A very intriguing read. Peep that timeline and tell me this family isn’t as dirty as they get. Guarantee Mueller has to have facts like this in that report...
Donald Trump tried to reward a Mar-a-Lago member with billions extorted from Qatar
In April of 2018, Donald Trump pushed the Qatari sovereign wealth fund—the same fund that had recently bailed out Jared Kushner—to engage in a risky deal involving a nuclear power plant. The reason doesn’t seem to have anything to do with a need for nuclear power, and it certainly wasn’t done to help the Qataris. Instead, it appears to have been Trump using his leverage over the tiny nation of Qatar to help a billionaire speculator who just happens to be a Mar-a-lago member and who plowed $1 million into Trump’s controversial Inaugural fund.
As reported in the Daily Memphian, Franklin Haney calls himself a “lifelong Democrat,” but the billionaire speculator lives in a 52-room mansion, is a Mar-a-lago member, gave over a million to put Trump in office, and has donated hundreds of thousands to GOP candidates. So … not exactly a model Democrat. But the deal he became a part of does seem like model behavior for Trump: using the power of his office to force nations and institutions to do as he wants, simply to remain in his favor.
In the case of Haney and the power plant, the investor was having dinner at Mar-a-Lago in April of 2018 when Trump came to his table with a representative of the Qatar Investment Authority in tow. Trump was aware that Haney was trying to open an abandoned, never-completed nuclear plant in Alabama and make a long-term power-supply agreement. The deal was a long-shot, demanding billions in up-front cash and navigation of a dozen federal agencies, and offering a shaky return.
Trump had the answer to all of that. According to Haney, Trump brought the Qatari fund manager to his table and bluntly declared that the fund had $45 billion that it wanted to invest in the United States and would “loan money for nuclear plants.” Promoting nuclear plants, along with coal, has been one of the continuing goals of Trump’s energy policy.
Shortly after this first meeting, Michael Cohen showed up and inserted himself into the arrangement, saying he could land the funding for a mere $10 million fee. However, April was also the month that federal investigators raided Cohen’s home and offices in New York. That was apparently enough of a distraction that Cohen doesn’t seem to have taken much more action. He never got his money, and neither did Haney.
Even without a “happy ending,” the story of Haney and Qatar puts a fresh spotlight on Donald Trump’s willingness to use U.S. foreign policy and his position not just to force allies into following policy that he wants, but to force banks and funds to cough up money for his family and friends. Just as Qatar had already done for Jared Kushner.
In May of 2018, Jared Kushner was in serious trouble. The deadline was closing in on a massive $1.2 billion note taken out to keep his family business afloat after the real estate wunderkind purchased the 41-story office tower at 666 Fifth Avenue only to find it was a giant white elephant that no investor wanted to touch. Kushner courted investors, and nations, around the world, but despite a few preliminary announcements of interest, once anyone got a good look at the property and the numbers, they backed away. Kushner was very much on the brink of losing his family business thanks to his own biggest, and worst, decision.
And then a miracle occurred. At nearly the last minute, the Qatar Sovereign Wealth Fund swooped in to rescue Kushner, with a funding deal that topped $1.8 billion. It was an incredible and unexpected save, especially considering that Kushner’s family had met with the Qatari fund a year earlier and walked away without finding any interest. But the time between those two meetings about 666 Fifth Avenue was quite a year for the tiny Middle Eastern monarchy.
March 2017: Anbang Group, a holding company connected to the Chinese government, backs out of a tentative agreement to finance Kushner’s plans for 666 Fifth Avenue.
April 2017: A preliminary meetingbetween the Kushner company and Qatari sovereign wealth goes nowhere. Kushner’s father later claims it would have been “inappropriate” to make such a deal, considering Jared’s position in the government. In the same month, Qatar reaches a deal with militants in Syria to release over two dozen Qatari hostages and allow humanitarian aid into the village of Madaya in exchange for a large payment. The hostage deal increases tensions between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which sees it as funding Iran.
