Tag: united arab emirates
Fox News Ignores Bombshell Reports Of $500M Emirati Payoff To Trump Family

Fox News Ignores Bombshell Reports Of $500M Emirati Payoff To Trump Family

Fox News has not covered bombshell reports revealing that an Emirati royal known as the “spy sheikh” secretly purchased a major stake in a company controlled by President Donald Trump’s family for $500 million just four days before Trump’s inauguration, according to a Media Matters review through Monday night.

The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times both reported over the weekend on what the Journal described as a deal “unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.” Such deals are unprecedented because they open up obvious channels for presidential corruption, and that seems to be what happened here.

The foreign government official, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, reportedly sought “access to tightly guarded artificial intelligence chips,” though the previous administration had blocked such access due to “fears that the sensitive technology could be diverted to China.” But after Tahnoon lined the Trump family pockets by purchasing 49 percent of their nascent cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial — which “had no products” at the time of the investment — the Trump administration “committed to give the tiny Gulf monarchy access to around 500,000 of the most advanced AI chips a year.”

But the president’s apparent participation in a quid pro scheme scheme in which U.S. national security interests were sold out in return for a sizable payment to his family has not been mentioned a single time on Fox News, the Journal’s corporate cousin. The pro-Trump network’s propagandists were instead fixated Monday night on criticism of Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdown by attendees at Sunday’s Grammy Awards.

You may recall that Fox's stars spent years claiming to be very disturbed by the foreign business dealings of members of former President Joe Biden’s family. Those dealings, which involved comically tiny amounts of money compared to the Tahnoon payoff and no compelling nexus to any policy decision by Biden or his administration, were the subject of endless coverage and commentary dating back to before Biden launched his 2020 presidential campaign, and deemed so serious as to require Biden’s impeachment.

Fox host Sean Hannity alone devoted hundreds of segments to the president’s son Hunter in 2023 as he argued that the president had been “very credibly accused of public corruption on a scale this country has never seen before.”

But after the right-wing propaganda machine helped Trump back into office, he promptly began cashing in. And in turn, we've seen Fox stars seem to have developed a strange new respect for obvious malfeasance.

Trump's Multi-Billion Dollar Emirates Payoff Dwarfs Biden 'Scandal'

Trump's Multi-Billion Dollar Emirates Payoff Dwarfs Biden 'Scandal'

President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement are constantly pushing boundaries and transgressing norms of behavior and discourse. That’s not to say, however, that they find such rules useless: Trump’s media propagandists aggressively call out infractions by his opponents even when he and his allies break those same strictures on a far more expansive scale.

To wit, The New York Times on Monday published an investigation providing new details into “two multibillion-dollar deals” which revolve around Steve Witkoff, simultaneously Trump’s Middle East envoy and his business partner, and Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the royal family of the United Arab Emirates. The paper reported of the deals: “One involved a crypto company founded by the Witkoff and the Trump families that benefited both financially. The other involved a sale of valuable computer chips that benefited the Emirates economically.”

According to the Times, “while there is no evidence that one deal was explicitly offered in return for the other, the confluence of the two agreements is itself extraordinary.” The Times further reported:
In May, Mr. Witkoff’s son Zach announced the first of the deals at a conference in Dubai. One of Sheikh Tahnoon’s investment firms would deposit $2 billion into World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency start-up founded by the Witkoffs and Trumps.
Two weeks later, the White House agreed to allow the U.A.E. access to hundreds of thousands of the world’s most advanced and scarce computer chips, a crucial tool in the high-stakes race to dominate artificial intelligence. Many of the chips would go to G42, a sprawling technology firm controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon, despite national security concerns that the chips could be shared with China.

The first instantly propelled World Liberty into one of the world’s most prominent crypto companies, giving it a revenue stream that could be worth tens of millions of dollars annually.
The second is still pending, with final details under discussion in the White House. But it is poised to be a monumental victory for the Emirates. The Trump administration agreed to exponentially increase the U.A.E.’s access to one of the most important inventions in modern history.

For a sense of the scale of this alleged corruption, it’s worth comparing it to the various allegations that Fox News propagandists like Sean Hannity and Republican politicians like House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) made during former President Joe Biden’s term as part of their effort to manufacture an impeachable offense from the business dealings of his family members, primarily his son, Hunter.

The $2 billion deposit from the UAE sheikh's investment firm into the crypto company controlled by Trump, his family, and the family of his Middle East envoy, is:

  • 100 times the size of the $20 million Trumpists typically claimed that “the Bidens” or “the Biden family” received from foreign sources. Even that $20 million figure is a fabrication — according to a Washington Post review, two-thirds of the money actually went to Hunter Biden business partners who were not members of the family; only $7.5 million was collected by Biden family members, most of it by Hunter Biden, and none by Joe Biden.
  • 400 times the size of the $5 million “bribe” they claimed President Biden received from a Ukrainian oligarch whose company employed Hunter. The Justice Department subsequently alleged that the FBI informant behind that charge had fabricated his story; the informant pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and a judge sentenced him to six years in prison.
  • 8,333 times the size of the $240,000 President Biden received from his brother Jim, which was cited as evidence of the president receiving laundered money. In fact, this appeared to be Jim Biden repaying a loan Joe Biden had made to him.
  • 483,092 times the size of the $4,140 President Biden received from one of his son’s companies, cited by Comer as evidence that “Joe Biden knew & benefitted from his family's business schemes.” In reality, Joe Biden bought a truck for his son’s use at a time when Hunter was battling drug addiction, and Owasco PC, Hunter Biden’s law firm, subsequently made three monthly payments of $1,380 to repay Joe Biden’s initial payments on the vehicle.

