Dirty Riyals: A Brief History of Trump/Qatar

Quid Pro Doha.

In what can only be termed a straight-up bribe, Donald Trump has reportedly accepted a brand-spanking-new luxury Boeing 747-8 from the Qatari royal family—a “palace in the sky”—that he plans to use as Air Force One until he leaves office, at which point he will climb aboard his fancy new airplane and fly off into the sunset. Technically, the 747 will then belong to the Trump Presidential Library, but that’s fooling no one—not even MAGA shill and Barbie movie triggeree Ben Shapiro.

The corruption here is breathtaking. Even the New York Times begrudgingly concedes that the “donation” from the House of Thani, the family that has ruled Qatar as more or less an absolute monarchy since 1868, “raises substantial ethical issues:”

The plane would then be donated to President Trump’s presidential library when he leaves office, two senior officials said. Such a gift raises the possibility that Mr. Trump would have use of the plane even after his presidency ends.

The possibility, you say? Spoiler alert: if Trump is still alive on January 20, 2029—assuming that there’s an actual election in 2028, and that he doesn’t cheat, and that he willingly departs without leaving dead bodies in his wake—the chances of him not using the plane after his presidency ends are roughly equivalent to Mark Zuckerberg having more than three non-AI friends.

There are two big problems here. First, as the Times helpfully points out, we have the substantial ethical issue. Even for a legendary grifter, this is an egregious violation of the Emoluments Clause that prohibits U.S. presidents from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever” from “any King, Prince, or foreign State.” The Emir of Qatar is a king; the golden bird is worth north of $400,000,000. The only two people in Washington who seem to think accepting such a lavish gift is legal are (presumably) Susie Wiles, the White House Chief of Staff, whose lobbying firm was retained by the Embassy of Qatar, and (definitely) the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, who raked in over $100k a month as a registered agent of Qatar before she took over the Justice Department. Talk about convenient!

And then there are the security concerns. As Frank Figliuzzi, the former FBI assistant director of counterintelligence, tweeted: “Aside from the obvious law violation here, it will take the US gov’t months to dismantle this plane and try to find all the embedded bugs and trackers.” There are reality TV show sets less mic’ed up than that plane will be.

POTUS is reportedly livid that people are making a stink about his wingéd swag, but his anger will likely be the only consequence for this brazen violation of the law. Republicans in Congress decided eight years ago that Trump is pretty much exempt from the Emoluments Clause. I seem to recall him owning a hotel in Washington that foreign governments tripped over themselves spending money at, to curry favor with the White House. In the Trump Redux, meanwhile, the $400 million airplane is chump change next to the market manipulation, insider trading, bogus trade wars, and meme-coin schemes that have lined the President’s pockets. (Finally, at long last, Donald is an actual billionaire!) At this point, a Republican Senator is more likely to get thrown off Marine One as it hovers over the Potomac than to demand accountability for Trump’s graft. Also: buying influence is the Qatari modus operandi. There’s a reason FIFA awarded Qatar the World Cup. (Remember the Qatar World Cup? Elon Musk does.)

But hey: the GOP, and therefore the entire federal government, is already owned by the Kremlin, so what’s the big deal if the Qataris have eyes and ears on Donald? It’s not like this blubbering moron will disclose anything useful. For that, Qatar’s State Security service would have to hack into Pete Hegseth’s Signal chats, which it, along with every other foreign intelligence agency worth its salt, has presumably already done.

The real question here doesn’t involve emoluments or eavesdropping, but is simply: Qatar? Why Qatar?

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Some background: Qatar is a pinecone-shaped extremity half the size of New Jersey jutting off the Arabian Peninsula into the Persian Gulf. It borders Saudi Arabia to the south, and is not far from Bahrain, to the northwest, or the United Arab Emirates, to the southeast, as the crow flies (although crows do not typically take flight over the Persian Gulf). Two-point-three of the country’s two-point-six million residents are expats: Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, Nepalese, Filipinos, and Egyptians, mostly, as well as some 10,000 American service members stationed at Al Udeid Air Base, a forward headquarters of U.S. Central Command. (Note: no one in Qatar seems to complain about an “invasion” of immigrants.) Because so many of the expats are laborers, and the workforce is primarily dudes, the male-to-female ratio is heavily skewed; Doha, the gleaming capital, is Surf City inverted, a Jan and Dean hell: two boys for every girl.

