claims, as summarized by the Center for Investigative Reporting, that there was a “$10 million clerical error” and that he was never involved in the Rodeo Drive transaction at all.152 He thereafter flees the country under threat of litigation from creditors.153 In 2009, Trump sells for $9.5 million the property that Girgis had gifted to him—thereby making a profit of $9.5 million in under a year and with virtually no effort.
Just six months before the Korbatovs purchase the mansion on Rodeo Drive that will, in short order, move through Trump’s hands, the New York City businessman incorporates two companies in Egypt that thereafter will remain (to all outward appearances) inactive: “Trump Marks Egypt Corp.” and “Trump Marks Egypt LLC.”154 It would take access to Trump’s tax returns to see what if any business Trump subsequently does with or through these companies; Trump has declined, however, to release his returns. As noted by the Center for American Progress, Trump “served as president, director, and chairman of Trump Marks Egypt Corp. and was listed as the president and a member of Trump Marks Egypt LLC. But because of Trump’s continued insistence on hiding his tax returns and general evasiveness when it comes to his business dealings, it is unclear the purposes for which these companies were created and their future plans.”155
The year 2007 also sees Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, make the worst business decision of his career in real estate: the purchase of 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City for $1.8 billion, “the highest price [ever] paid at the time for a U.S. office tower,” according to the Washington Post—which Kushner, then running his family’s real estate firm, Kushner Companies, pays despite a general consensus in the New York City real estate market that the property is significantly overpriced.156 The deal requires Kushner to put down $500 million in cash, and the company borrows the remaining $1.3 billion of the property’s purchase price.157 According to The Intercept, there are, at the time of Kushner’s purchase of 666 Fifth Avenue, “clear signs that the price was too high and the debt was too much. The Kushners paid $1,200 a square foot, twice the previous per square foot record of $600, while records show that even with the building almost fully rented out, revenue only covered about two-thirds of the family’s debt costs.”158
After the 2008 financial crisis, 666 Fifth Avenue declines dramatically in value, “wiping out much of … [Kushner family’s] initial investment.”159 Jared Kushner will spend the next decade struggling to keep the property from bringing the family business into deep financial distress, and 666 Fifth Avenue will come to be described in the press as “an extreme risk” and “severely underwater.”160 Kushner’s desire to atone for the error of his 2007 purchase of the building will appear to drive his perspective on global geopolitics well into his term of service as a top adviser to Trump—a circumstance that in 2018 “raises questions about a possible conflict of interest” when he appears to support the punishment of the nation of Qatar via blockade just a month after Qatar’s ministry of finance refuses to bail out Kushner Companies from its Fifth Avenue investment (see chapter 7).161
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In the first months of the Obama administration, George Nader unsuccessfully tries to use his connections to the Syrian government to gain access to “senior members of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy team,” according to the New York Times. He is at the time already working with “former advisers to President George W. Bush” to advance various business deals; the details of these deals, including the names of their principals, are unknown.162 While there are many thorny geopolitical quagmires across the Middle East in the months leading up to Obama taking office that Nader may have believed, based on his history in the region, he could aid the incoming Obama administration with, as of late 2008 the Saudis’ or Emiratis’ desire for American nuclear technology—whether for civilian or military uranium enrichment—is not one of them, as long-standing U.S. policy prevents the transfer of such technology to the Middle East, and indeed opposes any encouragement of such Saudi or Emirati ambitions. Nor do the Saudis or Emiratis expect any U.S. administration, with or without Nader’s assistance, to act otherwise.
It is therefore unsurprising when, in the midst of the 2008 presidential campaign, the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, issues a public warning to nations across the Middle East at “a