February 2017 to June 2017
As Kushner and MBS become fast friends, MBS and MBZ use various intermediaries to profoundly alter U.S. foreign policy to their benefit—particularly a group of six Trump aides and advisers with substantial ties to Russia and Israel as well as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Meanwhile, Kushner and Trump prioritize their own business interests ahead of even the basic diplomatic and administrative processes of the new Trump administration, abandoning a longtime American ally, rewarding war crimes, and encouraging destabilizing regional aggressions even as Trump feels the pressures of a newly reinvigorated Russia investigation.
During the week of Trump’s inauguration, George Nader and Trump Victory Committee vice chairman Elliott Broidy meet for the first time.1 By February 2017, Nader and Broidy have become “fast friends” and begun “exchanging emails about potential contracts for [Broidy’s private security company] Circinus with both the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and also about Saudi and Emirati objectives in Washington, such as persuading the United States government to take action against the Muslim Brotherhood or put pressure on its regional ally, Qatar.”2 Nader soon arranges a meeting between Broidy and MBZ, whereafter Broidy signs contracts with the UAE worth “several hundred million dollars”—ostensibly for services to be rendered by Broidy’s mercenary company.3
That “Saudi and Emirati objectives in Washington” include lobbying the U.S. government to “take action against the Muslim Brotherhood” is in alignment with a major concern of Egyptian president and Red Sea conspirator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, as is an ancillary effort—cheered by both Nader and Broidy in their emails to each other—to block former United States ambassador to Cairo and then assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs Anne Patterson from getting a job at the Pentagon.4 According to the New York Times, MBZ, MBS, el-Sisi, Nader, and Broidy all consider Patterson “too sympathetic” to one of el-Sisi’s chief enemies, deposed and imprisoned Egyptian president and Muslim Brotherhood member Mohamed Morsi; on June 17, 2019, the democratically elected president will die mysteriously of a “heart attack” in an Egyptian court just days, according to the Middle East Eye, after the el-Sisi administration gives the incarcerated politician an ultimatum—disband the Muslim Brotherhood or face dire consequences—that Morsi refuses.5
From the time of their first meeting onward, writes the New York Times, Broidy and Nader “work[] to sway the Trump administration on behalf of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia at a time when Mr. Broidy [is] seeking contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars from the two countries.”6 Broidy and Nader even jointly lobby the White House on an issue important to the Malaysians and Chinese when they discover the possibility of Emirati kickbacks in doing so. They consistently find an amenable bargaining partner in the president—who must quickly see that MBZ and MBS have found, in UAE adviser Nader and GOP mega-donor Broidy, their preferred conduits for continuing their pre-election relationship with Trump and his staffers.7
As he is lobbying the Trump administration on behalf of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, one of Broidy’s side projects sees him seeking “billions” in oil, gas, and mining assets in Angola while helping Angolan politicians gain access to both Republicans in Congress and members of the Trump administration.8 Broidy is aided in this effort by Lisa Korbatov—the same Trump associate whose parents in 2007 sold “small-time scam artist” Mokless Girgis a mansion under suspicious circumstances, with the final stages of the transaction accruing to Trump’s benefit in an effortless $9.5 million profit in just twelve months.9 Korbatov’s arrangement with Broidy’s private security firm in the Angola affair promises her a 3 percent finder’s fee of any security contract Broidy’s security company, Circinus, signs.10 While wooing the Angolans, Broidy scores multiple tickets to Trump’s inauguration and entices his clients with possible meetings with President Trump, Vice President Pence, and defense secretary Jim Mattis, the last of whom has been an “unpaid adviser” to MBZ in the past.11
On April 3, 2017, at a time it would have been clear to both Trump and his top aides that Broidy had been acting as an agent of MBZ and MBS, Trump names the former Trump Victory Committee vice chairman (and presidential inaugural committee vice chairman) the new national deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.12 Trump’s decision significantly increases the ability of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to access top GOP officials.
By May 2019, a series of scandals involving Broidy—already a convict from a 2009 federal charge of “rewarding official misconduct”—leads the Republican Party to scrub its webpage announcing Broidy’s appointment as one of its top finance officials.13 In 2018, Al Jazeera writes critically of Broidy’s “history of bribery and pro-Israel advocacy,” and indeed it is in 2018 that the media outlet publishes allegations that Broidy has secretly worked as an unregistered agent for a Russian principal since June 12, 2014, when he took on a multimillion-dollar lobbying contract with VTB, a Russian bank eventually subjected to U.S. sanctions; Al Jazeera’s allegations include publication of the purported consultancy agreement between Broidy and VTB.14 Of the six countries in the “expanded” Red Sea Conspiracy—including Russia and Israel as well as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt—Broidy’s lobbying history shows him working at various points on behalf of foreign nationals or entities from four of these.
As part of Broidy’s 2014 contract with VTB, he commits to offer the Russian bank “political advocacy” in Washington, among other services such as well-informed “investment advice.”15 Al Jazeera reports that Broidy’s lobbying on behalf of Russia is, in many respects, a Russia-UAE joint venture, with Broidy’s payment for his VTB work coming from a UAE-headquartered company whose chief shareholder, Yuri Soloviev, worked for Deutsche Bank from 2002 to 2008 and is a powerful enough figure in the world of Russian finance that he appears on an investment forum panel beside Vladimir Putin in Moscow in October 2017.16 That Broidy’s boss Soloviev should have high-level Kremlin connections is no surprise; in 2010, when Soloviev is the chief executive of VTB Capital, the New York Times notes that the venture capital firm is “supported in part by the Russian government.”17 In 2011, Financial News reports, regarding Soloviev’s work with VTB Capital, that “Soloviev has not … had to rely solely on his deal-making talents. Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, [has] put his weight behind the firm from its launch—and business from state-run companies played a substantial role in VTB Capital’s rapid rise.”18 The Putin-linked Soloviev is still paying Elliott Broidy for “political advocacy” and “investment advice” as the Trump administration begins on January 20, 2017.19
Both Broidy and Nader enjoy ready access to the White House in the early days of the Trump presidency. According to the New York Times, in the first weeks of the new administration Nader makes “frequent trips to the White House … meeting with Stephen K. Bannon and Jared Kushner to discuss American policy toward the Persian Gulf States … By some accounts, it was Mr. Bannon who pushed for [Nader] to gain access to White House policymakers. Others said Mr. Kushner backed him.”20
On January 26, acting attorney general Sally Yates goes to the White House to inform White House counsel Don McGahn that the nation’s national security advisor, Michael Flynn, has been compromised by a foreign power by virtue of having lied to federal investigators about December 2016 negotiations he held with the Kremlin over U.S. sanctions.21 The next day, McGahn calls Yates back to the White House to ask her “why the Justice Department would be concerned whether one White House official [Flynn] lied to another [Vice President Pence]” about the content of a phone call, a line of questioning that requires the acting attorney general to—as she later tells Congress—underscore to McGahn that “it is a matter of some urgency” when the president’s national security advisor is “compromised with respect to the Russians.”22 McGahn gives little indication of why the White House is inclined to defend Flynn from any repercussions for his actions, instead asking Yates to provide the White House with all the evidence it has compiled against the nation’s top national security official.23
On January 27, the same day that Yates reconfirms for McGahn that Flynn has committed a serious federal offense involving the Russians, and just forty-eight hours before Trump is due to speak with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman (MBS’s father) on the phone, one of Flynn’s top aides, Derek Harvey, meets in the White House with the co-founder of IP3, Bud McFarlane, and a number of backers of IP3’s plan for U.S.-Saudi-Russian cooperation on nuclear power.24 Harvey, who in the first week of Trump’s presidency had told a future congressional whistleblower that “Flynn [has] already decided to adopt IP3’s nuclear plan and develop ‘dozens of nuclear power plants’ [in Saudi Arabia],” ends his meeting with McFarlane—who had met with Michael Flynn at Trump Tower on December 5—by “direct[ing] NSC [National Security Council] staff to add information about IP3’s ‘plan for 40 nuclear power plants’ to the briefing package for Trump’s call with King Salman.”25 When Harvey is told that such a plan would be illegal unless Saudi Arabia finally agrees to a “123 agreement” with the United States, the Flynn aide “ignore[s] these warnings,” insisting “that the decision to transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia [has] already been made.”26 Harvey does not clarify who has been the final arbiter in this decision—Flynn, the president, or someone else—and his statements cause so much alarm in the White House that “NSC staffers, ethics counsel and lawyers alert[] the top NSC legal adviser, John Eisenberg.” On January 30, “Eisenberg instruct[s] the NSC staffers to stop all work on the [IP3] plan.”27
The same day that Eisenberg moves to block the advance of the nuclear power component of Flynn’s Middle East Marshall Plan on legal and national security grounds, and just twenty-four hours removed from Trump’s first-ever call with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, the president announces a high-profile firing: Sally Yates.28
Following the dismissal of the acting attorney general, Michael Flynn sees no change in his employment status, and indeed even retains his top-secret security clearance until public pressure on the White House forces its revocation more than two weeks later.29 Harvey, who retains his job after Flynn is finally forced out of the White House on February 14, will continue speaking regularly with the disgraced national security advisor until at least March 2, saying during a White House meeting on that date, “I speak with Michael Flynn every night.”30 By this point it has long been national news that Flynn is, as the Washington Post reported on February 14, “vulnerable to blackmail by Moscow.”31
