recent positions in the Emirati government, however; while serving as chancellor of Higher Colleges of Technology in Abu Dhabi from 1988 to 2013, he concurrently acted as the UAE’s minister of higher education and scientific research.130 Tawil admits to being a sometime adviser to world leaders, though he is willing to specify to the Times of Israel only the presidents of certain African nations.131 He does not indicate whether he has ever advised leaders in the country he evidently spends a good deal of time in: the United Arab Emirates.
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In the fall of 2017, Elliott Broidy, now the deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee thanks to Trump, emails George Nader, still an adviser to MBZ, a “detailed report” on a private meeting he has just had with the president.132 Broidy’s report is sent to an encrypted email address used by Nader and is, according to the New York Times, sent in response to a request by MBZ that Broidy lobby Trump for the creation of a new “counterterrorism task force” focused on the Middle East.133 The Times reports that by fall 2017 Nader has been trying for months to turn Broidy into an “instrument of influence at the White House for the rulers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.”134 In sum, writes the Times, “hundreds of pages of correspondence between the two men reveal an active effort to cultivate President Trump on behalf of the two oil-rich Arab monarchies.”135 In charting Nader and Broidy’s three primary ambitions—convincing Trump to fire secretary of state Rex Tillerson, ensuring Trump backs Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates against Iran and Qatar, and orchestrating a private meeting between Trump and MBZ—the Times notes that the first two of these ambitions were achieved by the Broidy-Nader partnership. As for the third, it is unknown whether Trump has met secretly with MBZ, though the possibility remains MBZ did so when he attended a Trump Tower meeting in secrecy in December 2016.136
Across a number of emails, Nader offers Broidy more than $1 billion in contracts for his private security company, Circinus, in exchange for Broidy’s help wooing Trump on behalf of MBZ.137 Because Nader is offering this money to the Republican National Committee’s deputy finance chair, there is a risk from the start that some of the money offered by the Emiratis will end up in Republican Party coffers, either directly or through money laundering—for instance, by Broidy, who is a GOP mega-donor, legally donating to the Republican Party money that he himself has received from MBZ to influence the party’s leader. Broidy is already accused by federal prosecutors in court filings of receiving laundered money in a separate case involving 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a Malaysian state-owned fund.138 In April 2019, shortly after Robert Mueller reports the findings of his Russia investigation to William Barr, Trump’s new attorney general—by then facing persistent accusations of “acting like Trump’s lawyer” and “trying to protect” Trump—will seek and receive an ethics waiver from the DOJ to oversee the 1MDB case; Barr’s former law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, currently represents Goldman Sachs in the 1MDB investigation.139
During the 2016 election cycle, Broidy was responsible for raising $108 million for a joint RNC-Trump campaign fund. The August 2016 offer to Trump Jr. by Broidy’s partner, Nader—that Nader would do anything he could do, on behalf of MBZ and MBS, to assist the Trump campaign—could therefore have been a promise delivered upon, pre- or post-election, through Broidy’s fundraising efforts for the RNC, making the 1MDB investigation a potentially dangerous one not just for Broidy but for Trump and members of his 2016 presidential campaign.140
In his emails to Broidy, Nader assures the GOP rainmaker and donor that he is playing a “Pivotal Indispensable Magic Role” in helping both Saudi Arabia and the UAE.141 That the special counsel’s office will subsequently grant Nader immunity from criminal prosecution—and have him testify multiple times before a federal grand jury—underscores that elements of the secretive efforts Nader made in conjunction with Broidy and MBZ may have amounted to criminal acts, possibly of a sort Broidy has repeatedly been accused of throughout his political career: bribery, a charge not investigated by the special counsel but possibly being considered by other federal jurisdictions that have received evidence from his office.142 According to the New York Times, one of the focuses of Mueller’s probe—though this subject does not appear in his report, suggesting any case related to it was referred elsewhere or considered