS News programming and teams, including layoffs that disbanded the network’s race and culture unit. For the president, a successful Paramount takeover of Warner Bros could mean not only that his son-in-law and Arab allies are a crucial part of the deal, but it could also ensure that CNN’s parent company has a Trump-friendly owner. It would be a win-win for Trump – and a loss for democracy and rule of law. Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University