By mid-March, Flynn’s deputy K. T. McFarland, who has also kept her job despite her involvement in Flynn’s clandestine December 2016 sanctions negotiations, will tell White House staff that it is Trump who has approved Flynn and McFarlane’s Saudi plan and, moreover, put Thomas Barrack in charge of it.32 Harvey shortly thereafter calls Barrack and Gates—the latter by then working for Barrack as a consultant—to get the IP3 plan into a position for “Kushner to present it to the president for approval.”33 A few weeks later, in April, despite knowing that Flynn is under federal criminal investigation for a series of events involving both him and his transition team, Trump contacts Flynn to tell him to “stay strong.”34
Derek Harvey will, like Flynn, eventually be let go—though not until July 2017, after which he goes to work for former Trump transition official Devin Nunes on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, a committee whose Republican members, in particular Nunes, will by early 2018 have received criticism for secretly collaborating with the White House to block the Russia investigation, including any investigation of Flynn’s dismissal.35 By the time Harvey leaves the White House, the IP3 plan is opposed, on legal and national security grounds, by both “White House lawyers and National Security Council officials,” according to the Washington Post, but is pushed forward anyway by Trump, Kushner, and Barrack (see chapter 10).36
The day after Flynn’s firing, Trump makes an unusual comment to his friend and former transition chief Chris Christie at a private meeting attended also by Jared Kushner. Christie and Flynn had been the only members of Trump’s team to join him at his first classified national security briefing on August 17, 2016—the briefing that conclusively established for the Trump campaign brass that the Kremlin was seeking to infiltrate the campaign and interfere in the 2016 presidential election. At a lunch meeting with Christie and Kushner on February 15, 2017, Trump tells Christie that the “Russia thing is all over now, because I fired Flynn,” and explains that he “fired Flynn” because Flynn “met” with “the Russians”—a narrative that contradicts his public insistence that Flynn was fired for lying about a phone call to Vice President Mike Pence.37
Though it is known that Flynn did indeed meet with Sergey Kislyak during the campaign, it is not clear which meeting—or negotiation—held between Flynn and Kremlin agents during the primary season or general election Trump deems to have been a danger to him. What the Mueller Report details, however, is that Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, believed the president was afraid of “Flynn saying bad things about him” after he was fired; that Trump’s counsel John Dowd anxiously contacted Flynn’s counsel to ask him if he had transmitted any “information that implicates the President” to federal law enforcement; and that Flynn’s deputy K. T. McFarland—who worked closely with Flynn during the transition, on Russia policy in particular—could not make any representation one way or another about whether Trump had ordered Flynn’s contacts with Russian nationals before or after Election Day.38 Nevertheless, Trump “sought to have [her] … draft an internal letter stating that the President had not directed Flynn to discuss sanctions with Kislyak.”39
As recounted in the Mueller Report, during a press conference after Flynn’s firing Trump declares, oddly, that “it certainly would have been okay with me if [Flynn] did [discuss sanctions] with Kislyak. I would have directed him to do it if I thought he wasn’t doing it.”40 Trump thereby suggests that he knew Flynn was negotiating sanctions with the Kremlin, even though he had never told him to do so nor told anyone else to tell him to do so. This sentiment is a problematic one, given that Flynn’s sanctions negotiations in December 2016 appear to have been a federal crime under the Logan Act—one for which the retired general escaped prosecution in part because the act is rarely enforced. As for any sanctions negotiations that may have occurred between Flynn’s (and Trump’s and Christie’s) August 17, 2016, classified briefing on Russian election interference and Election Day, Trump may well have feared, as intimated by Dowd’s calls to Flynn’s counsel, that these could be considered a federal felony (aiding and abetting, 18 U.S.C. § 2) if Trump knew about them at the time.41 Fears regarding the aiding and abetting statute could thus explain Trump’s insistence to Christie that “the problem” with Flynn—which in Trump’s view created a “Russia thing” he had to deal with—was that “Flynn met with the Russians.”42 As for McFarland’s claim that she couldn’t definitively state whether or not Trump had directed Flynn to speak to the Russians before or after the election, on this point the Mueller Report notes that Trump had sufficient knowledge of such meetings and/or conversations that when “Flynn listed [for Trump during the week of February 6] the specific dates on which he remembered speaking with Kislyak … the President corrected one of the dates he listed.”43
The Mueller Report will also reveal, though not resolve, another mystery: the fact that, prior to any public revelation of Flynn’s December 2016 contacts with Kislyak, Trump was so “unhappy” and “upset” with his top national security advisor that “he would not look at him during intelligence briefings,” a circumstance Hope Hicks said was caused by Trump thinking Flynn had shown “bad judgment” in the past.44 While the report offers Flynn’s “tweets” as one possible basis for Trump’s ire, given Trump’s own controversial tweeting habits a more plausible explanation is that Trump’s leading adviser on national security issues had in fact kept his boss apprised of his ongoing contacts with the Russians during and after the campaign—as well as his contacts with other foreign nationals—and that those contacts, or simply being told of them, had angered Trump.45 Certainly, the report confirms that after Flynn’s contacts with the Russians became public knowledge, Trump was angry, per Reince Priebus, with “the reporting on Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak” rather than with the conversations themselves, and that Trump used Priebus to tell Flynn he needed to “kill the story.”46 Trump’s “kill” directive led to Flynn’s deputy McFarland “providing false information” about Flynn’s actions to the Washington Post—a course of deceit that had the effect of covering up Flynn’s apparent violation of the Logan Act and contributing to McFarland subsequently being denied an ambassadorship by Congress.47
While the Mueller Report will fail to establish with high confidence whether Trump knew beforehand of Flynn’s December 2016 sanctions negotiations with Kislyak, it does provide some evidence that the Flynn-Kislyak contacts were persistent and that Trump may have had knowledge of them. Prior to the December Flynn-Kislyak calls, the report observes, “the FBI had opened [before 2016] an investigation of Flynn based on his relationship with the Russian government. Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak [in 2015 and 2016] became a key component of that investigation”—a statement that suggests Flynn may have had contacts with the Russian ambassador after his December 2015 visit to Kislyak’s home but before December 2016.48 In December 2016, Flynn’s deputy McFarland, according to Reince Priebus, had told Trump and others gathered at a meeting at Mar-a-Lago that there were means available for the transition team to “cool[] down” and “not escalate[]” the U.S.-Russia tensions caused by the Obama administration’s imposition of new sanctions in response to Russian election interference.49 McFarland herself told the special counsel’s office that at the end of that meeting “someone may have mentioned to the President-Elect that Flynn was speaking to the Russian ambassador that evening.”50 And according to Flynn’s statements to the special counsel—statements made while he was in a cooperation agreement with the government—four days later, on January 3, 2017, Flynn “saw the President-Elect in person and thought they discussed the Russian reaction to the sanctions.”51 The picture therefore painted by the report, in total, is of a politician kept reasonably well informed by his top aides of their most important political and diplomatic maneuvers.
Less than ninety-six hours after Flynn’s February 14 firing—an event that for a moment seems to leave in limbo IP3’s U.S.-Saudi-Russian nuclear deal, and therefore, due to its arrangement with the United States, the United Arab Emirates’ nuclear ambitions as well—Trump’s sons, Don and Eric, travel to the UAE with the assistance of more than $16,000 in taxpayer funds for security.52 The trip is ostensibly for the opening of Trump International Golf Course Dubai, though while there Don “praise[s] the development of the UAE,” saying that “to see the incredible vision Sheikh Mohammed [MBZ] has been able to put forward for this country is truly awe-inspiring. As a developer … it is truly incredible to be part of that vision.”53 It is unknown if either or both of the brothers meet with any members of the Emirati royal family, including MBZ, during their trip, or with any of MBZ’s Saudi allies, but what is known is that as Trump’s two eldest sons travel to the United Arab Emirates, the most powerful man in that country is just weeks removed from entering the United States in secret to meet with Jared Kushner and only a few months away from using his intermediaries George Nader and Elliott Broidy to try to set up a “private,” off-the-grid meeting with Don and Eric’s father. Moreover, Don and Eric visit the UAE as construction has just begun on yet another Trump-branded golf course in the country MBZ rules, Trump World Golf Club Dubai.54
Meanwhile, in the United States, Thomas Barrack begins paying Rick Gates—Barrack’s deputy on the inaugural committee—$20,000 a month for post-inaugural “consulting on legislative and regulatory matters.”55 Barrack does this despite having, as a longtime friend of the new president, direct access to Trump and, consequently, top Republican legislators and regulators. Barrack’s payments to Gates do not appear to have been intended to aid Barrack in accessing the president; indeed, as the New York Times notes, after becoming the subject of multiple federal investigations Gates maintains access to top Trump advisers only “because he was seen as having the blessing of Mr. Barrack, a close friend and business associate of Mr. Trump’s.”56 As Barrack is paying Gates, Barrack is himself lobbying Trump to have his first trip overseas as president be to Saudi Arabia, a course of persuasion that will ultimately achieve its desired result.57
In March 2017, Broidy, who worked with Gates on the Trump Victory Campaign before the election, and worked also with Barrack on Trump’s inaugural committee finance team during the transition, begins paying Gates $25,000 a month for “advis[ing] Mr. Broidy on how to pursue both a contract for his [private security] business and appointments for associates and provid[ing] insight into the new administration’s foreign policy plans.”58 As these two major Trump fundraisers and inaugural committee officials, Barrack and Broidy, are both paying Gates exorbitant amounts to lobby an administration they already have ready access to, Gates is under investigation by the FBI in a case that could ultimately—if Gates agrees to cooperate with the FBI—lead to significant legal liability for Barrack, Broidy, and perhaps even the president himself.
