a counterintelligence matter—is whether Nader “funnel[ed] Emirati money to Mr. Trump’s political efforts,” though it is unclear when Mueller believes any such illegal donations may have been made.143 What is clear is that Trump’s foreign policy aligns with the requests made by MBZ through his agents and intermediaries, and that Nader and Broidy for some reason feel compelled to use code names in their emails, referring to Donald Trump as “Chairman” and to MBZ as “Friend.”144
In one of the Nader-Broidy emails, first reported on by the New York Times in March 2018, Broidy, who by fall 2017 has “hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with the United Arab Emirates,” tells Nader that he “repeatedly pressed Mr. Trump to meet privately with Prince Mohammed [bin Zayed], preferably in an informal setting outside the White House.” Broidy also explains to Nader and MBZ that he strongly urged Trump to get behind MBZ’s policy agenda in the Middle East.145 At his fall 2017 private meeting with Trump, moreover, Broidy tells the president to fire Rex Tillerson, which Trump will do (via tweet) in March 2018.146 Months after the firing, Trump tweets, on December 7, 2018, that Tillerson, the man who had so critiqued the MBS-Kushner relationship—also the former president of Exxon, one of the largest energy companies in the world—“didn’t have the mental capacity needed” to be secretary of state.147 “He was dumb as a rock … [and] lazy as hell,” Trump will add, suggesting further that he had wanted to get rid of Tillerson from the moment he hired him and “couldn’t get rid of him fast enough.”148 The tweet has the effect of erasing Saudi or Emirati involvement in Tillerson’s ouster, as well as the involvement of the by then disgraced former RNC deputy finance chair, Broidy.
Trump takes Broidy’s advice with respect not only to Tillerson but also to his administration’s continued support for Emirati schemes and adventures abroad. As the New York Times will note in March 2018, “Trump has closely allied himself with the Emiratis, endorsing their strong support for the new heir to the throne in Saudi Arabia [Mohammed bin Salman], as well as their confrontational approaches toward Iran and their neighbor Qatar. In the case of Qatar, which is the host to a major United States military base, Mr. Trump’s endorsement of an Emirati- and Saudi-led blockade against that country has put him openly at odds with … years of American policy.”149
When Broidy is confronted with his emails to Nader by the Times, his only response, through a spokesman, is to accuse, without evidence, the nation of Qatar—an enemy of his allies in the UAE—of a “hack … sponsored and carried out by registered and unregistered agents of Qatar seeking to punish Mr. Broidy for his strong opposition to state-sponsored terrorism.”150 Neither Broidy nor his spokesman explains which email between him and Nader, in whole or in part, contains content sensitive enough that its revelation could be construed as state-sponsored punishment.151 In addition to Qatar, Broidy also blames “numerous Washington consultants and former intelligence operatives” for the hack.152
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By August 2017, just sixty days into his tenure as heir presumptive to the throne of Saudi Arabia, MBS is already thinking with great particularity about which of his enemies he needs to harness and which he needs to torture or kill. According to American intelligence intercepts, he issues instructions to his top associates to lure a noted critic of his regime, Jamal Khashoggi—a Virginia resident with three American-citizen children—to a third country so that he can be kidnapped there and taken back to Saudi Arabia.153 Under U.S. law (specifically, a 2015 directive to the National Security Act), the receipt of this intercept immediately obligates the Trump administration to warn Khashoggi that he is in danger, as the directive “requires the United States to give ‘non-U.S. persons’ notice of ‘impending threats of intentional killing, serious bodily injury, or kidnapping.’”154 Khashoggi is given no warning about traveling abroad, however, let alone about the danger of entering Saudi consulates abroad. Quartz will note, upon disclosure of these intelligence intercepts, that “the U.S. knew that Khashoggi was a target,” while the Washington Post will add that “intelligence about Saudi Arabia’s earlier plans to detain Khashoggi have raised questions about whether the Trump administration should have warned the journalist that he might be in danger.”155 (The Post references “earlier plans” because, as will be revealed in 2018, the Trump administration also acquired advance knowledge of MBS’s murderous alternative to his extraordinary