The country’s human rights record is predictably atrocious. Women are second-class citizens. Same-sex sex is against the law. The punishment for adultery is 100 lashes, and it’s unwise to walk around the Al Corniche Waterfront with an open can of Budweiser. But finding a Gulf State with an unblemished human rights record is like finding a Catholic Cardinal who is completely uninvolved with the child sex abuse scandal: it cannot be done. And unlike other Middle East petrostate Millennial royals that come to mind, Emir Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani didn’t watch on close-circuit TV as his hit men dismembered a Washington Post journalist (although he has been a bit too cozy with Putin for my liking).

No less an authority than Laura Loomer has denounced Qatar as a sponsor of terrorism. “We cannot accept a $400 million ‘gift’ from jihadists in suits,” the far-right activist and conspiracy monger tweeted. “The Qataris fund the same Iranian proxies in Hamas and Hezbollah who have murdered US Service Members. The same proxies that have worked with the Mexican cartels to get jihadists across our border.”

I’m not sure how many jihadists have crossed our Southern border, but the bit about Hamas is certainly true. The Taliban, too, have an embassy in Doha. Even so, Loomer’s explanation is reductive. These are hardly “jihadists in suits.” Qatar often operates as a go-between: a trusted neutral party that can act as an intermediary between belligerents. The Qataris served as a mediator between Hamas and Fatah, to ease tensions in Palestine, in 2006; between various factions in the crisis in Lebanon in 2008; between rival sides in the Darfur conflict; and between the Taliban and, as the Financial Times reported, “many countries and organizations, including the U.S. state department, the U.N., Japan, several European governments and non-governmental organizations.” The Wall Street Journal described Qatar as the “prickly Switzerland” of the Middle East.

After two U.S. Congressmen—one from each party—wrote the State Department in 2014 grousing about Qatar’s alleged role in financing terrorism, an Assistant Secretary of State replied:

Qatar has said it wants to help bring about a cease fire to the ongoing hostilities in Israel and Gaza. The Qatari government has engaged with Hamas to this end. . . . We have designated Hamas a Foreign Terrorist Organization and we view it as a destabilizing force in Gaza. We need countries that have leverage over the leaders of Hamas to help put a ceasefire in place. Qatar may be able to play that role as it has done in the past. . . .

There will need to be reconstruction in Gaza once a cease fire is in place. Qatar has pledged financial support that would be directed to the Palestinian people of Gaza. Qatar assured us that its assistance would not go to Hamas. We continue to interact closely with the Government of Qatar and will reinforce that such assistance should not go to Hamas.

Verily has it come to pass: The few moments of cooperation between Israel and Hamas in the current Gaza War—the first ceasefire, the hostage exchanges—have happened with Qatari help. When peace is restored there, Qatar will almost certainly have played a key role. (This is something experts I’ve spoken to personally have suggested.) Likewise, Qatar is sure to be intimately involved in whatever happens in Gaza going forward.

In the summer of 2017, the former CIA chief and retired general David Petraeus said, per Al Jazeera, that Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. “should remember that Qatar—at our request—welcomed delegations from the Taliban and Hamas.” In other words, the U.S. asked Qatar to engage with these hostile groups. This was echoed by Alan Dershowitz, who changed his tune about Qatar after a visit to Doha in January 2018. “The Saudis also claim that Qatar gave asylum to Hamas leaders, who live freely in Doha. Again, there is the conflict over the facts. The Qataris claim that American officials had asked them to allow the Hamas leaders to live in Doha,” he wrote. And:

A second [Saudi] complaint is that Qatar financially supports Hamas in the Gaza Strip. I too, was concerned by this allegation and met with Qatar’s ambassador to Gaza. He explained that Qatar’s financial assistance was limited to direct payments to builders in Gaza who were constructing homes, schools and hospitals. He insisted that no money was being given to support terrorism.

