Zamel pitch in Riyadh in March 2017, it “dates to the beginning of 2016,” according to the New York Times, “when [the three men] started discussing an ambitious campaign of economic warfare against Iran similar to one waged by Israel and the United States during the past decade aimed at coercing Iran to end its nuclear program.”80 The timing of the plan’s development suggests that at some point during the 2016 campaign all three progenitors of the scheme were advising the Trump campaign and that Nader began working with Zamel and Trump adviser Prince not long after his fall 2015 meeting on the Red Sea with MBZ, MBS, and el-Sisi. The contours of the Nader-Prince-Zamel proposal suggest that Zamel’s role in it has been particularly key, with the New York Times reporting that the proposal prominently features “revealing [the] hidden global assets” of enemies; “creating fake social media accounts … to foment unrest”; secretly “financing … opposition groups”; and “publicizing accusations, real or fictitious, against … senior officials to turn them against one another.”81 Indeed, from its description in the Times, this appears to be a plan similar to the one Zamel suggested to Trump Jr. during the 2016 presidential election—with the target, in the latter case, being an unsuspecting American electorate.82 Reports indicate, indeed, that after the election “Mr. Nader and Mr. Zamel traveled to New York to sell both Trump transition officials and Saudi generals” on their plan, though now, as to its social media elements, applied to Iran rather than America.83 The plan is considered “so provocative and potentially destabilizing” that when Nader, Prince, and Zamel suggest it to al-Assiri in New York City during the presidential transition at a meeting atop the Mandarin Oriental hotel, al-Assiri says he would have to “get the approval of the incoming Trump administration before Saudi Arabia paid for the campaign.”84 That Nader, Prince, and Zamel’s plan required green-lighting by Trump, who had not yet assumed the authority to negotiate U.S. foreign policy, suggests that the plan had indeed been devised as a new, covert U.S.-Saudi policy initiative; just so, the willingness of the Saudis in December 2016 to secretly pay for a social media disinformation campaign devised by Joel Zamel—but only if they are asked to do so by Trump—calls to mind the possibility that this same process may have played out in August 2016 with respect to the social media disinformation scheme then being offered by Zamel to the Trump campaign.
The approval from “the incoming Trump administration” sought by al-Assiri is ultimately given, it appears, by Michael Flynn, at a subsequent meeting with the Saudi general during the transition. The result is that the Trump administration, prior to assuming power, has already secretly approved a plan to have a foreign government commit acts of espionage against a nation (Iran) with which the United States is in a state of détente.85 Under the plan, the Saudis would spend money, with explicit approval from Trump’s team, on a military initiative that would undercut the foreign policy of the existing U.S. government, then run by President Obama.
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Just days before MBS is set to make his first visit to Washington to meet with the new president, Trump receives terrible news: FBI director James Comey informs the congressional “Gang of Eight”—which includes the chairs and ranking minority members of the Senate and House intelligence committees—that its counterintelligence investigation into Russian election interference has identified “4-5 [American] targets” whose actions require substantial additional investigation by the U.S. intelligence community, and could compel criminal prosecution.86 A week later, the Republican chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr (R-NC), briefs the White House counsel’s office on what was said in the classified briefing.87 Burr appears to inform the office that the four individuals under investigation by the FBI’s counterintelligence division are Flynn, Manafort, Page, and Papadopoulos; a redaction in the Mueller Report indicates that there may have been a fifth individual as well.88
Trump’s reaction appears to be a dramatic one. Three days after Comey’s Gang of Eight briefing, but four days before Burr briefs the White House counsel, Trump is suddenly in a “panic” and a state of “chaos,” according to contemporaneous notes taken by Annie Donaldson, White House counsel Don McGahn’s chief of staff; Donaldson records that “all things related to Russia” must immediately be put in “binders” for Trump’s review.89 That Trump’s reaction is borne in substantial part by the White House counsel’s office suggests that Burr’s briefing of the office four