As Barrack and Broidy continue making unusual payments to Gates, they continue, too, lobbying Trump on various issues involving the Middle East. Noting the irregularities in these arrangements, CNBC will observe that Barrack’s and Broidy’s payments to Gates “raise[] questions of why the two men … each of whom ha[s] close ties to the Republican Party and, in Barrack’s case, to the president himself, [a]re paying a lobbyist like Gates for guidance on how to deal with the new administration.”59 According to the Wall Street Journal, post-inauguration Broidy “often [meets] with the president at the White House and at Mr. Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago,” further muddying the question of whether and why the venture capitalist and mercenary company owner needs Gates’s assistance in connecting with Trump.60
The payments made by Broidy to Gates are made to Gates’s Konik Madison Group LLC, which also bills the Trump campaign for $37,000 in “strategic consulting fees” in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election.61 Prior to transitioning from being Trump’s deputy campaign manager to his RNC liaison upon Paul Manafort’s departure from the campaign in August 2016, Gates’s two primary contributions to Trump’s 2016 presidential run had been, apparently, to field proposals from an Israeli business intelligence company connected to Michael Flynn (proposals geared toward executing a clandestine social media disinformation campaign on Trump’s behalf) and to regularly send proprietary internal polling data to Russian intelligence during the general election.62 Gates is also, by the transition period if not before, part of a secret lobbying consortium, with Flynn and Barrack, seeking to convince Trump to give the Saudis (and thus the Emiratis) nuclear technology.63
While Broidy is paying Gates seemingly extraneous consulting fees, MBS arrives in the United States for a March 20 meeting at the White House.64 In the weeks preceding the meeting, George Nader had begun proposing a plan to “Saudi, UAE, and American officials … to carry out economic sabotage against Iran.”65 Shortly after the Trump-MBS summit, Nader travels to Riyadh to meet with “senior Saudi military and intelligence officials” to continue the pitch for his sabotage plan, having become convinced that “economic warfare [is] the key to the overthrow of the government in Tehran.”66 By the time Trump and Kushner travel to Riyadh in May, Nader has already “tried to persuade Mr. Kushner to endorse the [economic sabotage plan] to Crown Prince Mohammed in person.”67 While Nader is pitching his ideas to Kushner in April or early May, he is also “in discussions with [Erik] Prince … about a plan to get the Saudis to pay $2 billion to set up a private army to combat Iranian proxy forces in Yemen.”68
By spring 2017, therefore, the chief elements of a new anti-Iran foreign policy in the United States have been actively developed between just six men—Flynn, Barrack, Gates, Prince, Nader, and Broidy—on a for-profit basis: (1) weaponized uranium for Saudi Arabia and the UAE; (2) economic sabotage of the Iranian economy; (3) counterterrorist mercenaries deployed throughout the Middle East, with a green light to assassinate opponents of MBZ and MBS; and (4) coordination with pro-Kremlin officials to maintain U.S.-Russian relations and ensure at least tacit Kremlin approval of American efforts to weaken Iran, Russia’s most important ally in the Middle East. Four of the men in this “gang of six”—Flynn, Prince, Nader, and Broidy—also have significant ties to another key enemy of the Iranian regime, Israel. Throughout the lobbying efforts of these six men, the primary foreign beneficiaries of their work are two foreign leaders, MBS and MBZ, who, through George Nader, had offered the Trump campaign illicit pre-election assistance at a meeting at Trump Tower on August 3, 2016—an offer Trump’s son responded to approvingly, per the New York Times.69 Also present at that meeting was a man, Joel Zamel, brought to the attention of the Trump campaign by a top aide from the office of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
As part of these covert lobbying campaigns—in Washington, Moscow, and several capitals in the Middle East—Prince and Nader travel to Riyadh in March 2017 to pitch directly to top Saudi government officials their $2 billion anti-Iran “private army.”70 During the meeting that ensues, “top Saudi intelligence officials close to” MBS ask the men “about using private [military] companies [like the ones Nader and Prince are proposing] to assassinate Iranian enemies of the [Saudi] kingdom.”71 One of the Saudi intelligence officials behind this query is Major General Ahmed al-Assiri, the same Saudi intelligence chief who had met with Trump’s then-national security advisor, Michael Flynn, during the presidential transition—and who will, in 2018, be accused of helping orchestrate the assassination of a non-Iranian MBS enemy, Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.72
According to the Times, the army Nader and Prince envision is one comprising primarily “intelligence operatives.” It is telling, then, that an intelligence operative by March 2017 well known to both the Trumps and Trump aides, Israeli business intelligence expert Joel Zamel, joins Nader and Prince at their meetings in Riyadh.73 The Times notes that, while technically an independent operator, Zamel has “deep ties to [Israel’s] intelligence and security agencies.”74
By the time Nader, Prince, and Zamel make their presentation to al-Assiri, they have already pitched it to both MBS and Trump—suggesting that the meetings in Riyadh are focused on further development of the proposal rather than on an initial acceptance of it.75 Nader’s original plan had been to conduct economic espionage against Iran, however; it is al-Assiri who asks Nader, Prince, and Zamel whether they can also conduct “kinetics”—a euphemism for targeted assassinations.76 According to the Times, in response to al-Assiri’s query Nader refers the Saudis to “a London-based company run by former British special operations troops.”77 By 2018, media reports on both sides of the Atlantic will reveal that the UAE has been hiring former U.S. soldiers to conduct “kinetics” throughout the Middle East, with stories on this subject appearing in the Daily Beast, BuzzFeed News, the Middle East Monitor, National Public Radio, and elsewhere.78 Given that some of the other foreign mercenary units the UAE puts into the field at the same time—predominantly Colombian in their derivation—had previously been trained by Erik Prince, Prince’s presence alongside Nader and Zamel as the Emiratis plot military as well as intelligence maneuvers to combat Iranian proxies across the Middle East is telling.79
As for the economic-espionage-oriented plan Nader, Prince, and Zamel pitch in Riyadh in March 2017, it “dates to the beginning of 2016,” according to the New York Times, “when [the three men] started discussing an ambitious campaign of economic warfare against Iran similar to one waged by Israel and the United States during the past decade aimed at coercing Iran to end its nuclear program.”80 The timing of the plan’s development suggests that at some point during the 2016 campaign all three progenitors of the scheme were advising the Trump campaign and that Nader began working with Zamel and Trump adviser Prince not long after his fall 2015 meeting on the Red Sea with MBZ, MBS, and el-Sisi. The contours of the Nader-Prince-Zamel proposal suggest that Zamel’s role in it has been particularly key, with the New York Times reporting that the proposal prominently features “revealing [the] hidden global assets” of enemies; “creating fake social media accounts … to foment unrest”; secretly “financing … opposition groups”; and “publicizing accusations, real or fictitious, against … senior officials to turn them against one another.”81 Indeed, from its description in the Times, this appears to be a plan similar to the one Zamel suggested to Trump Jr. during the 2016 presidential election—with the target, in the latter case, being an unsuspecting American electorate.82 Reports indicate, indeed, that after the election “Mr. Nader and Mr. Zamel traveled to New York to sell both Trump transition officials and Saudi generals” on their plan, though now, as to its social media elements, applied to Iran rather than America.83 The plan is considered “so provocative and potentially destabilizing” that when Nader, Prince, and Zamel suggest it to al-Assiri in New York City during the presidential transition at a meeting atop the Mandarin Oriental hotel, al-Assiri says he would have to “get the approval of the incoming Trump administration before Saudi Arabia paid for the campaign.”84 That Nader, Prince, and Zamel’s plan required green-lighting by Trump, who had not yet assumed the authority to negotiate U.S. foreign policy, suggests that the plan had indeed been devised as a new, covert U.S.-Saudi policy initiative; just so, the willingness of the Saudis in December 2016 to secretly pay for a social media disinformation campaign devised by Joel Zamel—but only if they are asked to do so by Trump—calls to mind the possibility that this same process may have played out in August 2016 with respect to the social media disinformation scheme then being offered by Zamel to the Trump campaign.
The approval from “the incoming Trump administration” sought by al-Assiri is ultimately given, it appears, by Michael Flynn, at a subsequent meeting with the Saudi general during the transition. The result is that the Trump administration, prior to assuming power, has already secretly approved a plan to have a foreign government commit acts of espionage against a nation (Iran) with which the United States is in a state of détente.85 Under the plan, the Saudis would spend money, with explicit approval from Trump’s team, on a military initiative that would undercut the foreign policy of the existing U.S. government, then run by President Obama.
Just days before MBS is set to make his first visit to Washington to meet with the new president, Trump receives terrible news: FBI director James Comey informs the congressional “Gang of Eight”—which includes the chairs and ranking minority members of the Senate and House intelligence committees—that its counterintelligence investigation into Russian election interference has identified “4-5 [American] targets” whose actions require substantial additional investigation by the U.S. intelligence community, and could compel criminal prosecution.86 A week later, the Republican chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr (R-NC), briefs the White House counsel’s office on what was said in the classified briefing.87 Burr appears to inform the office that the four individuals under investigation by the FBI’s counterintelligence division are Flynn, Manafort, Page, and Papadopoulos; a redaction in the Mueller Report indicates that there may have been a fifth individual as well.88
Trump’s reaction appears to be a dramatic one. Three days after Comey’s Gang of Eight briefing, but four days before Burr briefs the White House counsel, Trump is suddenly in a “panic” and a state of “chaos,” according to contemporaneous notes taken by Annie Donaldson, White House counsel Don McGahn’s chief of staff; Donaldson records that “all things related to Russia” must immediately be put in “binders” for Trump’s review.89 That Trump’s reaction is borne in substantial part by the White House counsel’s office suggests that Burr’s briefing of the office four days later may well have been the result of Trump’s White House meltdown. Indeed, the Mueller Report implies this is the case, noting that “the week after Comey’s briefing, the White House Counsel’s Office was in contact with SSCI Chairman Senator Richard Burr about the Russia investigations and appears to have received information about the status of the FBI investigation.”90
Donaldson’s March 16, 2017, notes indicate that Burr’s briefing of the White House counsel’s office took place on that day, and that, per Burr, Manafort was not being investigated for his activities on the Trump presidential campaign—suggesting it is more likely that Trump’s dramatic reaction was to the news of one or more of the other three men being under investigation for their contacts with Russian nationals. The timing of the briefing, just a month after Flynn’s firing and during a period in which both Trump and his attorneys would contact Flynn worriedly, strongly argues for Trump’s chief concern being his former national security advisor, of whom Donaldson’s March 16 notes say that the “DOJ [is] looking for phone records.”91 Donaldson’s notation for Page (“$ game”) may also have caused Trump concern, given Page’s representations in Moscow in December 2016 that he was there to discuss, as Trump’s incognito representative, the sale of a substantial percentage of Russia’s state-owned oil company, Rosneft, among other things (see chapter 4).92 By comparison, Annie Donaldson’s note regarding George Papadopoulos merely says, “Greek guy.”93
Of the four targets Burr reveals to the White House, all but Page are eventually indicted for federal felonies; the status of any federal investigation of Page is currently unknown. Burr’s disclosure of classified intelligence to the White House is not entirely surprising, as he had served as one of Trump’s national security advisers during the presidential campaign, and had told North Carolina voters in 2016 that there was “no separation” between him and Trump.94 As for Trump’s panic at learning the names of the FBI’s targets, the Mueller Report implies it was as notable as any moment of anxiety Trump exhibited during the Russia investigation, on par with his reaction, just days earlier, to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from the Russia probe—an event Steve Bannon recalled made the president “as mad as [he] had ever seen him,” with Trump “scream[ing] at [Don] McGahn about how weak Sessions was.”95 Trump’s reaction to Sessions’s recusal was so destabilizing in the West Wing that an internal White House counsel’s office note recorded, at the time, that the office thereafter had “serious concerns about obstruction.” Given the office’s history, its concern was most likely centered on the president’s urgent directives to the office to speak with Sessions about the Russia probe.96 One of Trump’s many concerns about Sessions’s recusal, according to the Mueller Report, was that it made the attorney general “look guilty” for “omitting details [about his contacts with Russian nationals] in his confirmation hearing.”97 What the president believed Sessions could look (or be) guilty of was unclear.
MBS’s March 2017 trip to D.C. begins a long and mutually profitable friendship between Kushner and MBS that makes Nader’s efforts to convince Kushner—and through him, Trump—to back MBS’s plans a fait accompli. According to the Washington Post, though Kushner and MBS had met briefly prior to March (and Kushner had already met with MBS’s Emirati ally MBZ), it was in the spring of 2017 that “a bond developed between the two men.”98 The Post notes that at least one of their shared interests involved Israel, as both men had been tasked by their fathers to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and both, as would shortly become clear, had taken a view of the conflict considerably favorable to the Israelis: Kushner as part of a long-standing commitment to Israel, and MBS as part of his commitment, since at least the 2015 Red Sea summit, to building a new pro-Israel Arab security alliance.
Between MBS’s March trip to Washington and Trump’s May trip to Riyadh, Kushner and MBS, per the Post, “consult[] with one another frequently,” and indeed it is Kushner who “successfully pushe[s] the president to make Saudi Arabia his first foreign visit … against objections from other senior administration officials,” including secretary of state Rex Tillerson.99 At one point Tillerson even tells Trump’s son-in-law that “his advice to [Trump] to endorse Saudi Arabia’s aggressive diplomatic and strategic campaign against Qatar, an important American ally, ‘had endangered the United States.’”100 At another point, Tillerson “heard ‘chatter’ between Kushner” and MBS “belittling” him,” an intriguing revelation given that agents of MBS and MBZ would later work behind the scenes to get Tillerson fired (see chapter 8).101
Kushner’s relationship with MBS in short order comes to “unsettle[] national security and intelligence officials,” according to the Washington Post, as Kushner is “relying on personal relationships instead of standard government channels” and in a way that generates “particular wariness about Kushner’s embrace of” MBS.102 According to a 2018 Vanity Fair article, during spring 2017, Tillerson says of Kushner’s relationship with MBS, “The kid’s a rookie. He doesn’t know the region.”103 Another former West Wing official will tell Vanity Fair that “there were many confrontations between Tillerson and Jared where Tillerson was … angry that Jared was in contact with MBS. I remember in a couple of instances, Tillerson would confront Jared about directly talking to MBS.”104
According to a Saudi government statement, the close relationship between Kushner and MBS is explained by the fact that “President Trump has given Mr. Kushner the important task of overseeing the peace process, and this has been the primary subject of discussion between Mr. Kushner and His Royal Highness the Crown Prince.”105 Unsaid in the statement is that MBS’s plan for remaking Middle East geopolitics through a new Arab security alliance with him at its head has, from the start, been positioned as a means of achieving “peace”—but does so by risking a bloody, possibly nuclear war between a Saudi-led Sunni coalition and Iranian Shiites. Every Kushner-MBS phone call and meeting on the subject of “peace” is, for the latter, necessarily a conversation about the contours of the Red Sea Conspiracy and its need for an American partner. As the Post will note, “Some intelligence and national security officials worry that [MBS’s] argument about how to resolve conflict in the Middle East—that his country is the chief hope for peace and Iran is the root of all strife—is too simplistic. They fear his appeal has gained traction with White House officials who have little experience with the region’s politics.”106
While he is in Washington in March 2017 with Trump, Kushner, a sizable Saudi delegation, and several Emirati allies, MBS’s agents begin injecting into polite Washington discourse the idea of a grand bargain involving Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel, and Russia. According to the New Yorker, “the idea was raised … by Adel al-Jubeir, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, and Abdullah bin Zayed, the foreign minister of the U.A.E., during a private March 2017 dinner that included several other guests. ‘Their message was “Why don’t we lift the Ukrainian sanctions on Russia in exchange for getting the Russians to push Iran out of Syria,”’ an attendee recalled the foreign ministers saying.… The dinner attendee … [said], ‘It wasn’t a trial balloon. They were trying to socialize the idea.’”107
As MBS’s D.C. entourage is spreading his idiosyncratic diplomatic ideations in public settings, Kushner is taking his relationship with the Saudi crown prince into increasingly private realms—particularly with respect to the duo’s preferred modes of communication. Beginning in March 2017, Kushner periodically broaches new topics with MBS without informing anyone else in the federal government; as the Washington Post will note in a March 2018 article, at one point “White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly asked a question in an intelligence briefing about a sensitive policy matter related to Saudi Arabia in preparation for the crown prince’s [March 2018] visit. In response, intelligence briefers told him that virtually all of the conversations that U.S. officials had with the Saudis on the matter had been between Kushner and Mohammed.”108 The Post adds that “Kushner and his staff have often arranged private conversations with the Saudi crown prince and other senior leaders in foreign countries that were not always coordinated with national security or diplomatic officials, according to multiple officials familiar with his activities.”109 Nor is this lack of coordination merely accidental or the product of Kushner’s limited diplomatic experience: the Post writes that Kushner is quite self-consciously “wary of letting others in the [intelligence] agencies [and state and defense departments] know what he [is] doing for fear opponents would make his plans public.”110 This is an observation with troubling implications, inasmuch as it suggests that whatever Kushner is doing behind closed doors, he believes any career government officials who discover it are likely to soon thereafter become whistleblowers or adversaries.
Even more troublingly, the increasingly frequent conversations between Kushner and MBS are not just private but unreviewable, as they mostly occur, according to The Intercept, via WhatsApp, a secure messaging application.111 It is these WhatsApp conversations that will cause fear in the White House that “the Saudis [a]re playing [Kushner],” according to a former White House official.112 Despite crowing to friends that “Jared’s gotten the Arabs on his side,” Trump will claim to have no knowledge whatsoever of Kushner using WhatsApp to contact MBS.113
While Kushner’s attorney’s spokesman, Peter Mirijanian, will contend that Kushner’s use of a secure messaging application complies with the Presidential Records Act, it seems unlikely that Kushner’s attorney himself believes this—given that since the WhatsApp conversations were revealed, according to The Intercept, “Kushner’s attorneys have … told him not to use the app for official business.”114 It is unknown whether Kushner has, by summer 2019, heeded his attorneys’ advice.