May 2017: Donald Trump breaks with tradition by using his first foreign trip to visit Saudi Arabia, with Kushner in tow. The two drop in on Mohammed bin Salman, who was decidedly not in line for the throne at the time. While Trump is in Riyadh, Trump supporters Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy and his business partner George Nader urge him to support the isolation and punishment of Qatar. Trump responds with strong support for Saudi Arabia, and for Mohammed bin Salman personally, encouraging him to take action. Russian hackers break into government web sites in Qatar and plant messages supporting Iran.
June 2017: At the start of the month, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Bahrain cut diplomatic ties with Qatar. Trump immediately praises the action as he tweets out that Qatar is the source of funding for “radical ideology.” That same day, Saudi Arabia and the UAE send out notices to halt all shipping in and out of Qatar—a source of more than 80 percent of the nation’s food. Trump finishes his series of tweets not just encouraging the action, but taking credit for the blockade, saying that it is “So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off.” Throughout the month, the blockade against Qatar is tightened. Saudi Arabia’s central bank threatens other banks if they deal with Qatar. Even though the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East is in Qatar, Trump continues to support the Saudis in turning up the heat. In the middle of June, Mohammed bin Salman becomes crown prince and de facto leader of Saudi Arabia in a “soft coup” that sees members of his family removed from power or imprisoned. On the same day, the Saudis deliver a list of demands to Qatar, including closing Al-Jazeera and other independent news organizations; handing over Saudi dissidents; agreeing to do as Saudi Arabia tells it in all political, economic, and social policies; and making a large payment in “reparations” for allowing criticism of the Saudis. In essence, it’s a demand that Qatar become a vassal state of Saudi Arabia.
October 2017: Jared Kushner pays an unannounced visit to Crown Prince Mohammed after “speaking with him frequently” by phone. Within two weeks of Kushner’s visit, the crown prince institutes a new crackdown on other members of the royal family who are suspected of being disloyal, arresting dozens, seizing positions and wealth for his supporters, and carrying out a record number of beheadings. Kushner is, at the time, still operating on a provisional security clearance, but has read top secret information on Saudi Arabia, including the assessment of the crown prince’s position. Kushner reportedly offered him the names of the disloyal.
July–December 2017: Cut off from banking and shipping, forced to reroute flights and bring in food in a self-organized airlift, Qatar is bleeding funds to the tune of billions a week. Its stock market plummets. Its credit rating is reduced around the world. Rather than buckle under to demands, Qatar spends freely from its $340 billion sovereign wealth fund, buying new jets from Europe and beefing up its military. In November, Qatar leaves OPEC, after having been one of its founding members. By December, the required government spending has driven up the nation’s national debt over 50 percent in a single year. Qatar begins a series of efforts to end the blockade through negotiation without giving Saudi Arabia the absolute surrender required by the list of demands.
January–May 2018: Qatar continues attempts to end the blockade. But while some parts of the blockade become more formalized, and Qatar increasingly learns to live under what amounts to a set of very costly tariffs and conditions, Crown Prince Mohammed refuses to reduce his demands. At home, he tightens his demands, carrying out still more beheadings.
May 2018: With the blockade still in place, and with Trump still claiming that Qatar is a funder of terrorism and attempting to increase military sales to Saudi Arabia, Kushner announces that his company has been saved by a $1.8 billion injection from Qatar. For Kushner, it’s an amazing rescue. For Qatar, it’s less than one week of the losses it is suffering under the blockade. But if the Qataris are hoping that tossing the money to Kushner will lift the blockade … they are disappointed.
October 2018: Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi is ambushed, tortured, dismembered, and executed in Turkey by assassins sent by Mohammed bin Salman. Jared Kushner calls up his partner to tell him to just keep quiet about it, “weather” the storm, and everyone will soon forget.
While rumors continue to circulate that the special counsel’s investigation will in some sense come to “an end” in the near future, hopefully it will not end without handing off anything it has learned about Trump and Kushner’s connections with Mohammed bin Salman—connections that could easily outpace Russia as the greatest story of corruption in U.S. history.
Donald Trump tried to reward a Mar-a-Lago member with billions extorted from Qatar
Donald Trump tried to reward a Mar-a-Lago member with billions extorted from Qatar
In April of 2018, Donald Trump pushed the Qatari sovereign wealth fund—the same fund that had recently bailed out Jared Kushner—to engage in a risky deal involving a nuclear power plant. The reason doesn’t seem to have anything to do with a need for nuclear power, and it certainly wasn’t done to help the Qataris. Instead, it appears to have been Trump using his leverage over the tiny nation of Qatar to help a billionaire speculator who just happens to be a Mar-a-lago member and who plowed $1 million into Trump’s controversial Inaugural fund.
As reported in the Daily Memphian, Franklin Haney calls himself a “lifelong Democrat,” but the billionaire speculator lives in a 52-room mansion, is a Mar-a-lago member, gave over a million to put Trump in office, and has donated hundreds of thousands to GOP candidates. So … not exactly a model Democrat. But the deal he became a part of does seem like model behavior for Trump: using the power of his office to force nations and institutions to do as he wants, simply to remain in his favor.
In the case of Haney and the power plant, the investor was having dinner at Mar-a-Lago in April of 2018 when Trump came to his table with a representative of the Qatar Investment Authority in tow. Trump was aware that Haney was trying to open an abandoned, never-completed nuclear plant in Alabama and make a long-term power-supply agreement. The deal was a long-shot, demanding billions in up-front cash and navigation of a dozen federal agencies, and offering a shaky return.
Trump had the answer to all of that. According to Haney, Trump brought the Qatari fund manager to his table and bluntly declared that the fund had $45 billion that it wanted to invest in the United States and would “loan money for nuclear plants.” Promoting nuclear plants, along with coal, has been one of the continuing goals of Trump’s energy policy.
Shortly after this first meeting, Michael Cohen showed up and inserted himself into the arrangement, saying he could land the funding for a mere $10 million fee. However, April was also the month that federal investigators raided Cohen’s home and offices in New York. That was apparently enough of a distraction that Cohen doesn’t seem to have taken much more action. He never got his money, and neither did Haney.
Even without a “happy ending,” the story of Haney and Qatar puts a fresh spotlight on Donald Trump’s willingness to use U.S. foreign policy and his position not just to force allies into following policy that he wants, but to force banks and funds to cough up money for his family and friends. Just as Qatar had already done for Jared Kushner.
In May of 2018, Jared Kushner was in serious trouble. The deadline was closing in on a massive $1.2 billion note taken out to keep his family business afloat after the real estate wunderkind purchased the 41-story office tower at 666 Fifth Avenue only to find it was a giant white elephant that no investor wanted to touch. Kushner courted investors, and nations, around the world, but despite a few preliminary announcements of interest, once anyone got a good look at the property and the numbers, they backed away. Kushner was very much on the brink of losing his family business thanks to his own biggest, and worst, decision.
And then a miracle occurred. At nearly the last minute, the Qatar Sovereign Wealth Fund swooped in to rescue Kushner, with a funding deal that topped $1.8 billion. It was an incredible and unexpected save, especially considering that Kushner’s family had met with the Qatari fund a year earlier and walked away without finding any interest. But the time between those two meetings about 666 Fifth Avenue was quite a year for the tiny Middle Eastern monarchy.
March 2017: Anbang Group, a holding company connected to the Chinese government, backs out of a tentative agreement to finance Kushner’s plans for 666 Fifth Avenue.
April 2017: A preliminary meetingbetween the Kushner company and Qatari sovereign wealth goes nowhere. Kushner’s father later claims it would have been “inappropriate” to make such a deal, considering Jared’s position in the government. In the same month, Qatar reaches a deal with militants in Syria to release over two dozen Qatari hostages and allow humanitarian aid into the village of Madaya in exchange for a large payment. The hostage deal increases tensions between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which sees it as funding Iran.
