Guest Editorial by Grandpa0594
I’ve been digging into this whole situation with Qatar. First of all Qatar has been an ally of the United States since 1972. Their hosting of the Al Udeid air base during the gulf wars was essential for our success in Iraq. In fact, even today flights out of Al Udeid continue to assist our efforts across the Middle East.
And then there was this…
2005: Charles Kushner sentenced to 14 months in prison for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering.
2005: Following his father’s conviction, then 24 year-old Jared Kushner took over the management of his father’s real estate company
2007: In his first big deal as head of Kushner Companies, Jared purchased the office building at 666 Fifth Avenue, for a then-record price of $1.8 billion, most of it borrowed.
2008 – 2017: Almost from the very beginning 666 Fifth Avenue was bleeding money and putting the Kushner family fortune in jeopardy. In fact, Kushner was given until January 2019 to come up with a 1.2 billion dollar balloon payment or Kushner Properties would very likely have been lost. Despite drastic attempts to locate investors to bail him out, no one was willing to buy into a piece of property where revenues where less than half the mortgage payments.
April 2017: Enter Charles Kushner, who met with the Qatari finance minister at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City in an attempt to get Qatar to loan them one billion dollars to prop up 666 5th Avenue. They were turned down by the Qataris simply because it was such a terrible deal.
May 2017: Then, according to Vicky Ward, author of Kushner, Inc., Jared Kushner, as senior counsel to Donald Trump, got on a plane and flew to Doha, the Qatari capital, and he reamed the Qatari ruling family, the al-Thanis, for not doing the deal with his father. They began to feel that he was indirectly threatening their sovereignty. The next thing they know, when they show up to the summit in Riyadh, the Emir, the ruler of Qatar, arrives with an entourage, but his entourage is suddenly cut off from him, and not allowed into the summit at the same time by the Saudis, which he felt was a move to deliberately make him look weak. You have to remember during this summit, Jared and Ivanka go off for a cozy secret unmonitored dinner with [Saudi Crown Prince] MBS. Nobody knows what they talked about.
June 2017: Just ten days later, against the advice of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis, the United States supported the Saudi and UAE-led blockade of Qatar. On June 6, 2017 President Trump shockingly supported the blockade of a key US ally in the region, forcing many within his own Administration and the GOP to question the move publicly.
March 2018: A Canadian company, Brookfield Partners, who the Qatari Investment Authority owns a $1.8 billion or 9% stake in, bailed out Kushner Properties, with a 99-year lease agreement for 666 5th Avenue.
Shortly after this deal Trump chose to reestablish relations with Qatar saying their help was necessary given the on-going dealings with Iran. As a matter of fact, in April 2018, one month after “the deal”, Qatar joined Saudi Arabia in joint military exercises for the first time since the battle between the two countries began, and in August 2018, the United States announced plans to expand both U.S. airbases in Qatar.
For ten months between May 2017 through March 2018 when Jared Kushner was trying to get Qatar to bail his company out, Trump treated that country as our enemy. Once the deal was signed, they once again became our best of friends. One would have to be a fool, or as thick-as-a-brick to think all this was nothing more than just a coincidence. The Trump/Kushner Crime Family was willing to use the power of the United States to effectively shake down an ally of this country purely for personal gain. An ally that upset nearly every other country in the region and put a target on their back in order to support the United States for the past 37 years.