U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia said on Saturday that President Donald Trump’s envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff were “negotiating with Putin to sell billions in Russian oil fields and refineries and gas stations to the president’s friends.” His comments at a campaign rally appeared to refer to a proposed sale of sanctioned Russian oil company Lukoil’s international business, which U.S. officials have not approved.
Ossoff, a Democrat running for re-election on Nov. 3 against Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, spoke at an Oct. 17 rally in Cobb County with Democratic gubernatorial nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms, according to his campaign. The campaign’s Team Ossoff account posted a clip from its livestream. He opened the passage by referring to the diesel arrangement Trump announced with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Oct. 9.
“Y’all remember Jared Kushner?” Ossoff asked, calling Trump’s son-in-law “the so-called special envoy responsible for diplomacy with Russia and in the Middle East.” He described Witkoff as the envoy “who co-founded the president’s crooked crypto business, World Liberty.” Ossoff did not name Lukoil in the posted clip.
He then listed the buyers: Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates, whom he called “the Emirati spy chief who paid half a billion to the Trump-Witkoff crypto business”; the Al-Khayyat brothers, “two Syrians who are financing Jared and Ivanka’s multi-billion dollar Albanian resort project”; and “a billionaire mega donor to Trump’s campaign.” He added: “Oh, and the U.S. government would take a 15% stake, by the way.”
The details track reporting by The New York Times on Oct. 3, based on eight people familiar with the talks. The Times reported that Putin raised the Lukoil sale when he met Witkoff and Kushner at the Kremlin on Sept. 5, proposing it as a way of showing Russians “that they can do business with the United States,” and that the Americans said they would work on it. One person told the paper it was the first time Lukoil had come up in Putin’s talks with the two envoys.
According to the Times, the leading bidder is a group led by Todd Boehly, a co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who gave $1 million to MAGA Inc., the pro-Trump political committee, in December 2025 and another $1 million through his firm Eldridge Industries to Trump’s inauguration. The U.S. government would take part through the U.S. International Development Finance Corp., the Times reported.
The newspaper reported that a major equity holder would be a Qatar-based conglomerate controlled by Moutaz and Ramez Al-Khayyat, who attended Trump’s 2025 inauguration and have since partnered with Kushner and Ivanka Trump to help finance a multibillion-dollar resort project in southern Albania. Another would be an Abu Dhabi fund controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon, the UAE’s top national security adviser, who controls a separate fund that bought a large stake in World Liberty Financial. Tahnoon also helps oversee Lunate, an Abu Dhabi fund that the Times said is among the largest stakeholders in Kushner’s private equity firm.
Some of Ossoff’s descriptions differ from the Times’ wording. He called the Khayyats “two Syrians”; the Times describes them as billionaires born in Syria who moved to Qatar during the Syrian civil war. He said Tahnoon “paid half a billion” to World Liberty; the Oct. 3 report gave no price for the stake purchase, and reported separately that a Tahnoon affiliate made a $2 billion cryptocurrency purchase in 2025 that helped World Liberty generate $799 million for Trump last year.
The $2 million in Boehly donations the Times cited went to MAGA Inc. and the inauguration; the paper did not report contributions directly to Trump’s campaign. The Times reported that Witkoff co-founded World Liberty, which is run in part by his son, and that he has sold his stake, according to a person close to him. In a follow-up report on Oct. 8, the Times said, citing people familiar with the talks, that the DFC would get a stake of about 15% without putting in cash up front, and that Middle Eastern investors would together hold more than half the equity.
The Boehly group emerged after earlier bids stalled. When the assets went on the market following the Treasury’s October 2025 sanctions on Lukoil, interested parties included Chevron, the Times reported. On Nov. 6, 2025, the Treasury wrote on X that “as long as Putin continues the senseless killings, the Kremlin’s puppet, Gunvor, will never get a license to operate and profit,” rejecting the Swiss trader’s offer. Private equity firm Carlyle reached a “nonexclusive” agreement with Lukoil in January, but U.S. approval stalled, according to the Times.
Lukoil valued its international assets at $20 billion earlier this year, the Times reported, though the price and structure of the proposed deal are not clear. The paper reported that Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s economic envoy, has been closely involved, and that Lukoil’s international division hired Bryan Lanza, a senior adviser to Trump’s 2024 campaign who works at Mercury Public Affairs, as a consultant. Lanza no longer works for Lukoil, a person familiar with the matter told the newspaper.
“This is an alarming and very concerning set of entanglements,” Hui Chen, a former Justice Department prosecutor and ethics adviser, told the Times. “And it means you have to question how the Trump administration is evaluating the different bidders involved here. Are the personal interests involved going to wrongly influence the outcome?”
Administration officials described the envoys’ role differently. A senior administration official said in a statement to the Times that Witkoff and Kushner played a direct role in helping negotiate the financial terms of the government’s investment to ensure it included “a substantial upfront payment and profits interest for the United States.”
A spokeswoman for Witkoff told the Times that he “takes no salary and travels the world on his own plane, at his own expense, working on behalf of President Trump to negotiate peace and bring hostages home to their families,” and that he “has no conflict of interest and no financial stake in this matter.” The Times did not report a comment from Kushner, and said there is “no indication that Mr. Kushner and Mr. Witkoff themselves stand to profit.”
A DFC official said in a statement to the Times that the deal “would advance the Trump administration’s commitment to strengthen U.S. economic security, advance U.S. foreign policy and lower energy prices for everyday Americans.” Asked about the decision, a Treasury spokeswoman told the paper that the Office of Foreign Assets Control “implements foreign policy as determined by the White House.”
Under General License 131J, issued Sept. 18, parties may negotiate and sign contracts to buy Lukoil International GmbH through Oct. 22, but carrying them out requires “separate authorization” from OFAC. In its guidance, OFAC said any approved sale must “completely sever LIG’s ties with Lukoil,” keep money owed to Lukoil blocked in an account under U.S. jurisdiction until sanctions are lifted, and “not provide a windfall to Lukoil.” On Oct. 15, OFAC extended separate licenses letting Lukoil’s gas stations outside Russia and its Bulgarian entities, including the Burgas refinery, keep running through April 24, 2027.
The sale has also drawn questions in Congress. In an Oct. 6 letter, Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, and Roger Wicker, a Republican, told Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that the new Russia sanctions law’s bans on new U.S. investment in Russia and on buying Russian sovereign debt “are germane to efforts, recently reported publicly, to conclude a multi-billion-dollar deal for Lukoil’s international assets.” Trump’s Oct. 16 executive order waived those prohibitions, in sections 107 through 109 of the law, along with most of its other sanctions and duties.
Ossoff’s remarks came a day after that order and eight days after the diesel license. The White House and the Collins campaign had not responded to his comments as of Monday, and Trump’s and Bessent’s public remarks on Russia over the weekend did not mention the Lukoil sale.
“The president’s friends,” “the first family’s cronies” and “crooked crypto business” are Ossoff’s words. The buyer group, the government stake and the envoys’ role are described in the Times’ reporting, based on unnamed sources and statements to the newspaper, not in any Treasury, DFC or White House document reviewed. The 15% figure appears in the Times’ Oct. 8 report and in Ossoff’s remarks but not in an official record, and the “half a billion” payment is Ossoff’s figure. OFAC has so far authorized only negotiations and contingent contracts.