It goes without saying that the volume of coverage right-wing media outlets give to these shady deals won’t be proportionate — or even inversely proportionate — to what they provided for those Biden stories. Indeed, when House Democrats issued a report last year showing that China directed millions of dollars straight to Donald Trump’s businesses during Trump’s first term, Hannity promptly excused him and moved on.

Perhaps they’d all care if there were an email in which Witkoff referred to the president as the “big guy.” But probably not.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Trump Pal Got Emirati Bonanza While Lobbying White House

Trump Pal Got Emirati Bonanza While Lobbying White House

Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a billionaire fundraiser and longtime friend of former President Trump, sought hundreds of millions of dollars in investments from the United Arab Emirates for an investment fund that would reinforce the former president’s agenda and benefit from his administration’s policies, federal prosecutors said in a Tuesday court filing.

The filing was a superseding indictment that levied additional charges on Barrack for lying to federal investigators, lobbying the Trump administration on behalf of the UAE, and conspiring with Emiratis to influence the Trump campaign.

Federal prosecutors also said that Barrack’s investment management firm, Colony Capital — which, per NBC News, wasn’t named in the filing — received a sudden injection of $374 million in capital commitments from two UAE wealth funds after not receiving any funds from the country in seven years prior, from 2009 to 2016.

In a 55-page superseding indictment, which replaced the original 46-page court filing, the Justice Department closely details how although the pro-Trump fund’s “primary purpose” was to earn profits, it quickly adopted “a secondary mandate to garner political credibility for its contributions to the policies” of the Trump administration, federal prosecutors said in the filing, quoting what a top Trump aide wrote in a “U.A.E Fund” plan in the weeks after the 2020 election, according to the New York Times.

The Times also reported that the plan claimed the fund would make money by “sourcing, financing, operationally improving and harvesting assets” in industries that would “benefit the most” from the Trump administration. Federal prosecutors cited the fund as evidence that Barrack wanted to profit from his illegal lobbying of Trump and his circle on behalf of Emiratis.

The Justice Department also accused Barrack of making “multiple false statements” when he lied to the FBI in a 2019 interview with the bureau. The amended indictment charged Barrack for allegedly lying he had one phone when he, in fact, had a secret line solely dedicated to his communication with the Emiratis. Barrack was also accused of lying when he denied engineering phone calls between then-President-Elect Trump and two Emiratis officials in 2016.

Last year, the Justice Department accused Barrack and two co-conspirators, Mathew Grimes and Rashid Al-Malik, of “acting and conspiring to act as agents of the UAE” from April 2016 to April 2018.

“The defendants repeatedly capitalized on Barrack’s friendships and access to a candidate who was eventually elected President, high-ranking campaign and government officials, and the American media to advance the policy goals of a foreign government without disclosing their true allegiances,” said the Department of Justice in a statement.

The indictment also cited April 2017 email and text message communications investigators obtained from the suspects, which stated Barrack could meet with the Emirati ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the Abu Dhabi crown prince at the time.

Although there is no evidence that the meeting ever took place, the indictment stated that Barrack’s company, now known as DigitalBridge Group, received multi-million dollar capital investments in the following months. Internal company records attributed the massive investment to “Barrack magic,” the New York Times said.

According to a 2019 congressional oversight committee report, Barrack sent the Emiratis a copy of a Trump campaign speech about Energy he had drafted — and permitted Emiratis to recommend amends to — that praised Shiekh by name, the New York Times reported.

“They loved it so much! This is great,” responded co-conspirator Malik, who is still at large outside the United States. The speech also contained mild language favorable to the Emiratis: a pledge to "work with our Gulf allies.”

The Emirati meddling increased in scale after that, according to the indictment. In the weeks leading up to the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, Barrack worked with Paul Manafort, former President Donald Trump’s campaign chairman, to water down the GOP platform at the Emiratis' behest.

“Can be much more expansive than what we did in the speech,” Manafort wrote Barrack in an email, “based on what you hear from your friends,” referring to the Emiratis.

In the indictment, federal prosecutors also alleged that Barrack and several Emirati officials worked together to arrange a phone call Trump had with Sheikh Mohammed during the transition in November 2016. “It’s done, great call,” co-conspirator Malik wrote in thanks to Barrack’s aide.

Barrack pleaded not guilty to the original counts filed last year and is awaiting trial, and his representative declined to comment on the superseding indictment. A spokesperson for Trump also ignored requests for comment.

Tom Barrack

Feds Indict And Arrest Trump Pal Tom Barrack For Foreign Agent Violations

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Federal law enforcement authorities have arrested a top Trump friend and ally, Tom Barrack.

Barrack served as then-President Donald Trump's chairman of his 2017 inaugural fund. The charges are not believed to be related to that fund.

"Few people are closer to Trump than Barrack, his friend for three decades," an October, 2017 Washington Post article said of Barrack.

"Barrack as Barrack helped rescue Trump's real estate empire years ago. He was the top fundraiser for Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. He turned down a Cabinet offer, preferring to be an outside adviser, although his name is still mentioned as a potential White House chief of staff should Trump decide to choose a new one. Above all, Barrack has remained unfailingly loyal to Trump, whom he sees as a shrewd politician."

UPDATE:

NBC's Tom Winter reports charges include acting as an "agent" of a foreign government, "influencing the foreign policy positions of the Trump campaign in 2016" and lying to the FBI:

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