Throughout 2017, Kushner’s means of communicating with MBS is an abiding issue in the Trump administration, with The Intercept noting that “Kushner’s unconventional communications with regional leaders excluded diplomats during the summer of 2017, when Saudi Arabia and the UAE initiated an economic blockade aimed at weakening their Gulf neighbor Qatar. Tillerson’s attempts to mediate the crisis were quickly undercut by Trump and Kushner, who supported the blockade. Three State Department officials told The Intercept that Tillerson was largely in the dark about Kushner’s communications with MBS during that period.”115 Tillerson, the nation’s top diplomat, will tell State Department colleagues during the Qatar blockade that trying to talk sense into MBZ in the midst of the international crisis created by his precipitousness was “‘pointless’ given that Kushner was already in close and direct contact with him.”116
While Tillerson is in the dark about what Kushner and MBS are secretly discussing via WhatsApp in the first half of 2017, subsequent reports will reveal that it is almost certainly the topic foremost on MBS’s mind at the time: taking control of Saudi Arabia by deposing Mohammed bin Nayef, the Saudi prince next in line for the kingdom’s throne.117 According to the New York Times, the Kushner-MBS conversations in February 2017 are believed to have been about MBS’s ascension to the Saudi throne, as it was during this period that Kushner began “inquiring [around the White House] about the Saudi royal succession process and whether the United States could influence it, raising fears among senior officials that he sought to help Prince Mohammed, who was not yet the crown prince, vault ahead in the line for the throne … American diplomats and intelligence officers feared that the Trump administration might be seen as playing favorites in the delicate internal politics of the Saudi royal family.”118 By March, just a few weeks into Trump’s presidency, Kushner has not only orchestrated a White House visit for MBS but has arranged, in a violation of protocol, for MBS to be treated as a head of state though he is not even next in line for the Saudi throne.119 It is during this period that Kushner first reveals to senior White House officials that he has been speaking privately with MBS, something that should have been impossible under the national security protocols long in place in the federal government.120
Even as Kushner is in regular contact with one Red Sea conspirator, he is also routinely in touch with a key emissary for a second, MBZ. According to the New York Times, the Emirati ambassador, Yousef al-Otaiba, whom Kushner has been advised by since May 2016, writes Trump friend Thomas Barrack in spring 2017 to tell him that he is “in constant contact with Jared and that has been extremely helpful.”121
In Washington in March 2017, MBS meets with Kushner and Trump in the Oval Office to “discuss[] opportunities for U.S. companies to invest in Saudi Arabia.”122 A readout of the meeting between the three men makes reference to “a new United States-Saudi program … in energy, industry, infrastructure, and technology potentially worth more than $200 billion in direct and indirect investments within the next four years.”123 The supposed “program” is so unknown to the nation’s foreign policy and national security apparatus at the time Trump and Kushner discuss it with MBS that a House Oversight Committee report will later quote one senior government official saying to a staffer at the National Security Council, “What the hell is going on?”124
In June, Kushner’s new friend MBS summons bin Nayef to the royal palace in Mecca and “[holds] him against his will” until he agrees to abdicate his claim to the Saudi throne.125 The process of convincing bin Nayef to give up his birthright takes all night; the full slate of methods employed by MBS’s agents is unknown, though the Times reports that all bin Nayef’s means of communication were taken from him and the fact that he is both a diabetic and still hampered physically by the aftereffects of a 2009 assassination attempt was used against him in cruel fashion as the night wore on.126 According to the New Yorker, one element of the persuasion employed by MBS’s agents was making bin Nayef stand up for hours, a form of torture for the injured prince that would have, given his conditions, “caused excruciating pain.”127
The question of why Kushner would go to such extraordinary lengths to get as close to MBS and MBZ as possible—bypassing national security protocols to engage in clandestine communications, deliberately sidelining career diplomats and even the secretary of state, offending a king-in-waiting by treating his inferior like a head of state, and using an Emirati ambassador as an adviser during a presidential campaign—goes unanswered until the Saudi blockade of Qatar in summer 2017, an event that also may explain the timing of MBS’s move against bin Nayef in June. According to the New York Times, “One American official and one adviser to a Saudi royal said Mohammed bin Nayef opposed the embargo on Qatar, a stand that probably accelerated his ouster.”128 Bin Nayef’s recalcitrance about his country taking an aggressive, even warlike posture toward a key U.S. ally may also explain, incredibly, Kushner’s support for MBS—as MBS’s summer blockade of the tiny Gulf nation leads indirectly, as will become clear in the coming months, to more than $1 billion in desperately needed new loans for Kushner Companies.129 It is a windfall that likely would have been impossible with bin Nayef on the Saudi throne.
After bin Nayef swears allegiance to MBS on video, he is sent back to his palace in Jeddah on the Red Sea, where he is immediately placed under house arrest.130 Within days, writes the New York Times, CIA officials are briefing Trump “on their concern that the ouster of Mohammed bin Nayef and the possible removal of General Huwairini [one of bin Nayef’s top security chiefs] could hamper intelligence sharing” with the United States.131 Because of his direct communications with MBS, Kushner likely has far less concern on this score than the rest of the federal government.
Since June 2017, “indications have emerged that Mohammed bin Salman plotted the ouster” of bin Nayef over a period of time, raising the possibility that—given Kushner’s intense interest in the process of succession in Saudi Arabia in early spring 2017—some part of his conversations with MBS were about the young prince’s political ambitions and perhaps even his intentions.132 The overnight shift from a bin Nayef power center in Saudi Arabia to an MBS power center “spread[s] concern among counterterrorism officials in the United States, who saw their most trusted Saudi contacts disappear” almost immediately—even as Kushner’s top Saudi contact has just become, instantaneously, the most powerful man in the kingdom.133 The shift in power in Riyadh quickly becomes a shift in power in Washington, D.C., too.
As Saudi Arabia’s succession crisis unfolds in a flurry of activity in mid-2017, Americans are unaware that the president’s son-in-law has sidelined the National Security Council with respect to certain foreign policy and national security crises in the Middle East, with the top Middle East adviser to the NSC, U.S. Army Col. Michael Bell, “complain[ing] … that he was out of the loop on the Gulf crisis and the Arab-Israeli conflict … [as] Kushner frequently micromanaged those subjects through direct interaction with regional leaders, without offering [NSC representatives] any worthwhile readout on their interactions.”134 As Kushner’s chief contacts in the Middle East by mid-2017 are MBS, MBZ’s ambassador al-Otaiba, Nader, and Netanyahu (the last of these “long a friend of the Kushners,” according to the Jerusalem Post), the effect of Kushner’s bureaucratic machinations in the first few months of the Trump presidency is to put two Red Sea conspirators and their plot’s chief beneficiary in the Middle East, Israel, atop America’s foreign policy apparatus—with both the State Department and the National Security Council deliberately marginalized.135
Between MBS’s March 2017 trip to D.C. and Trump’s May 2017 trip to Riyadh—a period of mere weeks—an important event occurs that will have a significant bearing on the fortunes of the nation of Qatar from 2017 through 2019. In April 2017, Charles Kushner, a convicted felon and Jared Kushner’s father, meets with Qatari finance minister Ali Al Emadi to beg him to assist Kushner Companies in refinancing its disastrous investment in 666 Fifth Avenue in New York.136 The elder Kushner knows that the property is twenty-one months from seeing its full $1.2 billion interest-only mortgage coming due, and knows further that there is no equity in the office (as opposed to retail) section of the building—the only part of the property the Kushners still own.137 As The Intercept notes, “The family’s initial $500 million investment, once heralded as an example of Jared’s emergence as a brash real estate star, has for now been effectively wiped out. A massive refinancing and construction of a new tower that dramatically increases the building’s value is one way to try to get out of that hole.”138 Getting the Kushners “out of the hole” at 666 Fifth Avenue has, by spring 2017, become a matter of great emergency for both Charles and Jared, as the family is also, at the same time, seeking $250 million to pay off debt connected to a Jersey City apartment building, and must, moreover, pay CIT Group $140 million by September 2017.139
Charles Kushner’s April 2017 entreaty to the Qataris is at least the fourth time the country has been pitched to by a Kushner since Trump announced his presidential run, with Jared and his father meeting directly with Qatari investor and Thomas Barrack friend Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani at least twice in 2015 and 2016 and Charles Kushner meeting by himself with HBJ in early 2017.140 While the early 2017 Kushner-HBJ talks briefly seem promising, by April 2017 they have fallen apart entirely, thus necessitating Charles Kushner’s urgent meeting with Al Emadi. According to the Washington Post, the Kushners’ desperation during this period will be noted immediately by one foreign player in particular: the United Arab Emirates. The Post reports in early 2018 that “officials from the UAE identified Kushner as early as the spring of 2017 as particularly manipulable because of his family’s search for investors in their real estate company”—a finding that may explain the Emiratis’ seeming confidence that Kushner would support their eventual blockade (alongside Saudi Arabia) of Qatar.141
During the thirty-minute meeting between Charles Kushner and Al Emadi at the St. Regis Hotel in New York in April 2017, the Qatari refuses to invest in the Kushners’ “critically distressed asset,” which had become, according to The Intercept, “essentially worthless.”142 The next day, a second meeting between the two takes place, this time at the property itself—coincidentally, the same building where, eight months earlier, Paul Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik had met to discuss a U.S.-Russia “peace deal.”143 As Thomas Barrack will tell the Washington Post in 2018, the Kushners’ 2017 negotiations with the Qataris—which Barrack will confess he tried to help broker—were “crushed” by Kushner entering the White House, as it “just about completely chilled the market, and [potential investors] just said, ‘No way—can’t be associated with any appearances of conflict of interest.’”144 Barrack’s comments underscore that when Charles Kushner’s efforts with Al Emadi fall through in April 2017, the Kushners realized it would take a dramatic development for foreign investors like the Qataris to overcome their fear of Jared Kushner’s conflicts of interest—not at all the reception Trump’s son-in-law had expected to find for his business proposals when he moved to Washington.
