Once-rising Trump Aide Sidelined From Iran, Ukraine Work

Josh Gruenbaum, a former adviser to Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, will no longer work with the pair on Russia-Ukraine or Iran, according to two people familiar with the matter.

On foreign policy matters, he’ll only be at the Board of Peace working on Gaza issues, the people said, stressing that the Board of Peace is an international organization that is meant to operate independently of the U.S. government.

The Trump administration is taking steps to stand up the group so that its daily work operates separately, but President Donald Trump is the chair and other senior U.S. officials are on the executive board.

Gruenbaum’s departure comes after he fell out of favor in recent weeks with several of the president’s top advisers in the West Wing and elsewhere in the administration, the people said. They were granted anonymity to discuss administration personnel dynamics.

Gruenbaum, a 40-year-old former Wall Street executive, had a meteoric rise in the administration. He was tapped in January 2025 to lead the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service and parlayed the posting to forge a close connection with Witkoff and Kushner, at first by working with them on the Gaza ceasefire deal that was completed in October 2025.

He leveraged that to a much broader portfolio alongside the pair, catapulting him into some of the administration’s most sensitive foreign policy work. His profile peaked in January this year when he was photographed alongside Kushner and Witkoff meeting Russian Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin.

But Gruenbaum’s penchant for self-promotion and an abrasive work style rankled some of Trump’s other senior advisers, one of the people said. He flooded various administration officials with phone calls and was seen as very focused on how his name appeared in stories and official communications, the person added.

While Kushner and Witkoff remain Gruenbaum’s allies, the pair didn’t stand in the way of paring back his duties, according to one of the people.

He “will continue to advance the President’s agenda of enhancing global stability in his role at the Board of Peace,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said.

Gruenbaum referred questions to the White House.

Board of Peace spokesperson Brad Klapper said: “We are very grateful to have Josh helping us advance one of the president’s signature foreign policy objectives: peace and prosperity in the Middle East.” He added that “Josh is a critical leader of this entire effort.”

Last week POLITICO reported that Gruenbaum would be detailed to the White House after leaving his post heading the GSA’s procurement shop, but at that point his next moves weren’t concrete, the people said. Since then, senior officials finalized the decision to keep him only working on Gaza, and outside the White House. He is now also a senior adviser to GSA.

The Board of Peace position is seen as taking Gruenbaum far away from the centers of power, the people said, adding that he had sought an office on the White House grounds and a more formal White House role.

“This is a guy that a couple of months ago, Steve and Jared brought to meet Putin, and now he's gonna be sharing an office with Kristi Noem, basically,” the first person said.

Trump fired Noem last month after a rocky and scandal-plagued tenure as Homeland Security Secretary. He then named her the U.S. envoy to the Shield of the Americas, a coalition against drug cartels. Her office as well as the Board of Peace’s are in the Institute of Peace, which is a mile from the West Wing and now bears Trump’s name.

Gruenbaum was unable to extend his early rapport with Witkoff and Kushner as his portfolio grew and he involved himself in other policy areas. Gruenbaum will still advise Kushner and Witkoff on issues relating to Gaza. He began the Board of Peace assignment on a part-time basis in October.

When he began at the GSA last year, Gruenbaum was part of a group of Elon Musk allies placed at the GSA at the start of the Trump administration as part of the DOGE effort to overhaul the federal acquisition process, an effort that lost steam after Musk departed Washington last May.

Gruenbaum was the subject of an expansive Wall Street Journal profile in February, which highlighted his unusually rapid rise from the GSA into high-level foreign policy circles, his unorthodox proposals for the government acquisition of missile technology and his potential conflicts of interest tied to a federal contract.