On January 19, 2021, one day before President Donald Trump’s first term ended, Michael Boulos, an ambitious entrepreneur only a few years out of college, knelt in the White House Rose Garden and proposed to Tiffany Trump.
Almost immediately after Tiffany—the former president’s youngest daughter—said “yes,” Boulos, his family, and his associates began landing major commercial opportunities through their proximity to his future wife’s family. The first deal was a family venture. According to his cousin Jimmy Frangi, Boulos, then a young yacht broker with a knack for developing business, quickly identified his future brother-in-law Jared Kushner as a potential client and arranged an introduction. They brought Kushner an enticing investment pitch: buy a yacht at a favorable price, refit it, then resell or charter it for profit.
Documents show that in June 2021 Boulos sent Kushner presentations about an unfinished 50-meter yacht later named Solstice.
Frangi’s company told Kushner the purchase price would be €12.5 million—about $15 million at the time—which included costs and a fixed $1.2 million commission for Boulos, Frangi, and their partners.
But messages from Frangi indicate the firm made more than that because the broker side paid less for the yacht than they told Kushner. “We made $3.5 million on this one,” Frangi told an associate.
The deal closed in early 2022. Frangi says he earned about $400,000 in commission and Boulos received $300,000. Frangi also acknowledged taking additional funds from transaction fees, but maintained the amount was only a few hundred thousand dollars—not millions—and that the yacht price was not inflated. According to Taylor Howard, an attorney for another broker, Kushner ultimately realized he had been overcharged by as much as $2.5 million and confronted Frangi. “In fact, Frangi used that amount to increase his profit in the transaction,” Howard wrote.
A spokesperson for Kushner declined to discuss the agreement’s details, saying only that Boulos had recently done “very well” finding prospective buyers for the yacht and that a deal was pending. The vessel remains unfinished and is moored in Greece.
Even so, previously unreported arrangements—compiled by U.S. media from contracts, court filings, text messages, and numerous interviews—show that Boulos, his family, and associates secured substantial financial advantages soon after his engagement to Tiffany, the only child of Donald Trump and his former wife Marla Maples.
Their wedding, held at the Mar-a-Lago golf club in Florida on November 12, 2022, significantly elevated the Boulos family’s profile and turned Massad Boulos, Michael’s father, into an important campaign backer for Donald Trump.
American media have described Massad Boulos as a billionaire, though there is no evidence he holds significant assets from business operations. Last year, reporters found that his stake in his wife’s family trucking company in Nigeria was worth less than $2. Trump’s 2024 reelection to a second term brought Massad Boulos into government: he became a presidential adviser on the Middle East, then a senior adviser on Africa at the U.S. Department of State.
According to former Guinean prime minister Lansana Kouyaté, Michael Boulos has been seeking business opportunities in Africa. Without offering specifics, he said Boulos told him several months ago that he was working to “connect investors from the United States with certain governments in Africa.” Kouyaté added that Boulos’s commercial activities cannot be separated from the political role his father now holds in the administration.
As the Boulos family’s standing rose through its ties to the Trump family, their associates also pursued openings of their own. Around the time of the presidential inauguration, entrepreneur Habib Saidi—a close friend of the Boulos family—was sitting with Michael at Mar-a-Lago when he spotted financier Kacy Grine, who has extensive connections in Saudi Arabia, dining nearby.
Saidi left the table and introduced himself to Grine in front of others. According to a witness, Saidi said he and his friends wanted to leverage their proximity to the center of American power to do business in the Middle East.
Today, Michael Boulos and Tiffany Trump are focused on their young family. They welcomed their first child, Alexander, in May. Tiffany remains private but last week shared on Instagram photos of a family boat outing and views from the French Riviera—her “vacation paradise.”