Tiffany Trump’s in-laws allegedly swindled her brother-in-law, Jared Kushner, out of millions of dollars as part of a deal involving a luxury yacht, according to a report in The New York Times.
When President Donald Trump’s fourth child married her husband, Michael Boulos, in 2022, the Boulos family was quickly brought into the Trumpian fold.
Trump lauded Michael’s father, Massad Boulos, as a business tycoon and made him an adviser to the Middle East and Africa, even though Boulos’ nebulous business dealings turned out to be worth far less than he had claimed.
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Michael Boulos, 27, was also eager to mix business and family after he proposed to Tiffany, 31, in 2021, the Times reported.
The younger Boulos identified Kushner—who is married to Trump’s oldest daughter, Ivanka—as a potential client for his cousin Jimmy Frangi, who is a yacht broker.
The two cousins pitched Kushner on a multi-million-dollar investment deal that originally involved Kushner buying a yacht at a good price, renovating it, and then selling or leasing it to make money.
By June 2021, Boulos was instead sending Kushner sales presentations to buy an unfinished yacht called the Solstice that was being built in Greece. Frangi’s firm told Kushner the yacht price was €12.5 million, or about $15 million, which included a $1 million brokerage commission for the firm.
In fact, the firm was spending millions less to acquire the yacht than what they had told Kushner, allowing them to pocket $3.5 million on the deal instead of $1 million, according to Frangi’s text messages, the Times reported.
They also worked to keep the actual price secret. An executive at the firm wrote in a text message that it would be “difficult to hide” the yacht’s real value from Kushner and said it was important that Kushner not hire an independent appraiser.
It’s not clear if Boulos—who was not copied on those messages—knew that Kushner was being ripped off, according to the Times. But he was personally involved in pushing the deal through.
At one point, Kushner’s lawyer seemed to be delaying the deal, prompting Boulos to write to another associate at the law firm.
“Me and Tiffany are pi---ed off,” he said.
The sale closed in early 2022. According to Frangi, Boulos made $300,000 in commission, while his cousin made $400,000 in commission plus several hundred thousand dollars that had been earmarked for transaction fees.
A spokesperson for Boulos and Tiffany Trump told the Times that Boulos had only received a pre-negotiated finder’s fee and had since ended his business relationship with Frangi.
Eventually, Kushner realized he had been overcharged and confronted Frangi, who made up an excuse for the higher price, according to a lawyer who brought up the deal during a separate financial dispute with Frangi.
A spokesperson for Kushner declined to comment on the deal to the Times, saying only that Boulos was doing a “great job” working to find a new buyer for the yacht, which still hasn’t been finished.
A representative for Tiffany Trump and Boulos told the paper, “Mr. Boulos is proud of and honored by his close, familial relationship with Mr. Kushner.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Kushner, Boulos, and Tiffany Trump for further comment.
