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- Jared Kushner racked up a $24,335 hotel bill during his last official trip to Israel in December 2020.
- Former President Donald Trump's son-in-law and top adviser was in Israel as part of his Middle East negotiations.
- Richard Grenell, an ex-Trump administration official, called the hotel bill "a small price to pay for multiple Historic peace deals."
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Jared Kushner, former President Donald Trump's son-in-law and top adviser, racked up a $24,335 hotel bill during his last official trip to Israel in December 2020, the Daily Beast first reported Monday.
Kushner led negotiations last year of the so-called Abraham Accords, which normalized diplomatic relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. He traveled to Jerusalem in December to lead an Israeli delegation on the first direct flight to Morocco since the two countries normalized ties. Kushner also helped lead the Trump administration's Middle East policy, spearheading the creation of an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan that heavily favored Israel's interests.
Jason Miller, an adviser to the Trumps, defended the expenditure, which was made public on a federal government database. "Jared Kushner was there to cement his 5th peace deal for Israel in 4 months. How much did John Kerry's trips cost where he accomplished nothing?" he told The Daily Beast.
And Richard Grenell, acting director of national intelligence under Trump, wrote on Twitter that the hotel bill was "a small price to pay for multiple Historic peace deals."
Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, and other members of the Trump family have faced scrutiny for their spending. Trump and Kushner spent over $100,000 renting an apartment for their Secret Service detail across the street from their Washington, DC, home after they prohibited the security team from using the bathroom in their house.
In another instance, the couple spent over $58,000 in taxpayer money on accommodations for their security team during a 2018 weekend vacation in the Dominican Republic.