transition team had established pre-inauguration—the United States will not lift sanctions on Russia until the Kremlin has withdrawn its armed forces from the Crimean peninsula.161 It is unknown whether President Trump concurs with Tillerson’s declaration; the New York Times will observe that “Trump at times … appear[s] to side with the Arab monarchies [Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates] against his own cabinet secretaries.… Also in concert with the Saudis and Emiratis, Mr. Trump … take[s] a far more hawkish stance toward Iran than … his cabinet.”162 Indeed, as late as May 2017, even Republican senators are so convinced that Trump still plans to end sanctions on Russia—Tillerson’s statement on the matter notwithstanding—that a bipartisan bill supported by Senator John McCain (R-AZ) is advanced that would wrest control of all Russian sanctions away from the executive branch.163 McCain may be pushing the bill because he has heard the same news that, per Newsweek, journalists and diplomats are hearing at the time: “In its early days, the Trump administration sought to strike a [sanctions] deal with Russia by seeking cooperation against the Islamic State militant group in Syria in return … [a plan that] came in the form of a ‘tasking’ order at the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs within the State Department. The order asked officials to draw up a list of options, including sanctions relief and the return of … seized [diplomatic] buildings in Maryland and New York.”164
That Russia is aware of at least the outline of Trump’s plan by December 2016—at the very latest—is evident from intercepts of Flynn’s phone calls with Russian ambassador Kislyak that month. In the calls, observes Newsweek, “Flynn reportedly indicate[s] to Kislyak … that Russia could expect a review of the [Crimea and post-election] sanctions under the Trump administration.”165 Whether this is merely a reiteration of something Flynn has already told Kislyak pre-election, perhaps in one of the Flynn-Kislyak meetings Trump tells Chris Christie he fired Flynn over, is unclear. Certainly, it is known that Flynn and his son visited Ambassador Kislyak at his private D.C. residence on December 2, 2015—nearly a year before Election Day—and flew to Moscow for dinner with Vladimir Putin at an RT gala just eight days later.166 Little is known of the meeting at the ambassador’s house in late 2015 other than that Flynn was advising Trump on foreign policy and national security at the time, had been doing so for approximately four months and visited Kislyak as a “courtesy call … prior to his trip” to Moscow to deliver an address on “Middle East issues”; it is Flynn or his son who asked Kislyak for the meeting; and Flynn’s son later called the meeting “very productive.”167 As for any Flynn-Kislyak meetings between December 2015 and Election Day, in December 2018 Mother Jones will report that in the months leading up to Election Day, Flynn told several people he was having in-person as well as telephone contact with Kislyak.168
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In searching for other root causes of the Saudi-Emirati axis’s blockade of Qatar, the New York Times will note the possible influence of George Nader on a high-profile event hosted by the Hudson Institute in early 2017. The think tank organizes a conference that “feature[s] heavy criticism of Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood”; according to the Times, a $2.7 million payment Nader made to Broidy appears to have helped pay for the conference, a violation of Hudson Institute policies (which prohibit donations from foreign governments that are not democracies) if Nader was being used as an MBZ intermediary to pay Broidy.169 According to the Hudson Institute, Broidy represented to them, in offering to pay for the conference, that none of the money he was using to fund the event had come from a foreign government.170 Broidy also falsely represented to the Hudson Institute that at the time of his donation he had no business contracts in the Middle East.171 Per the Times, both Nader and Broidy used foreign corporations under their control—Nader an Emirati one, Broidy a Canadian one—to facilitate the funding for the conference.172
Nader meets “several times with senior administration officials in the White House during Mr. Trump’s first weeks in office.”173 Among those he meets with are Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, and several other “White House policymakers,” according to the New York Times. It is unknown whether he meets with Trump himself.174 In these meetings, Nader offers advice “on American policy toward the Persian Gulf states in advance of Mr. Trump’s trip to Saudi