When I pointed out that money is fungible and that funds given for humanitarian purposes can then free Hamas to use other funds to support terrorism, he said that Hamas would not build these buildings with their own funds in any event. He also told me that the building projects sponsored by Qatar were “coordinated” with Israeli authorities.

Has Qatar given money to Hamas? Yes. You know who else has helped finance Hamas? Benjamin Netanyahu—just like the Qatari ambassador told Dershowitz. This stuff is complicated.

One could argue—even if one is not a paid agent, registered or otherwise, of the State of Qatar, like so many of Trump’s nearest and dearest—that Qatar has done more to advance the cause of peace in the region, and the larger Islamic world, than any other nation in the Middle East.

Qatar has also been a loyal U.S. partner, dating back to the first Gulf War. We already saw, in the above-quoted letter, how John Kerry felt about the strategic alliance with Qatar. President Biden went so far as to bestow “Major Non-NATO ally” status on the nation in 2022.

And so again we ask: Qatar? Why Qatar?

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Laura Loomer is not the only kooky rightwing dimwit who has it out for Qatar. Donald Trump himself once had a bee in his bonnet about Doha’s alleged ties to terrorists groups: “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!” he tweeted on June 6, 2017. “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!”

Trump’s proclamation came at a precipitous moment. That same month, Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Bahrain, and Egypt had imposed a land, sea, and air blockade on Qatar, for byzantine reasons involving a hacked website, allegations of coziness with the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Jazeera’s critical coverage of the aforementioned four countries, post-Arab Spring paranoia, historical enmity, and Allah knows what else.

The U.S. State Department was opposed to the blockade—because Qatar is our ally—so Trump’s implicit endorsement of it came as a shock to his Secretary of State, the former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson. As Ryan Goodman and Julia Brooks lay out on the very helpful Kushner/666 Fifth Avenue/Qatar timeline they complied at Just Security:

Sec. Tillerson states:

We call on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt to ease the blockade against Qatar. There are humanitarian consequences to this blockade. We’re seeing shortages of food. Families are being forcibly separated, and children pulled out of school. We believe these are unintended consequences, especially during this holy month of Ramadan, but they can be addressed immediately. The blockade is also impairing U.S. and other international business activities in the region. … The blockade is hindering U.S. military actions in the region and the campaign against ISIS.

Within an hour, the president says that the Saudi-led action against is “hard but necessary” and claims that Tillerson supports this stance. President Trump states:

The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level, and in the wake of that conference, nations came together and spoke to me about confronting Qatar over its behavior. So we had a decision to make: Do we take the easy road, or do we finally take a hard but necessary action? We have to stop the funding of terrorism. I decided, along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, our great generals and military people, the time had come to call on Qatar to end its funding — they have to end that funding — and its extremist ideology in terms of funding.

What Tillerson had not yet realized was that there was a shadow Secretary of State. His name was Jared Kushner. And he was pissed at the Qataris.

For months, Kushner and his dad, Charles Kushner, had been negotiating with the Qatari Investment Authority. The father and son were angling for a bailout loan on a white elephant of a Manhattan building they’d stupidly purchased at the height of the real estate bubble at 666 Fifth Avenue. Without help from the Qataris—or someone with similarly deep pockets—their family business might collapse.

As Goodman and Brooks explain:

Throughout 2015 and 2016, Jared and Charles Kushner negotiate with Qatari investor Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani (known as “HBJ”) to refinance the building. HBJ is a former Prime Minister of Qatar who manages the country’s $250 billion sovereign wealth fund. One of the meetings Kushner reportedly holds with HBJ is in Trump Tower during the transition in December 2016. He agrees to invest at least $500 million. The deal ultimately falls through when the Kushners fail to raise the rest of the funding from other sources, and the potential investors reportedly worry about public scrutiny from Kushner’s role in the Trump White House.

Tom Barrack told the Washington Post that he tried to use his Qatar connection to help Kushner with 666 Fifth Avenue. “Barrack said he told the former prime minister of Qatar to consider investing in the Kushner Cos. property,” according to the Post. In a subsequent Post story, Barrack says that Kushner’s move to the White House, “just about completely chilled the market, and [potential investors] just said, ‘No way — can’t be associated with any appearances of conflict of interest,’ even though there was none.”