May 2017: Donald Trump breaks with tradition by using his first foreign trip to visit Saudi Arabia, with Kushner in tow. The two drop in on Mohammed bin Salman, who was decidedly not in line for the throne at the time. While Trump is in Riyadh, Trump supporters Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy and his business partner George Nader urge him to support the isolation and punishment of Qatar. Trump responds with strong support for Saudi Arabia, and for Mohammed bin Salman personally, encouraging him to take action. Russian hackers break into government web sites in Qatar and plant messages supporting Iran.
June 2017: At the start of the month, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Bahrain cut diplomatic ties with Qatar. Trump immediately praises the action as he tweets out that Qatar is the source of funding for “radical ideology.” That same day, Saudi Arabia and the UAE send out notices to halt all shipping in and out of Qatar—a source of more than 80 percent of the nation’s food. Trump finishes his series of tweets not just encouraging the action, but taking credit for the blockade, saying that it is “So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off.” Throughout the month, the blockade against Qatar is tightened. Saudi Arabia’s central bank threatens other banks if they deal with Qatar. Even though the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East is in Qatar, Trump continues to support the Saudis in turning up the heat. In the middle of June, Mohammed bin Salman becomes crown prince and de facto leader of Saudi Arabia in a “soft coup” that sees members of his family removed from power or imprisoned. On the same day, the Saudis deliver a list of demands to Qatar, including closing Al-Jazeera and other independent news organizations; handing over Saudi dissidents; agreeing to do as Saudi Arabia tells it in all political, economic, and social policies; and making a large payment in “reparations” for allowing criticism of the Saudis. In essence, it’s a demand that Qatar become a vassal state of Saudi Arabia.
October 2017: Jared Kushner pays an unannounced visit to Crown Prince Mohammed after “speaking with him frequently” by phone. Within two weeks of Kushner’s visit, the crown prince institutes a new crackdown on other members of the royal family who are suspected of being disloyal, arresting dozens, seizing positions and wealth for his supporters, and carrying out a record number of beheadings. Kushner is, at the time, still operating on a provisional security clearance, but has read top secret information on Saudi Arabia, including the assessment of the crown prince’s position. Kushner reportedly offered him the names of the disloyal.
July–December 2017: Cut off from banking and shipping, forced to reroute flights and bring in food in a self-organized airlift, Qatar is bleeding funds to the tune of billions a week. Its stock market plummets. Its credit rating is reduced around the world. Rather than buckle under to demands, Qatar spends freely from its $340 billion sovereign wealth fund, buying new jets from Europe and beefing up its military. In November, Qatar leaves OPEC, after having been one of its founding members. By December, the required government spending has driven up the nation’s national debt over 50 percent in a single year. Qatar begins a series of efforts to end the blockade through negotiation without giving Saudi Arabia the absolute surrender required by the list of demands.
January–May 2018: Qatar continues attempts to end the blockade. But while some parts of the blockade become more formalized, and Qatar increasingly learns to live under what amounts to a set of very costly tariffs and conditions, Crown Prince Mohammed refuses to reduce his demands. At home, he tightens his demands, carrying out still more beheadings.
May 2018: With the blockade still in place, and with Trump still claiming that Qatar is a funder of terrorism and attempting to increase military sales to Saudi Arabia, Kushner announces that his company has been saved by a $1.8 billion injection from Qatar. For Kushner, it’s an amazing rescue. For Qatar, it’s less than one week of the losses it is suffering under the blockade. But if the Qataris are hoping that tossing the money to Kushner will lift the blockade … they are disappointed.
October 2018: Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi is ambushed, tortured, dismembered, and executed in Turkey by assassins sent by Mohammed bin Salman. Jared Kushner calls up his partner to tell him to just keep quiet about it, “weather” the storm, and everyone will soon forget.
While rumors continue to circulate that the special counsel’s investigation will in some sense come to “an end” in the near future, hopefully it will not end without handing off anything it has learned about Trump and Kushner’s connections with Mohammed bin Salman—connections that could easily outpace Russia as the greatest story of corruption in U.S. history.
Donald Trump tried to reward a Mar-a-Lago member with billions extorted from Qatar
...Nap
