A Fresh, Foul Aroma Surrounds the Ties Between Jared Kushner, Donald Trump, and MBS

By Charles P. Pierce, Esquire

As I may have mentioned once around the shebeen, I used to write for a short-lived but merry sports publication called The National. Our correspondents were far-flung, our publisher lived in Mexico, but our actual headquarters was in Manhattan, across the street from St. Patrick's Cathedral and up the block from 21, in a place called the Tishman Building. Its official mailing address was 666 Fifth Avenue and our company ID's did not include the words, "The National," but they were marked with a big 666 across the top, which should have told us all something. After our newspaper folded in 1991, I never gave 666 another thought. When Jared Kushner's company made the galaxy-brained genius move of buying it for a debt-laded $1.8 billion in 2007, just as the real estate market was preparing to go off the cliff, dragging the world economy behind it, I didn't know anything about it. But then, Kushner's father-in-law ran for president. That, I noticed.

Kushner approached the Qataris for funding in 2016, but the government's sovereign wealth fund declined to get involved. Early in the former president's administration, Kushner got in contact with Mohammad bin Salman, the butcher prince of Saudi Arabia. By the spring of 2017, the Kushners were back negotiating with the Qataris again. In May of that year, while being part of the former president's traveling party to Saudi Arabia, Kushner [and Steve Bannon] met secretly with officials from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two countries planning to blockade Qatar. In June, the blockade went into effect. And the Qataris, who did not arrive on turnip trucks, smelled a rat. From NBC News:

Some top Qatari government officials believe the White House's position on the blockade may have been a form of retaliation driven by Kushner who was sour about the failed deal, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. Saudi Arabia and UAE have long had a rivalry with Qatar. The White House, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have said the blockade against Qatar is in retaliation for their government’s support for terrorism.

Several months of rancid intrigue ensued. But, lo and behold, in August of 2018, Brookfield Property Partners, a firm in which the Qatar Investment Authority had a 9% stake, bailed out 666 Fifth Avenue for the Kushners. It's a real estate miracle! The QIA denied any involvement in the decision at the time.

All of this came back to me this weekend when the Washington Post went long on the refreshed and foul aroma of the relationship between Jared Kushner, his father-in-law, and Saudi Arabia, particularly as regards MBS.

The day after leaving the White House, Kushner created a company that he transformed months later into a private equity firm with $2 billion from a sovereign wealth fund chaired by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Kushner’s firm structured those funds in such a way that it did not have to disclose the source, according to previously unreported details of Securities and Exchange Commission forms reviewed by The Washington Post. His business used a commonly employed strategy that allows many equity firms to avoid transparency about funding sources, experts said. A year after his presidency, Trump’s golf courses began hosting tournaments for the Saudi fund-backed LIV Golf. Separately, the former president’s family company, the Trump Organization, secured an agreement with a Saudi real estate company that plans to build a Trump hotel as part of a $4 billion golf resort in Oman.

If that wasn't rancid enough...

New details about their relationship have emerged in recently published memoirs, as well as accounts in congressional testimony and interviews by The Post with former senior White House officials...They also underscore the crucial nature of Trump’s admission that he “saved” Mohammed in the wake of the CIA’s finding that the crown prince ordered the killing or capture of Post contributing opinion columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

The next month, the CIA concluded that Mohammed had “approved an operation” to kill or capture Khashoggi, which the prince denied. Mohammed’s years-long effort to rise to power was in grave danger. But, as Trump later put it in a recorded interview, “I saved his ass,” according to “The Trump Tapes” by Post associate editor Bob Woodward. Trump refused to endorse the CIA’s conclusion, equivocated about Mohammed’s involvement, opposed releasing of the report and vetoed a congressional bill to block arms sales to the kingdom...It was a pivotal moment that halted efforts to isolate Mohammed, who is known as MBS, in Congress and around the world. “Without the absolute protection of Trump and Kushner, MBS would definitely have fallen,” said Abdullah Alaoudh, the director for the Gulf at Democracy for the Arab World Now [DAWN], a group founded by Khashoggi.

There's nobody involved in this story who isn't a monster. But since, apparently, it's a full-time job protecting us from Hunter Biden's laptop, we're on our own.