meddle in the 2016 elections.”211 The alleged Russian hack appears calibrated to provide cover for Saudi Arabia and the UAE in their decision to blockade Qatar, with a May 23 news report from the Qatar News Agency “attribut[ing] false remarks to [Qatar’s] ruler that appeared friendly to Iran and Israel … and question[ing] whether President Donald Trump would last in office.”212 The hack, which Qatari foreign minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani will say has been “confirmed” and “proved” by the FBI as a “planting of fake news,” is therefore equally offensive to Saudi Arabia and the UAE (because of its indication of a positive turn in Qatari-Iranian relations) and Trump himself (because of its indication of a negative turn in Qatari-Trump relations).213
An open question is whether the Saudis’ and Emiratis’ credulous response to a Qatari news report many in the U.S. government deemed inauthentic was strategic. Certainly, the Saudi-led blockade is conveniently coincident with tweets from Trump shifting the focus of accusations of terror financing in the Middle East from Saudi Arabia to Qatar.214 That Trump, the Saudis, and the Emiratis are overstating their case with respect to Qatar’s support for international terrorism is only emphasized when the U.S. State Department issues a statement—mere hours after Trump’s pro-blockade tweets—saying that Qatar has “made progress on stemming the funding of terrorists.”215 The statement contradicts Trump’s remarks even as, per CNN, his words include “criticism of Qatar that mirrors that of the Saudis” and fail to mention at all the possible hacking of the Qatar News Agency.216 Saudi Arabia’s announcement that its blockade is “partly in reaction” to an incident that U.S. media considers a possible “false news report” is telling: by ignoring the findings of the FBI and the concerns of American media outlets, and focusing instead on the words of support tweeted out by Trump, Saudi Arabia is emboldened into a course of action for which it otherwise might have had little support outside the region.217
The Qataris will tell U.S. media that the Saudis’ posture toward Qatar changed suddenly and unexpectedly as soon as Trump and Kushner met with King Salman. A “high-level Qatari source” tells The Intercept that “the Emir [of Qatar] was in Jeddah [Saudi Arabia] before the [Trump-Salman] summit, had a meeting with King Salman. King Salman did not bring up any subject about differences with Qatar. After the summit, the Saudis and the Emirates, they thought, after signing all these [military] contracts [with Trump], they can have the upper hand in the region and they don’t want any country not to be in the same line.”218 Certainly, the chief complaint about Qatar the Saudis declare after their king’s summit with Trump—that Qatar, a chief U.S. ally in the region, is in fact secretly a major state sponsor of terrorism—is of the sort that, if valid, normally would have been communicated first through diplomatic channels to the Qatari government prior to the summit and only then made public.
Less than a month after Trump departs Saudi Arabia, he will falsely declare that Qatar has “historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level.”219 Secretary of State Tillerson tells several peers, in response, that Trump’s unsupported claim about Qatar’s financing of terrorism “had been written by UAE Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba and delivered to Trump by Jared Kushner.”220 At a fundraiser shortly after leaving Riyadh, Trump will so align himself with Saudi Arabia and the UAE that he will abandon America’s long-standing alliance with Qatar and associate himself instead with the aggressors arrayed against the tiny Gulf country. “We’re having a dispute with Qatar,” he tells a roomful of Republican donors in late June, adding, “I prefer that they don’t fund terrorism.”221
Trump’s sudden abandonment of the Qataris, inasmuch as it emboldens the Saudis and Emiratis and prolongs their blockade of Qatar, operates as a crushing financial punishment for the Qataris refusing—even if only temporarily—to bail out his son-in-law. According to a source in the region quoted by The Intercept, “Had the Qataris known where things were heading diplomatically” they would have immediately and “happily ponied up the money [to Jared Kushner], even knowing that it was a losing investment. ‘It would have been much cheaper,’ he [the source] said.”222
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As Trump is in Saudi Arabia in May 2017, his friend Thomas Barrack is finalizing a deal to buy One California Plaza in Los Angeles. At a time when Barrack holds exactly $70 million of Jared Kushner’s debt, Barrack receives exactly $70 million in investments for his