Senate Finance Committee

Committee profiles usually read like a jurisdiction checklist. The story this one actually tells is about oversight. In September 2024, the Senate Finance Committee’s chair laid out findings that a private equity firm owned by Jared Kushner had collected as much as $157 million in fees from foreign clients — including $87 million from the Saudi government — while generating no return on investment for any of those clients (Senate Committee on Finance). That investigation is the committee’s most publicly detailed recent exercise of its oldest power: following the money.

The Affinity investigation

On September 25, 2024, Finance Chair Ron Wyden sent Affinity Partners a letter detailing new findings on payments to the firm from foreign governments, and stated his concern that the firm “represents a compensation scheme designed in part to skirt federal disclosure requirements” (Senate Committee on Finance). Affinity is owned by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and former top White House advisor of President Donald Trump, a fact the committee’s own release states directly (Senate Committee on Finance).

The numbers the committee extracted from Affinity’s own disclosures are precise. The firm charged its lead investor, the Saudi Public Investment Fund, a 1.25 percent annual fee on $2 billion in committed funds, and charged its other investors — including one the committee described as “yet undisclosed” — a fee closer to 2 percent on committed funds (Senate Committee on Finance). The committee called the fee structure “unusually high, given market trends and the relative inexperience of Kushner and the firm’s Trump-connected employees in the industry” (Senate Committee on Finance).

The returns side is starker. As of July 2024, Affinity had generated no return on investment and “not distributed a penny of earnings back to clients”; financial statements sent to clients marked “N/A” in line items related to annual rate of return (Senate Committee on Finance). Wyden’s letter included the sharpest language of the investigation: “Affinity’s failure to deploy capital in a timely fashion while charging excessive fees has reinforced my view that Affinity is likely part of a compensation scheme involving U.S. political figures designed to circumvent the Foreign Agents Registration Act” (Senate Committee on Finance).

Two details in the letter went beyond fees. Affinity confirmed that investors could renegotiate their agreements or withdraw all funds once the initial five-year investment period ends in August 2026 — “in the middle of a potential second Trump term,” in the committee’s words — which the committee said would give foreign governments unusual influence over the sitting president’s family’s finances (Senate Committee on Finance). And Affinity confirmed that government officials in Albania and Serbia had approached the firm about real-estate partnerships, with the Belgrade project — on the site of a former NATO bombing — set to include a museum described as a monument to “victims of NATO aggression” (Senate Committee on Finance).

The letter also posed 21 detailed questions, asking Affinity for investor identities and beneficial owners, fee and expense totals by year, quarterly performance measurements, Kushner’s annual compensation, and all communications between Affinity employees and Trump family members about Albania and Serbia (Senate Committee on Finance). The same day, on the House floor, Rep. Robert Garcia cited the New York Times’ reporting that Kushner had “collected $112 million in fees but hasn’t made a single dime for the Saudis through this fund,” referencing the $2 billion Saudi investment made months after Kushner left the White House (U.S. Congress / Library of Congress).

Why this committee has that power

The Finance Committee’s jurisdiction is the broadest of any congressional committee. Its primary responsibility covers taxation and general revenue measures, and it also oversees the insular possessions, customs collection districts and ports of entry, the bonded debt of the United States, reciprocal trade agreements, tariffs and import quotas, the deposit of public moneys, revenue sharing, and national social security (EBSCO Research Starters). Its health jurisdiction comes through the Social Security Act: Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and any other health and human services program financed by a specific tax or trust fund (EBSCO Research Starters). In the 119th Congress it consisted of 27 members divided into six subcommittees: International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness; Taxation and IRS Oversight; Health Care; Energy, Natural Resources, and Infrastructure; Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth; and Social Security, Pensions, and Family Policy (EBSCO Research Starters).

Two centuries of the money committee

The Senate created the Select Committee on Finance and an Uniform National Currency in December 1815 to handle finance proposals from President James Madison; on December 10, 1816, it became an official standing committee (EBSCO Research Starters). Its first major matters were the Tariff Act of 1816 and the Bank Act authorizing the Second Bank of the United States (EBSCO Research Starters). Until 1867, when the Senate Appropriations Committee was created, Finance also handled federal appropriations (EBSCO Research Starters).

The committee’s fingerprints are on the country’s foundational money legislation: during the Civil War it funneled funds to the war effort, instituted the nation’s first income tax, and in 1862 produced the Legal Tender Act authorizing paper currency (EBSCO Research Starters). It designed the payroll taxes for the Social Security Act of 1935, financed veterans’ education through the GI Bill of 1944, produced the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, created Medicare and Medicaid through the Social Security Amendments of 1965, and steered the Tax Reform Act of 1986 and the 2017 tax overhaul (EBSCO Research Starters). It celebrated its bicentennial in 2016 (EBSCO Research Starters).

In the 119th Congress, with Republicans in the Senate majority, Mike Crapo served as chairman and Ron Wyden as ranking member (EBSCO Research Starters).

What this profile does not claim

It does not assert when the Affinity investigation began or what happened after the September 2024 letter, since neither was in the sources read in full. It does not assert a reported FARA referral to the Justice Department or any 2026 follow-up findings, which rest on leads only. Membership and leadership figures reflect the 119th Congress (2025), not any later composition. The “compensation scheme” and FARA characterizations are Wyden’s, as stated in the committee’s own release, not established legal findings.