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Arabia
Report: UAE Paid Businessman to Spy on Trump Admin
2019-06-12
[AnNahar] A United Arab Emirates businessman linked to a probe of illegal donations to Donald Trump
...Perhaps no man has ever had as much fun being president of the US...
's political campaign was paid by his country's intelligence agency to spy on the US president's administration, The Intercept reported Monday.

Rashid al-Malik received tens of thousands of dollars a month for gleaning information on Trump administration policy toward the Middle East in 2017, the website said, citing a former US official and documents.

He reported back to the UAE's National Intelligence Service on topics of interest to the oil-producing Gulf state -- including US efforts to mediate a Gulf feud involving Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
-- as well as meetings between US officials and Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
's powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
...Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia as of 2016....
, The Intercept said.

Late last year, The New York Times

...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...

and Wall Street Journal reported that US federal prosecutors were investigating whether foreigners illegally funneled donations to Trump's inaugural committee and a pro-Trump fundraising super PAC.

Al-Malik, chairman of the investment firm Hayah Holdings, was interviewed by special counsel Robert Muller's office as part of the probe, according to the New York Times.

The Times cited people familiar with the inquiry as saying it focused on whether people from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates used straw donors to make contributions in the hope of buying influence over US policy.
Given President Trump’s decisions around fracking, it seems a reasonable assumption that they did not succeed...
The report was denied by al-Malik's lawyer, who told The Intercept that his client was "not an intelligence operative."

"He has never been 'tasked' to deliver information about the inner workings of the Trump administration," Coffield wrote in an email to the website.

He has, however, "on numerous occasions, discussed various business ideas for UAE projects in the US," the lawyer was quoted as saying.
And have any of them come to fruition?
The Intercept report came after the Justice Department last week said George Nader, a well-connected Middle East fixer for the Trump campaign, was arrested for possessing child pornography.

Nader was a witness in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian election meddling.
Posted by:trailing wife

#1  Enterprising man, Rashid. Making a fast buckDirham like that. At no cost to America it seems.
Posted by: Dron66046   2019-06-12 02:45  

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