Congressional interest in intersections between the inaugural committee and the presidential transition is understandable, given that, as Bloomberg notes, “Barrack planned much of the inauguration … [but] was also a key player in the transition effort taking place … at Trump Tower. His dual role allowed him to keep Trump apprised of the inaugural committee’s efforts, according to people familiar with their conversations.”276 A link between the campaign and the inaugural committee is likewise established when Barrack selects Rick Gates, Trump’s deputy campaign manager and later RNC liaison, as the inaugural committee’s deputy.277 Interestingly—given Gates’s pre-RNC solicitation of a proposal by Joel Zamel for a general election marketing campaign—Bloomberg will note that Trump’s relationship with Gates had taken a turn for the worse after Trump got upset about “how more than $700,000 for a direct mail contract had been allocated [by Gates] … while [Paul] Manafort and Gates were overseeing plans for the Republican convention.”278 Whatever Gates had done with a $700,000 set-aside for campaign marketing at a time he was secretly soliciting marketing proposals from an Israeli business intelligence firm, Trump is allegedly concerned enough about it that he tells Barrack to fire Gates shortly after Election Day, an order Barrack declines to execute.279 In fact, Barrack, who by 2018 is himself being investigated by the Southern District of New York—after Gates becomes a cooperating federal witness—does the opposite of firing Gates: not only does he keep Gates on as his deputy, but he pays him $100,000 for just seventy days of work, the equivalent of a $525,000 annual salary.280 If Trump is indeed paying close attention to his inaugural budget during the transition period, Barrack’s significant payment to Gates after Trump had ordered his firing is one that Trump might have been expected to notice.
One of the most high-profile events of Barrack’s tenure as inaugural chair is his Chairman’s Dinner, an event he orchestrates with Gates that is held the week of the inauguration and features attendance by Trump himself and a “swarm” of “foreign diplomats.”281 According to Bloomberg, Barrack will make use of the “network of connections” he and Gates establish between Trump and representatives of “foreign governments” to “pursue deals arising from Trump’s promised $1 trillion infrastructure push.”282 While the identities of the foreign nationals Barrack and Gates target for involvement in their sub rosa lobbying of the president are unknown, Bloomberg notes that this kind of lobbying effort “was considered viable within Colony [Barrack’s firm] until at least April 2017, according to two people familiar with the plans. That month, Gates dined at an upscale Washington restaurant with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Barrack and seven Middle Eastern ambassadors.”283 The guest list at that April 14 dinner in a private room at Fiola Mare in Georgetown included, along with Barrack, Gates, and Mnuchin—the last of whom met with Colony executives at least three times in the 120 days post-inauguration—the ambassadors of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan, Oman, Kuwait, and Qatar.284
According to an eight-page document Gates writes that summarizes Colony’s plans to capitalize on connections made between Trump and associates of Barrack during the Chairman’s Dinner, the dinner put Gates and Barrack in a position to “build a bridge to where government and business intersect globally … to strategically cultivate domestic and international relationships while avoiding any appearance of lobbying.”285 Bloomberg notes that by the time of the Chairman’s Dinner, Barrack has “develop[ed] extensive ties with Trump and investors across the globe. He [has] nurtured special relationships with the Qatari sovereign wealth fund [the Qatar Investment Authority] and other Middle Eastern investors.”286
Events such as the Chairman’s Dinner—and missing funds such as the $40 million unaccounted for in a budget Trump was closely monitoring—will eventually lead to questions not just about the business opportunities Barrack and Gates sought to spin out of their inaugural roles but about donations made to the inaugural fund itself. Federal prosecutors will investigate how it came to pass that “several wealthy Russians and Ukrainians attended the inauguration,” given “questions about how they gained access [to the events].”287 In August 2018, Sam Patten, an associate of Gates’s former boss, Paul Manafort, will plead guilty to using a straw buyer to help a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian oligarch, Serhiy Lyovochkin, attend the inauguration, a plan Patten executed through a firm he jointly ran with Konstantin Kilimnik.288 According to the New York Times, Lyovochkin “was one of a clutch of oligarchs who paid Mr. Manafort more than $60 million [between 2007 and 2014] to