To me, this looks like an early example of “do me a favor, though”—Donald’s go-to mob-boss tactic. What he wanted the Qataris to do was bail out his son-in-law’s soon-to-be-underwater family real estate business. Which, in August of 2018, after months of negotiations, they finally did.

Pace Eric Lipton of the New York Times, corruption does not require an explicit quid pro quo. A nation sitting on a sovereign wealth fund worth half a trillion dollars can afford to throw money around in hopes of, say, the United States making sure Qatar is never again the target of a blockade—or worse. As the journalist Vicky Ward, author of Kushner, Inc., revealed about the 666 Fifth Avenue dust-up during the first Trump term: “The Qataris reported there were Saudi and Emirati troops on their border. My sources in the State Dept confirm this. The Qataris interpreted the presence of troops as Kushner saying, ‘If you don’t pay my father, the Americans are going to sanction an invasion of your country.’”

So: Why is Qatar giving Trump the big ol’ jet airliner? Doha is paying tribute—like vassal states of the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Empires did in the Middle East for most of the Anno Domini period. Or, to put it in more modern terms, Qatar is paying protection money to the capo di tutti capi. This is Ralphie giving Tony Soprano his taste.

Helluva nice country you got there, Emir. Shame if something were to happen to it.

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Postscript: Qatar also comes up in the intelligence reports produced by the former MI6 bureau chief Christopher Steele. As I wrote back in December of 2018:

In the intelligence report dated 18 October, 2016, Steele observes that Igor Sechin, CEO of the Russian oil company Rosneft, “was so keen to lift personal and corporate western sanctions imposed on the company, that he offered [Carter] PAGE/TRUMP’s associates the brokerage of up to a 19 per cent (privatized) stake in Rosneft in return.” Wherefore Sechin’s keenness? Well, Rosneft is one of the world’s largest publicly traded oil companies. Its majority owner is the Government of Russia — in other words, Vladimir Putin and his circle of oligarchs, a group that includes Sechin, a longtime crony of the Russian president. In 2012, Rosneft entered into a $500 billion joint venture with ExxonMobil, which at the time was run by Trump’s former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson (it was this mammoth joint venture, apparently, that inspired Putin to award Tillerson the Medal of Friendship in 2013). The oil reserves in the Arctic, the impetus for the joint venture, are estimated to contain 85 billion barrels. At a conservative price of $50 a barrel, that amounts to a staggering $4.25 trillion in potential gross revenue. Trillion, with a “T.”

These are dizzying numbers—but Putin will not see a kopek as long as the US continues to impose sanctions on Russia. Small wonder, then, that Sechin wanted those sanctions lifted.

Here’s where it gets interesting: As Steele predicted, Rosneft did sell off a percentage of its ownership—19.5 percent, almost exactly what he’d reported—in January 2017. The details of the transaction were predictably murky, with shell companies selling to other shell companies, who were owned by different shell companies, and so on to infinity. One reads the names of these ersatz enterprises—Glencore, Intesa SanPaolo, QHG Shares, QHC Holding, QHC Cayman Limited—and one finds one’s eyelids getting heavier, and one falling slowly to sleep.

The “Q” in the name of those shell companies stands for Qatar. “Although Qatar has never publicly confirmed how much it has contributed to the deal or the size of the stake that it bought, Glencore and Rosneft say it contributed 2.5 billion euros,” per a Reuters report of January 2017.

As it happens, Glencore’s largest shareholders is—ta da!—the Qatar Investment Authority, the nation’s deep-pocketed sovereign wealth fund. Which means that it was Qatar that gobbled up that huge stake in Rosneft.

Could it be that the gift of the Boeing 747-8—and whatever other goodies Trump will scoop up on his current grifter tour of the Middle East—has something to do with the commission on the sale of the stake in Rosneft, as Steele reported hearing about, back in 2016?

The only thing I can say for sure is that, by accepting the luxury airliner, Trump is indicating that he anticipates nothing but clear skies ahead.

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ANNOUNCEMENT

I’m pleased to announce that the audiobook for The Age of Unreality is now available! It is narrated by the great Kevin O’Brien, who did a masterful job. Please check it out: