JARED KUSHNER’S REAL-ESTATE FIRM SOUGHT MONEY DIRECTLY FROM QATAR GOVERNMENT WEEKS BEFORE BLOCKADE Clayton Swisher, Ryan Grim March 2 2018 https://theintercept.com/2018/03/02/jared-kushner-real-estate-qatar-blockade/ THE REAL ESTATE firm tied to the family of presidential son-in-law and top White House adviser Jared Kushner made a direct pitch to Qatar’s minister of finance in April 2017 in an attempt to secure investment in a critically distressed asset in the company’s portfolio, according to two sources. At the previously unreported meeting, Jared Kushner’s father Charles, who runs Kushner Companies, and Qatari Finance Minister Ali Sharif Al Emadi discussed financing for the Kushners’ signature 666 Fifth Avenue property in New York City. The 30-minute meeting, according to two sources in the financial industry who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the potential transaction, included aides to both parties, and was held at a suite at the St. Regis Hotel in New York. A follow-up meeting was held the next day in a glass-walled conference room at the Kushner property itself, though Al Emadi did not attend the second gathering in person. The failure to broker the deal would be followed only a month later by a Middle Eastern diplomatic row in which Jared Kushner provided critical support to Qatar’s neighbors. Led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a group of Middle Eastern countries, with Kushner’s backing, led a diplomatic assault that culminated in a blockade of Qatar. Kushner, according to reports at the time, subsequently undermined efforts by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to bring an end to the standoff. ... http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/06/secretary-of-state-abandons-diplomacy-berates-white-house.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/world/middleeast/rex-tillerson-calls-for-calm-in-middle-east-standoff-with-qatar.html
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crazy
LEAKED DOCUMENTS EXPOSE STUNNING PLAN TO WAGE FINANCIAL WAR ON QATAR — AND STEAL THE WORLD CUP Ryan Grim, Ben Walsh November 9 2017 https://theintercept.com/2017/11/09/uae-qatar-oitaba-rowland-banque-havilland-world-cup/ ... THE NEW PROJECT comes amid — and, if implemented, would escalate — a regional crisis that reached new heights in June, when the UAE and Saudi Arabia led a bloc of Gulf nations in blockading and cutting off diplomatic relations with Qatar. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently faulted the blockading countries for intransigence, but President Donald Trump has largely taken the opposite approach, emboldening Saudi Arabia and the Emirates at the expense of Qatar, which is home to one of the largest overseas U.S. military bases in the world. Tillerson traveled to the region on October 20 in the latest effort to defuse the crisis. According to a report in the American Conservative, Tillerson previously told people close to him that he believed Trump had undermined him at the behest of Otaiba, the UAE ambassador, working through Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner, to whom Otaiba is close. Both Kushner and Trump have reason to take sides with Otaiba in the dispute. The president has a Trump-branded golf course in Dubai and bragged at a press conference before his inauguration about a deal he was offered by a billionaire Emirati real estate developer. The president’s attempts to get his hands on Qatari money have been less successful. In 2010, Trump traveled to Qatar with his daughter Ivanka Trump in an attempt to secure two different sources of investment funding. He was unceremoniously rebuffed by both. {now if trump were the kind of guy who carries a grudge over being slighted, . . . } More recently, Kushner sought ...
There is a ray of sanity, it’s Mueller Time
JARED KUSHNER-QATAR REDUX: ROBERT MUELLER ENTERS THE FRAY Ryan Grim, Clayton Swisher February 21 2018, https://theintercept.com/2018/02/21/jared-kushner-mueller-qatar/ SPECIAL COUNSEL ROBERT Mueller is probing senior White House aide Jared Kushner’s attempts to secure financing for a distressed Manhattan property after the 2016 election, including pitches made to investment firms from China and Qatar, several news outlets reported this week. The attempt by Jared Kushner’s father Charles to secure funding from Qatar before and after Donald Trump’s election — up until the spring of 2017 — was first reported in July by The Intercept and later confirmed publicly by a Kushner Companies spokesperson. The property that is now tied up in Mueller’s probe, as well as linked to a diplomatic crisis in the Middle East, sits at 666 Fifth Ave., and was bought by Kushner at the height of the housing bubble for what was even then considered an inflated price of $1.8 billion. The building is now severely underwater ...
...Trump publicly took credit for the diplomatic attack on Qatar, and when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tried to walk it back, Trump doubled down, issuing an additional aggressive statement that Tillerson would later say he suspected was the work of Kushner and his regional ally, Yousef al-Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to the United States....