Just a few weeks later, on June 5, four of the five Red Sea conspirators—Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt—cut all diplomatic ties with Qatar, a nation the first three of these four countries are at the time serving alongside in the Gulf Cooperation Council.145 Jordan refuses to join the Saudi-led action, causing it to be dropped from the conspirators’ plans for a new GCC.146
In addition to ending diplomatic outreach to Qatar, the four members of the Saudi-led axis also close their airspace to Qatari aircraft; declare that “foreign airlines [will] have to seek permission for overflights to and from Qatar”; block Qatar’s only land border (with Saudi Arabia); “ban from docking at many ports” any “ships flying the Qatari flag or those serving Qatar”; and issue a thirteen-item list of demands on Qatar that include some expected items (“curb diplomatic ties with Iran”), some speculative ones (“stop all funding for individuals or organizations designated as terrorists”), and some that are overbroad or overreaching (“end interference in other sovereign countries’ internal affairs,” “pay reparations and compensation for loss of life caused by [Qatari] policies,” and “shut down Al Jazeera”).147 The blockade immediately has a significant effect on Qatar, as 40 percent of the nation’s food arrives via its land border with Saudi Arabia.148
As the Qatari crisis deepens—a troubling development in the United States, given that Qatar hosts the largest U.S. military installation in the region—Kushner, whose dad has just twice been denied a business-saving loan by an investor linked to the Qatari government, will not only “provide[] critical support” to Qatar’s enemies, reports The Intercept, but “undermine” attempts by Secretary of State Tillerson to end the conflict.149 The Qataris will be so convinced that Kushner’s actions constitute a reprisal for their former prime minister (HBJ) deciding not to bail out the Kushners financially that in January 2018 “Qatari government officials visiting the U.S. ‘[will] consider[] turning over to [special counsel Robert] Mueller what they believe is evidence of efforts by their country’s Persian Gulf neighbors in coordination with Kushner to hurt their country.’”150 Qatari officials ultimately decide not to cooperate with Mueller, however, fearing reprisals from the Trump family, including President Trump himself.
The result of Kushner’s actions will be, according to The Intercept, to “push[] Qatar, home to the Middle East’s largest U.S. military base, closer to Turkey and Iran.”151 As the digital media outlet will note in the midst of the blockade, upon news that the seemingly doomed early 2017 Kushner-HBJ deal to rescue 666 Fifth Avenue is in fact now said to be—quite suddenly—merely “on hold”, “If the [Kushner-HBJ] deal is not entirely dead, that means Jared Kushner is on the one hand pushing to use the power of American diplomacy to pummel a small nation, while on the other his firm is hoping to extract an extraordinary amount of capital from there for a failing investment. If, however, the deal is entirely dead, the pummeling may be seen as intimidating to other investors on the end of a Kushner Companies pitch.”152
A second major event in the period between Trump’s March 2017 and May 2017 meetings with MBS is that the president names Elliott Broidy the deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee.153 Broidy will act as an intermediary for MBS’s policy agenda in the months ahead, receiving significant payment from MBS emissary George Nader for his work. It is during this period, in which MBS’s man Broidy is at the RNC, Kushner is having WhatsApp conversations with MBS, and Nader is meeting regularly at the White House with Bannon, Kushner, and others, that Trump makes the decision—over the objection of his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson—to break with historical precedent and travel to Saudi Arabia rather than Canada or Mexico for his first overseas trip as president.154
A third key development in the spring of 2017, though it occurs unbeknownst to anyone outside the U.S. intelligence community, is that Trump’s May 2017 firing of James Comey—coupled with Trump’s claim, to both NBC News and two Kremlin officials he ushers into the Oval Office after he has done the deed, that it was done to stall or eliminate the Russia investigation—leads the FBI to open up a counterintelligence probe into whether Trump “is working on behalf of Russia.”155
Trump’s agreement to go to Riyadh in May 2017, just months into his presidency, does not come without a price tag attached.156 According to the Washington Post, Trump “tell[s] Kushner they would go [to Riyadh first] if the Saudis promised to make U.S. weapons purchases and increase counterterrorism efforts.”157 The Saudis agree to Trump’s demands, though the $110 billion in immediate American arms purchases King Salman announces after Trump arrives in Riyadh—which Trump will “boast” was the product of his decision to travel to Saudi Arabia before visiting any of America’s closer allies—had in fact “been on the books for more than a year,” meaning well before the 2016 presidential election. And by 2018 officials would acknowledge that “most of the deals [had] not progressed since Trump’s visit.”158
Trump’s quid pro quo with MBS is suspicious for another reason, however: the dollar amount attached to the first phase of Trump’s $350 billion arms-for-attention shakedown, $110 billion, will be almost exactly the amount that the Saudi government recoups—$106 billion—as the result of a fall 2017 domestic “purge” of wealthy Saudi dissidents and MBS enemies that appears to have benefited from Trump and Kushner’s direct assistance (see chapter 8).159 The Saudis estimate that an additional $13 billion in “settlements” with MBS’s enemies will come to the royal family by the end of 2018.160
In April 2017, secretary of state Rex Tillerson suddenly announces that—contrary to the plan Trump and his transition team had established pre-inauguration—the United States will not lift sanctions on Russia until the Kremlin has withdrawn its armed forces from the Crimean peninsula.161 It is unknown whether President Trump concurs with Tillerson’s declaration; the New York Times will observe that “Trump at times … appear[s] to side with the Arab monarchies [Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates] against his own cabinet secretaries.… Also in concert with the Saudis and Emiratis, Mr. Trump … take[s] a far more hawkish stance toward Iran than … his cabinet.”162 Indeed, as late as May 2017, even Republican senators are so convinced that Trump still plans to end sanctions on Russia—Tillerson’s statement on the matter notwithstanding—that a bipartisan bill supported by Senator John McCain (R-AZ) is advanced that would wrest control of all Russian sanctions away from the executive branch.163 McCain may be pushing the bill because he has heard the same news that, per Newsweek, journalists and diplomats are hearing at the time: “In its early days, the Trump administration sought to strike a [sanctions] deal with Russia by seeking cooperation against the Islamic State militant group in Syria in return … [a plan that] came in the form of a ‘tasking’ order at the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs within the State Department. The order asked officials to draw up a list of options, including sanctions relief and the return of … seized [diplomatic] buildings in Maryland and New York.”164
That Russia is aware of at least the outline of Trump’s plan by December 2016—at the very latest—is evident from intercepts of Flynn’s phone calls with Russian ambassador Kislyak that month. In the calls, observes Newsweek, “Flynn reportedly indicate[s] to Kislyak … that Russia could expect a review of the [Crimea and post-election] sanctions under the Trump administration.”165 Whether this is merely a reiteration of something Flynn has already told Kislyak pre-election, perhaps in one of the Flynn-Kislyak meetings Trump tells Chris Christie he fired Flynn over, is unclear. Certainly, it is known that Flynn and his son visited Ambassador Kislyak at his private D.C. residence on December 2, 2015—nearly a year before Election Day—and flew to Moscow for dinner with Vladimir Putin at an RT gala just eight days later.166 Little is known of the meeting at the ambassador’s house in late 2015 other than that Flynn was advising Trump on foreign policy and national security at the time, had been doing so for approximately four months and visited Kislyak as a “courtesy call … prior to his trip” to Moscow to deliver an address on “Middle East issues”; it is Flynn or his son who asked Kislyak for the meeting; and Flynn’s son later called the meeting “very productive.”167 As for any Flynn-Kislyak meetings between December 2015 and Election Day, in December 2018 Mother Jones will report that in the months leading up to Election Day, Flynn told several people he was having in-person as well as telephone contact with Kislyak.168
In searching for other root causes of the Saudi-Emirati axis’s blockade of Qatar, the New York Times will note the possible influence of George Nader on a high-profile event hosted by the Hudson Institute in early 2017. The think tank organizes a conference that “feature[s] heavy criticism of Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood”; according to the Times, a $2.7 million payment Nader made to Broidy appears to have helped pay for the conference, a violation of Hudson Institute policies (which prohibit donations from foreign governments that are not democracies) if Nader was being used as an MBZ intermediary to pay Broidy.169 According to the Hudson Institute, Broidy represented to them, in offering to pay for the conference, that none of the money he was using to fund the event had come from a foreign government.170 Broidy also falsely represented to the Hudson Institute that at the time of his donation he had no business contracts in the Middle East.171 Per the Times, both Nader and Broidy used foreign corporations under their control—Nader an Emirati one, Broidy a Canadian one—to facilitate the funding for the conference.172
Nader meets “several times with senior administration officials in the White House during Mr. Trump’s first weeks in office.”173 Among those he meets with are Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, and several other “White House policymakers,” according to the New York Times. It is unknown whether he meets with Trump himself.174 In these meetings, Nader offers advice “on American policy toward the Persian Gulf states in advance of Mr. Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia in May 2017.”175 Reporting on these meetings, Axios will call Nader a “mysterious” and “little-known” Bannon associate “who boasts of his well-placed connections in the Middle East”; the digital media outlet adds that Nader “regularly” visits Bannon in his White House office once Trump is inaugurated.176 Axios will also report, somewhat cryptically, that something about Nader—it is not clear what, or how it is discovered—unsettles Kushner as he begins looking more deeply into the Lebanese American businessman’s background; one possibility is Nader’s history of pedophilia (see Introduction).177 Others whom Axios asks about Nader will draw a blank. According to reporter Jonathan Swan, “A number of well-connected and experienced Middle East hands in Washington told me they’d never heard of Nader. I could only find a few people who have met him. Nobody was quite clear about what he does for a living.”178
In 2017, Saudi lobbyists will spend more than a quarter of a million dollars reserving rooms at a single Trump property: the Trump International Hotel in D.C.179 The Saudis’ commitment to Trump reflects his commitment to them; as Voice of America will note, “Saudi Arabia is an unprecedented destination for an initial overseas visit by any U.S. president, but the oil-rich nation, which has deep, long-standing energy and defense ties to the United States, was not named in the travel bans” announced by Trump on January 27, 2017.180
Kushner accompanies his father-in-law to Riyadh, as does secretary of state Rex Tillerson, about whom MBZ has begun complaining to the White House, through Elliott Broidy, by May 2017—and whose dismissal Broidy will consequently demand from Trump in a face-to-face meeting 120 days later. In the private conversation the two men have in October 2017, as Broidy reports in an email to Nader immediately thereafter, “President Trump asked me about the job Rex was doing. I responded that he was performing poorly and should be relieved but only at a good time, politically.”181 Broidy’s opposition to Tillerson is based in part on him being, in the view of the Emiratis, “insufficiently hostile to Qatar”—one of the nations whose representatives Trump meets with in May 2017 in Riyadh, when the Saudi-Emirati axis’s blockade of the country is still a few weeks away.182 Reportedly, Tillerson single-handedly prevented a full-scale invasion of Qatar by Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the summer of 2017 (see chapter 6).
