BREAKING NEWS:
Roger Stone arrested in Fort Lauderdale FL. on an indictment for witness tampering and making false statements under oath … that’s it for now.
#RogerStone has been arrested in Florida for witness tampering, obstruction & making false statements. More info coming…. #SpecialCounsel
— Ann Herberger (@annwherberger) January 25, 2019
[Update]
See follow-up front-page story by Martin Longman …
The leading Democrats in the House Intelligence Committee will finally focus on the REAL risk to US security and its national interest.
Kushner’s overseas contacts raise concerns as foreign officials seek leverage (_link) “Kushner had contacts with foreign officials that he did not coordinate through the National Security Council or officially report”
— M. Taylor Fravel (@fravel) February 28, 2018
Trump appointee ‘overruled’ rejection of Jared Kushner for top security clearance | The Guardian |
Last February, the Washington Post reported that at least four countries had discussed the president’s son-in-law as a possible target of manipulation given his financial straits – the paper named the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico.
More below the fold …
What about the publicized “back-channel” with a Russian delegate on the Seychelles?
○ What happened in the Seychelles: Erik Prince’s account | Vox |
Family ties between Jared Kushner and Bibi Netanyahu … they get along quite well together!!!
○ Trump’s Israel First!
○ Political Divide UAE (Trump) and Qatar (Clinton)
○ The curious case of Jared Kushner and the Israel lobby
[Most links added below are mine – Oui]
In January 2017 Erik Prince attended a meeting in the Seychelles with the United Arab Emirate’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund Kirill Dmitriev, and George Nader, a former consultant for Erik Prince’s company Blackwater.
The princes, the president and the fortune seekers | AP – May 2018 |
In return for pushing anti-Qatar policies at the highest levels of America’s government, Broidy and Nader expected huge consulting contracts from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, according to an Associated Press investigation based on interviews with more than two dozen people and hundreds of pages of leaked emails between the two men. The emails reviewed by the AP included work summaries and contracting documents and proposals.
The AP has previously reported that Broidy and Nader sought to get an anti-Qatar bill through Congress while obscuring the source of the money behind their influence campaign. A new cache of emails obtained by the AP reveals an ambitious, secretive lobbying effort to isolate Qatar and undermine the Pentagon’s longstanding relationship with the Gulf country.
A lawyer for Broidy, Chris Clark, contended the AP’s reporting “is based on fraudulent and fabricated documents obtained from entities with a known agenda to harm Mr. Broidy.”
How 2 Gulf Monarchies Sought to Influence the White House | NYT – March 2018 |
A cooperating witness in the special counsel investigation worked for more than a year to turn a top Trump fund-raiser into an instrument of influence at the White House for the rulers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to interviews and previously undisclosed documents.
Hundreds of pages of correspondence between the two men reveal an active effort to cultivate President Trump on behalf of the two oil-rich Arab monarchies, both close American allies.
High on the agenda of the two men — George Nader, a political adviser to the de facto ruler of the U.A.E., and Elliott Broidy, the deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee — was pushing the White House to remove Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, backing confrontational approaches to Iran and Qatar and repeatedly pressing the president to meet privately outside the White House with the leader of the U.A.E.
Mr. Nader’s cultivation of Mr. Broidy, laid out in documents provided to The New York Times, provides a case study in the way two Persian Gulf monarchies have sought to gain influence inside the Trump White House. Mr. Nader has been granted immunity in a deal for his cooperation with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.
[…]
Mr. Nader, 58, a United States citizen born in Lebanon, previously ran a Washington-based journal called Middle East Insight, acted as an informal emissary to Syria under the Clinton administration, and, according to a short biography in the emails, later worked for Vice President Dick Cheney.
Early in the Trump administration, the two men also noted with approval a successful effort to block a top Pentagon position for Anne Patterson, a former ambassador to Cairo whom the Emiratis and Saudis have long criticized as too sympathetic to the deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood during his one year in office.
In one message to Mr. Nader in March 2017, Mr. Broidy referred to Secure America Now, an advocacy organization that he suggested had campaigned against Ms. Patterson, as “one of the groups I am working with.”
The foundation [Hudson Institute] said in a statement that it was approached by Mr. Broidy in 2017 seeking to fund a conference on Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood. “As is our funding policy, we asked if his funding was connected to any foreign governments or if he had business contracts in the Gulf. He assured us that he did not,” the statement said.
Documents show Mr. Nader’s payment was made by an Emirati-based company he controlled, GS Investments, to an obscure firm based in Vancouver, British Columbia, controlled by Mr. Broidy, Xiemen Investments Ltd.
Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, will become our new Secretary of State. He will do a fantastic job! Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service! Gina Haspel will become the new Director of the CIA, and the first woman so chosen. Congratulations to all!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2018
More on Bannon, Prince and bin Zayed …
○ From the Seychelles to the White House to Cambridge Analytica, Erik Prince and the UAE are key parts of the Trump story | Medium – Apr. 8, 2018 |
○ Bannon, banished from the Trump team, takes on UAE talking points | Al Jazeera – Apr. 6, 2018 |
Related reading …
○ Obama Administration Backed Muslim Brotherhood
○ US Administratons’ Failure to Distinquish Strands of Islam