Congress needs to figure out the deal between Trump, Jared, and the Saudis
The FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago should bring a new sense of urgency to getting to the bottom of corrupt Trump family ties to the Saudis.
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It’s a remarkable story that begins inside Trump Tower on Aug. 3, 2016, the day that Donald Trump Jr. met with a longtime emissary for two oil-rich Gulf States — Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — and their Israeli security guru as they promised to secretly help his father win that fall’s presidential election against Hillary Clinton.
The tale is far from over, but the richest plot twist may — emphasis on the word may — have occurred just a couple of weeks ago, right after a Saudi-government-backed pro golf tour made a financially rewarding stop at Donald Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, N.J. That’s when a team of FBI agents swooped into the senior Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in Florida, looking for top secret documents and evidence that the 45th president had violated the Espionage Act.
In between came enough drama to carry several seasons of a TV mini-series like The Crown — from soon-to-be-disgraced national security adviser Michael Flynn’s covert nuclear dealings with Riyadh, to son-in-law Jared Kushner’s strange but close relationship with the murderous de facto Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), to almost Seinfeld-ian subplots involving the sex life of billionaire Jeff Bezos, as well as the National Enquirer.
So, it’s hardly a surprise that once Americans digested the shock that the home of an ex-president had been raided by the FBI that so many people had the exact same thought. If Donald Trump wanted to cash in on a trove of priceless, sensitive documents — even nuclear secrets — the Saudis who’d just blessed his New Jersey golf course with petrodollars were probably his go-to-guys.
Because we all knew that something was off about Donald, Jared, and Mohammed almost literally from Day One — when Trump made Saudi Arabia, with its bizarre sword dances and glowing orbs, the very first international trip of his presidency (his most recent predecessors all went with Canada). It didn’t make sense from a diplomatic point of view, but it made perfect sense that the man behind Trump Vodka would attach himself to the world’s richest kleptocracy. Like the famed bank robber Willie Sutton said of his targets, that’s where the money is.
Let’s be clear: We don’t know what Trump was doing with those boxes of documents at Mar-a-Lago that weren’t supposed to be there. There’s no proof of any Saudi connection, or known evidence that the stash was shared with any foreign power — despite the speculation stirred by the government’s citation of the Espionage Act. For all we know, Trump simply gets off on showing sketches of new nuclear bombs to his golf partners.
But corruption isn’t just a known conflict-of-interest, but also the appearance of a conflict that causes citizens to lose trust in the process. When it comes to TrumpWorld’s tangled web of dealings with the Persian Gulf states and especially the Saudis, the issues go far beyond speculation about the possible sharing of secrets. The real question is why hasn’t there been a major, focused investigation into Trump’s Saudi ties so far.
Consider:
What was real story behind Flynn — forced by wrongdoing out of his job as Trump’s first national security adviser after just a few weeks — peddling sensitive secret nuclear technology to the Saudis, a deal which would have benefitted Flynn’s former firm but also Trump’s close friend Tom Barrack, the fundraiser for Trump’s inaugural? Did Team Trump continue working this plan, as some whistleblowers feared, even after the initial Flynn attempt was shot down?
Did Kushner — despite his issues with getting a security clearance — share U.S. intelligence with his good friend MBS around the same time the Saudi prince was rounding up potential rivals (even family members) and detaining them at a Riyadh hotel where many complained of harsh treatment? What, if anything, did Kushner or others in Trump’s orbit know in real-time or even in advance about the brutal bone-saw murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi? Why did Trump and Kushner always err on the side of absolving MBS, even as the CIA found the prince to be the architect of the killing?
Why was there not a bigger deal about the stunning report by cyber-experts that Saudi Arabia was behind the hack of mega-billionaire Jeff Bezos’ cell phone that exposed his extramarital affair (and ended his marriage) and that evidence pointed to a WhatsApp message from MBS himself to Bezos that embedded the critical malware? Wasn’t Amazon’s Bezos — who personally owns the Washington Post — high on Trump’s enemies list? How was it that the National Enquirer — which kept Trump secrets in a safe and seemingly got a sweet deal to publish a Saudi booster magazine — ended up printing the dirt on Bezos?
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What about all these weird post-presidential dealings? Like the Saudi fund that invested a whopping $2 billion in Kushner’s vague, inexperienced startup venture capital fund, but only after MBS himself overruled board members who wanted no part of it? Did Kushner negotiate his deal when he was still a government official touring the Middle East in the waning days of the Trump presidency, and ditto for Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who got a $1 billion investment from the same fund? Did the new Saudi pro golf tour schedule events at Trump’s courses in New Jersey and Florida because they are the best links, or to curry favor with a once and possibly future POTUS?
I could go on — Trump and Kushner’s bizarre diplomatic sellout of Saudi Arabia’s rival Qatar (which was reversed when a Qatar-backed firm bought Kushner’s money-losing Manhattan tower), or the great lengths to which Trump worked to hide details of his phone calls with MBS — but you get the idea. This all smells worse than a desert refinery.
Because here’s the thing: These corrupt dealings were inextricably linked with massively important policies that had life or death consequences that went even beyond the murder of Khashoggi or the jailing of dissidents. Among the pro-Saudi, pro-MBS policies pushed by the Trump administration were scuttling a landmark nuclear deal with the Saudi’s bitter regional rivals, Iran; providing weapons and other support for the Saudis’ immoral and genocidal military campaign in Yemen; and pretending that climate change wasn’t a problem — which was surely appreciated by the oil-soaked and blood-stained monarchy.
Will anyone ever take a serious look at all of this? Over the course of 2022, the House Jan. 6 Committee has achieved something that was starting to feel impossible, in partially restoring some faith in government through its thorough and well-run investigation of the Capitol Hill insurrection. Given the stakes for national security and the possibility of billion-dollar graft, shouldn’t the Trump-Saudi connection get the same treatment? Why not a comprehensive congressional probe, with sworn testimony and subpoena power?
It’s badly needed, yet I fear that no one would have the guts to tackle the Saudi question unless the Mar-a-Lago probe does turn up unsavory dealings that go even beyond the many suspicious deeds listed here. Without the truth, our failure to hold Trump and Kushner accountable could be a disaster if somehow 2025 sees POTUS 45 become POTUS 47 — along with a return of foreign policy for the highest bidder.
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