At the time of the Trump-Qatari meeting in Riyadh, Qatar is still a member in good standing of the Gulf Cooperation Council alongside Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain. The agreement reached on a yacht in the Red Sea in late 2015 had called for the “replace[ment] of the GCC and Arab League” by swapping out Qatar, Kuwait, and Oman in the former council with Egypt, Jordan, and Libya.183 However, given that Libya “was not represented” on the yacht and Jordan “[falls] out dramatically with the group … [when] Saudi Arabia decide[s] that it did not go far enough in enforcing the blockade against Qatar,” the Saudis and Emiratis are in fact, by mid-2017, simply planning on replacing Qatar, Kuwait, and Oman in the GCC with Egypt, while retaining Bahrain.184
MBS, Nader, and Broidy likely oppose Tillerson for another reason as well: his hostility to the ever-increasing role Jared Kushner is playing in Middle East geopolitics, particularly with respect to Saudi Arabia. The Intercept will later report that during this period, “senior U.S. government officials … [are] worried about Kushner’s handling of sensitive foreign policy issues given his lack of diplomatic experience. They have also raised concerns about the possibility that foreign officials might try to influence him through business deals with his family’s real estate empire.”185 According to the Washington Post, two of these “senior U.S. government officials” are secretary of state Rex Tillerson and national security advisor H. R. McMaster, who very “early” in the Trump administration “expressed … concern that Kushner was freelancing U.S. foreign policy.”186 The Post reports that at one point Tillerson angrily asked his staff, in reference to Kushner, “Who is secretary of state here?”187 That Kushner had been involved in meetings with Nader, MBS’s emissary, to discuss Middle East policy, and that Nader was involved in Broidy’s attempts to secure Tillerson’s dismissal in conversations with Trump, underscores that Tillerson’s eventual firing is at least partly the product of systematic coordination by Kushner and his allies, MBS included. That Kushner—and his wife, Ivanka Trump—hold this sort of authority in the White House will be often written of in the months ahead, including in a Politico report on Trump’s search for a new chief of staff after John Kelly leaves that concludes, “any potential hire must … win the approval of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Trump’s son-in-law and daughter, who are also White House advisers, want a political ally in the chief of staff job, and they are using their unrivaled influence to ensure they get one.”188 Of the Kushner-Tillerson relationship, Business Insider will write that “former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly believe[s] President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, stoked rumors of his impending ouster.”189 Shortly before he is fired, Tillerson gives an interview with the New Yorker in which he acknowledges that one person in the administration in particular wants to see him gone. “‘I know who it is,” he says. “I know who it is. And they know I know.” The magazine adds, “Tillerson was reportedly referring to Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner.”190
In December 2018, CNBC will report that Tillerson felt Trump repeatedly “encouraged him to break the law” while the former Exxon CEO was secretary of state, a statement that presages the Mueller Report’s subsequent revelation that Don McGahn believed Trump had asked him to do “crazy shit” and that Reince Priebus once referred to a directive Trump gave him as legally “all wrong.”191
Trump’s commitment to the four nations in a prospective reimagined GCC—Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt—is underscored by his actions in Riyadh in May 2017. The only bilateral meeting Trump holds during his stay in the kingdom is with the Saudi king, King Salman, who awards Trump “the kingdom’s highest civilian honor” during their meeting. Trump attends a multilateral meeting with three current GCC members—Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain—as well as Egypt, but thereafter he only accepts an invitation to visit Egypt, saying, “We will absolutely be putting that on the list very soon.… [There are] some very important talks going on with Egypt.” Of the fourth Saudi-and-Emirati-approved GCC nation, Bahrain, Trump not only says in a press conference in Riyadh that “there won’t be strain [between the United States and Bahrain] with this administration” but also agrees to “go ahead with the multibillion-dollar sale of military jets and related equipment” to Bahrain, a sale that had been “held up during the Obama administration by human rights concerns.”192
But Trump saves the biggest gift of his Riyadh trip for the Saudis, signing a ten-year, $350 billion arms deal with the kingdom that is the largest arms deal in American history.193 The deal is “partially negotiated” by Kushner, who even makes a call to American military equipment company Lockheed Martin to personally ask it to lower the cost of a missile defense system for the Saudis.194 The $110 billion first phase of the sale, which will in 2018 be threatened by the Saudi government’s assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi (see chapter 9), includes “Abrams tanks, combat ships, missile defense systems, radar, and communications and cybersecurity technology.”195 Trump signs the deal even though “Riyadh is expected to use at least some of the weapons in its military intervention in Yemen’s civil war, where the Saudi-led coalition has been accused of war crimes”; this complication leads human rights organizations to warn the White House that “the deal risks making the United States complicit” in the Saudis’ and Emiratis’ crimes.196 For Saudi Arabia’s part, it rewards Trump’s largesse by announcing, upon his arrival in Riyadh, $55 billion in new business deals with American companies in the energy and chemical sectors.197
While Trump vaguely suggests the possibility of selling arms to Qatar while meeting with the Qatari emir in Riyadh, it shortly becomes clear that the agreements Trump has made in Saudi Arabia are of a different character altogether. Just two weeks after he leaves Riyadh, the Saudi axis’s blockade of Qatar begins.198 After the country is cut off, the demands made by MBS and his Sunni Arab allies aim to fundamentally remake geopolitics in the Middle East by denying Iran, Turkey, and the elements opposing el-Sisi in Egypt access to the resources they have supposedly been receiving from Qatar. The axis’s voluminous list of demands include an insistence that Qatar immediately “close the Iranian diplomatic missions in Qatar,” “cut off military and intelligence cooperation with Iran,” “halt military cooperation with Turkey inside Qatar,” “shut down [a] Turkish military base currently under construction [in Qatar], “declare [the Muslim Brotherhood] a terror group as per the list announced by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE and Egypt, and concur with all future updates of this list,” “shut down … all news outlets directly and indirectly funded by Qatar,” “cease contact with the political opposition in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain,” “pay reparations” to Saudi Arabia and its allies in an amount to be determined, and “align Qatar’s military, political, social and economic policies with the other Gulf and Arab countries … per [a prior] agreement reached with Saudi Arabia.”199 In short, MBS demands that Qatar cede most of its sovereignty to him and his co-conspirators, with the Qataris’ journalistic, military, diplomatic, geopolitical, cultural, and economic decisions being brought forcefully into line by expansive edicts from Riyadh. This illustrates the conclusions of a 2017 Associated Press article republished in top Israeli media outlet Haaretz, which observes that “governments across the [Middle East] region routinely cite terrorism as justification to clamp down on political opposition and rights activists. Some groups Qatar has backed—such as the Muslim Brotherhood—are seen by many as a legitimate political force. Others, including some hardline Sunni rebel factions in Syria, are not that different ideologically from groups that Saudi Arabia backs there.”200 That the United States has not historically shared MBS and his allies’ professed concerns about Qatar is underscored by the fact that America “continues to sell Qatar billions in weapons,” the two media outlets note.201 Their finding that Qatari money has at times “indirectly” supported Islamist militant groups—as a result of chaos on the ground in sectarian conflicts in the region—echoes a similar finding in February 2019 by CNN, which reports that both MBS and MBZ have permitted American weapons sold to them by the Trump administration to “ma[k]e their way into the hands of Iranian-backed rebels battling the [Saudi-Emirati] coalition … exposing some of America’s sensitive military technology to Tehran and potentially endangering the lives of U.S. troops.”202
The Associated Press and Haaretz regard some of the demands by the Saudi-led axis as nonsensical. For instance, “Saudi Arabia has … accused Qatar of backing Iranian-allied rebels in Yemen, known as Houthis. However, Qatar was a member of a Saudi-led coalition bombing the Houthis in Yemen. Experts say there is no evidence to support the [Saudi] claims.”203
Nevertheless, not only does Trump immediately voice his support of MBS’s blockade, but he “appear[s] to take credit” for it, per the Guardian, tweeting, “During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar—look! So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to horror of terrorism!”204 According to the Guardian, “The president’s remarks on Tuesday will come as a shock to Qatar,” as the Gulf nation “regarded itself as an ally of the United States and is home to 10,000 U.S. troops, and will delight Saudi Arabia, which until recently had been fighting off claims in Washington that Riyadh was the chief sponsor of terrorism.”205 The British media outlet notes that Trump’s position “runs counter to the tone of other administration officials calling for compromise and reconciliation,” including Rex Tillerson, who immediately after the blockade began “called for calm.”206
In its coverage of the blockade, the Guardian reports that one reason Trump’s position shocks even officials in his own administration is that Qatar “spent more than $1 billion building [the U.S. base there] and [it] has been used to stage attacks against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.”207
