US officials 'briefed Jared Kushner on concerns about Wendi Deng Murdoch'

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, was reportedly warned about his friendship with Wendi Deng Murdoch, amid fears she was using the connection to promote China’s business interests.

Early in 2017 US officials urged Kushner, who is a senior adviser to the US president, to exercise caution around Murdoch, according to the Wall Street Journal. Murdoch is a close friend of Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump.

Concerns were raised by US officials about a counter-intelligence assessment that Murdoch was lobbying for a high-profile construction project in Washington funded by the Chinese government, anonymous sources told the US paper.

Wendi Deng Murdoch is former wife of Rupert Murdoch, who owns the Wall Street Journal.

The construction project was a proposed $100m (£73m) Chinese garden, which was reportedly declared a national security risk because the design included plans for a tall tower that officials were concerned could be used for surveillance. The garden was planned to be built less than five miles from both the Capitol and the White House.

Murdoch’s spokesman said she “has no knowledge of any FBI concerns or other intelligence agency concerns relating to her or her associations”. He also said she “has absolutely no knowledge of any garden projects funded by the Chinese government”.

A representative for Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, described the meeting where the concerns were raised as a “routine senior staff security briefing”. He said Kushner “has complied with all ethics and disclosure recommendations and has played a helpful role in strengthening the US-China relationship so as to help bring about a better resolution to the many issues the countries have.”

The Chinese embassy in Washington said the information in the Journal’s article was “full of groundless speculations”.

Wendi Deng Murdoch has been a good friend of the couple for many years, according to an interview she did with the Guardian in 2016.

“She’s very impressive,” Murdoch said of Ivanka Trump in the interview. “She has three children and she is teaching them Chinese. It’s very nice. We’ve been friendly for many years. I try to separate [the election] from that.”

Trump has shared several photos of Murdoch on her Instagram account, including one of them travelling together in Croatia.

According to a source quoted in the Journal’s article, Murdoch has surfaced on the radar of counter-intelligence services before. When reports emerged that she may have been linked with Tony Blair while she was married, British security officials discussed with their US counterparts whether they should be concerned. Murdoch and Blair have denied they were ever romantically connected.

The Journal’s story is particularly striking because the newspaper is owned by News Corp, whose executive chairman is Murdoch’s ex-husband Rupert Murdoch. The media tycoon married the then Wendi Deng in 1999; they divorced in 2013. She has kept the Murdoch name and said in the Guardian interview that they were still friendly. They have two children together, Grace and Chloe.

Michael Wolff, the author of a new book on Donald Trump’s presidency and a biography about Rupert Murdoch, claimed on Twitter after the Journal article was published that the media tycoon had been claiming his ex-wife was a Chinese spy to “anybody who would listen” since their divorce.

However, Marcus Brauchli, a former managing editor of the Journal, expressed doubts about the story. “Count me deeply sceptical,” he posted on Twitter. “US counter-intelligence has slurred people before with flimsy suspicions, especially those people with ties to China (eg ethnic Chinese). I’d warrant Trump does more for Russia than Wendi ever did for China.”

The Journal has written extensively about Wendi Murdoch’s background before, including before Rupert Murdoch bought the newspaper in 2007.

In November 2000 the Journal published an investigation into Wendi Murdoch that claimed a Californian couple sponsored her application for a student visa in the US, helped teach her English and gave her somewhere to stay. Shortly afterwards the Californian couple divorced and Murdoch married the husband.

The article also alleged that Murdoch was helping to identify investments for her husband’s company in China and was acting as his “liaison and translator in China”. News Corp said at the time that Murdoch was “entitled to her privacy” and questioned details in the story.