Qatar’s response to the blockade is to suggest that its enemies have conspired to create a “rift with the United States and its allies.”208 As the Guardian reports at the time, Qatar “feels it is the victim of an orchestrated and well-planned operation designed to end its independent foreign policy.”209 Even more troubling is a CNN report revealing that American officials believe it is Russia that has orchestrated the blockade crisis by using hackers to plant fake news on the Qataris’ state-run television channel.210 Per the CNN report, “intelligence gathered by the U.S. security agencies indicates that Russian hackers were behind the intrusion first reported by the Qatari government two weeks ago … The alleged involvement of Russian hackers intensifies concerns by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies that Russia continues to try some of the same cyber-hacking measures on U.S. allies that intelligence agencies believe it used to meddle in the 2016 elections.”211 The alleged Russian hack appears calibrated to provide cover for Saudi Arabia and the UAE in their decision to blockade Qatar, with a May 23 news report from the Qatar News Agency “attribut[ing] false remarks to [Qatar’s] ruler that appeared friendly to Iran and Israel … and question[ing] whether President Donald Trump would last in office.”212 The hack, which Qatari foreign minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani will say has been “confirmed” and “proved” by the FBI as a “planting of fake news,” is therefore equally offensive to Saudi Arabia and the UAE (because of its indication of a positive turn in Qatari-Iranian relations) and Trump himself (because of its indication of a negative turn in Qatari-Trump relations).213
An open question is whether the Saudis’ and Emiratis’ credulous response to a Qatari news report many in the U.S. government deemed inauthentic was strategic. Certainly, the Saudi-led blockade is conveniently coincident with tweets from Trump shifting the focus of accusations of terror financing in the Middle East from Saudi Arabia to Qatar.214 That Trump, the Saudis, and the Emiratis are overstating their case with respect to Qatar’s support for international terrorism is only emphasized when the U.S. State Department issues a statement—mere hours after Trump’s pro-blockade tweets—saying that Qatar has “made progress on stemming the funding of terrorists.”215 The statement contradicts Trump’s remarks even as, per CNN, his words include “criticism of Qatar that mirrors that of the Saudis” and fail to mention at all the possible hacking of the Qatar News Agency.216 Saudi Arabia’s announcement that its blockade is “partly in reaction” to an incident that U.S. media considers a possible “false news report” is telling: by ignoring the findings of the FBI and the concerns of American media outlets, and focusing instead on the words of support tweeted out by Trump, Saudi Arabia is emboldened into a course of action for which it otherwise might have had little support outside the region.217
The Qataris will tell U.S. media that the Saudis’ posture toward Qatar changed suddenly and unexpectedly as soon as Trump and Kushner met with King Salman. A “high-level Qatari source” tells The Intercept that “the Emir [of Qatar] was in Jeddah [Saudi Arabia] before the [Trump-Salman] summit, had a meeting with King Salman. King Salman did not bring up any subject about differences with Qatar. After the summit, the Saudis and the Emirates, they thought, after signing all these [military] contracts [with Trump], they can have the upper hand in the region and they don’t want any country not to be in the same line.”218 Certainly, the chief complaint about Qatar the Saudis declare after their king’s summit with Trump—that Qatar, a chief U.S. ally in the region, is in fact secretly a major state sponsor of terrorism—is of the sort that, if valid, normally would have been communicated first through diplomatic channels to the Qatari government prior to the summit and only then made public.
Less than a month after Trump departs Saudi Arabia, he will falsely declare that Qatar has “historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level.”219 Secretary of State Tillerson tells several peers, in response, that Trump’s unsupported claim about Qatar’s financing of terrorism “had been written by UAE Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba and delivered to Trump by Jared Kushner.”220 At a fundraiser shortly after leaving Riyadh, Trump will so align himself with Saudi Arabia and the UAE that he will abandon America’s long-standing alliance with Qatar and associate himself instead with the aggressors arrayed against the tiny Gulf country. “We’re having a dispute with Qatar,” he tells a roomful of Republican donors in late June, adding, “I prefer that they don’t fund terrorism.”221
Trump’s sudden abandonment of the Qataris, inasmuch as it emboldens the Saudis and Emiratis and prolongs their blockade of Qatar, operates as a crushing financial punishment for the Qataris refusing—even if only temporarily—to bail out his son-in-law. According to a source in the region quoted by The Intercept, “Had the Qataris known where things were heading diplomatically” they would have immediately and “happily ponied up the money [to Jared Kushner], even knowing that it was a losing investment. ‘It would have been much cheaper,’ he [the source] said.”222
As Trump is in Saudi Arabia in May 2017, his friend Thomas Barrack is finalizing a deal to buy One California Plaza in Los Angeles. At a time when Barrack holds exactly $70 million of Jared Kushner’s debt, Barrack receives exactly $70 million in investments for his hoped-for purchase of the Plaza from two separate sources: MBZ and “an Israeli insurance company.”223
Just weeks earlier, Kushner’s family business had received a $30 million investment from Menora Mivtachim, an Israeli insurance company—possibly, though the full details of Barrack’s One California Plaza purchase are unknown, the same unnamed Israeli insurance company that helped give Barrack $70 million while Trump was in Saudi Arabia.224 According to the New York Times, “Menora, which is also Israel’s largest manager of pension funds, has done numerous other real estate deals, including several in the United States.”225 Despite the coincidence of Barrack holding $70 million in Kushner debt and then receiving $70 million from an Israeli insurance company that may well have been simultaneously doing business with Kushner as well—all while Kushner was in the Middle East negotiating Iran policy with the Saudis, to the great interest of the Israeli government—Kushner’s attorney Abbe Lowell will tell the Times that “connecting any of [Kushner’s] well-publicized trips to the Middle East to anything to do with Kushner Companies or its businesses is nonsensical.”226
In early 2018, a major Washington Post report will identify the UAE and Israel as two of four countries that, per U.S. intelligence intercepts, “have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner,” specifically “by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements [and] financial difficulties,” as well as his “lack of foreign policy experience.”227
During the same period in which Kushner receives $30 million from Menora, he has already received $200 million in real estate purchases and investments from Beny Steinmetz and his family; Steinmetz, an Israeli, is in May 2017 “the subject of a United States Justice Department bribery investigation.”228 By May 2017 Kushner also has four outstanding loans from Israel’s largest bank, Bank Hapoalim, which at the time is “the subject of a Justice Department investigation over allegations that it helped wealthy Americans evade taxes.”229 The possibility that these financial transactions could represent a conflict of interest for Kushner—given that, just months earlier, he had directed Flynn, irrespective of the federal Logan Act, to negotiate with several countries on the subject of a UN resolution affecting Israel—will cause one ethics expert who speaks to the Times to opine that Kushner’s standard on government corruption appears to be “some version of, ‘It’s a conflict when I think it’s a conflict, and I’ll make that judgment myself.’”230
The same month Trump and Kushner travel to Riyadh, Egypt takes a major step toward realization of the Red Sea conspirators’ goal of improving relations with Russia in hope of softening its support for Iran, Turkey, and the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad: it announces a deal with Moscow that will see Russian firms building Egypt’s first nuclear power plant.231 According to the Washington Post, “The arrangement was supported by Russian President Vladimir Putin.”232 While Flynn’s ambition, when he traveled to Egypt in 2015, had been to convince Egypt not to partner bilaterally with Russia but to participate instead in a broader Middle East Marshall Plan, such two-party arrangements as the Egypt-Russia nuclear deal became a fait accompli when the ongoing Trump-Russia scandal prevented Trump from executing his original plan to drop all sanctions on Russia—a prerequisite to Flynn’s expansive proposal. As Newsweek reports just weeks after the Egypt-Russia accord, “Trump’s administration moved quickly to try to lift economic sanctions on Russia and other punishments former President Barack Obama had put in place just as soon as it took office in January [2017]. ‘There was serious consideration by the White House to unilaterally rescind the sanctions,’ according to Dan Fried, who retired in February [2017] as Coordinator for Sanctions Policy at the State Department.”233 But because Trump’s plan—which had not been shared with career officials at the State Department—resulted in numerous calls from State to Fried asking him to block the initiative, Fried soon began lobbying Congress to codify the Russian sanctions, thereby protecting them from presidential interference.234
The Egypt-Russia deal for a nuclear plant in Dabaa, Egypt, is not Russia’s first foray into building nuclear plants in the Middle East. In March 2015 it had signed a $10 billion deal with Jordan to build that nation’s first-ever nuclear power plant, and nine months earlier, in June 2014, it had agreed to build two such plants in Iran—precisely the sort of Russia-Iran coordination the Red Sea Conspiracy had been conceived, in late 2015, to disrupt.235
On May 17, eight days after firing FBI director James Comey, Trump learns that the acting attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, has just appointed a special counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Trump’s director of strategic communications, Hope Hicks, will eventually tell the special counsel’s office that on the day of the special counsel’s appointment Trump was “extremely upset,” indeed so upset that in the entirety of her time working for him “she had only seen the President like that one other time, when the Access Hollywood tape came out during the campaign.”236 According to Hicks, on the day of Robert Mueller’s appointment Trump called the assignment of a special counsel to investigate his and his campaign’s ties to Russia “the worst thing that ever happened to me” and actually “slumped back in his chair” when he heard the news.237 “Oh my God,” Hicks reports Trump saying. “This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.”238