Princes and Thieves | Matthew Cole

[00:00:00] Lock your doors, close the blinds, change your passwords. This is Secrets and Spies. Secrets and Spies is a podcast that dives into the world of espionage, terrorism, geopolitics, and intrigue. This episode is presented by Matt Fulton and produced by Chris Carr.

[00:00:30] Hello everyone and welcome back to Secrets and Spies. In December 2016, the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates skipped a farewell lunch with President Obama. He flew to New York instead. to meet Jared Kushner, son-in-law and top advisor to Donald Trump, who was then President-elect. Investigative journalist Matthew Cole says that meeting wants the start of a much longer and mutually fruitful relationship. His new book is Princes and Thieves, Jared Kushner and Mohammed bin Zayed's

[00:00:59] secret plot to remake the Middle East. It's built on five years of reporting and more than 50 sources. Cole reports on a cunning Emirati influence campaign, a blockade of Qatar that nearly sparked a war, a war, and Dutch intelligence officers who, he says, watch part of it play out on Kushner's own iPhone. Kushner denies the book's allegations in full. I talked with Matthew about how the UAE worked its

[00:01:24] way into the Trump White House, who was watching, and where this relationship stands now, with Kushner back in the driver's seat of American foreign policy. As always, thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Take care. The opinions expressed by guests on Secrets and Spies do not necessarily represent those of the producers and sponsors of this podcast.

[00:01:59] Matthew Cole, welcome to Secrets and Spies. It's great to have you with us. Thank you for having me, Matt. Matthew So you were a national security reporter at The Intercept and your last book, Code Over Country, investigated alleged crimes and abusive culture at SEAL Team 6. You write the Cole report on Substack. Your latest book, though, is an absolute blockbuster on Jared Kushner and his

[00:02:24] dealings with Gulf monarchies while steering US policy in the region. How did this story find you? I was reporting on a failed mercenary operation in Libya that had took place in 2019 involving Blackwater

[00:02:42] founder Eric Prince. And I got a call from a source detailing, it was kind of like a mystery in the source and I have to be careful about not revealing too much about the circumstances, but I was essentially asked a question, can you help me understand some bank transfers? And, you know, I'm okay, sure. But

[00:03:11] and then the source sort of peeled the layers back a little bit and was like, look, these bank transfers come out of a query from the Dutch intelligence service, which hacked Jared Kushner's phone starting in 2017, 2018 and monitored his phone for about two years. And during that time, watched Kushner access a bank account in the UAE.

[00:03:40] And there were all sorts of oddities about the transfers, including the fact that the money going into the account was from Azerbaijan, a Central Asian country and on the Caspian Sea. And the Dutch mystery was sort of what's this about? And the money going out of the account, so money going, so hundreds of millions of dollars into an account in the UAE that Kushner was accessing

[00:04:06] on his phone and then going out, but not going to one of his personal accounts. It wasn't as if he was taking money from the UAE bank account and then putting it in, you know, his Chase checking account. It was going to, and then that was where the transfers came in. One of the first transfers, if not the first transfer went to Eric Prince for $20 million. And the second transfer went to the

[00:04:33] Libyan warlord that the UAE was supporting and that Prince had tried to help that I was investigating, Khalifa Haftar. That was a $80 or $85 million transfer and so on and so forth. And so what I was getting was something odd that didn't initially seem to make any sense at all. And I didn't cover

[00:04:57] Kushner and I wasn't covering the Trump administration, the Trump White House. But obviously I paid attention to foreign policy and, um, and then, you know, so initially my sources were sort of like canvas sources and they were like, you know, sort of crickets. Um, but then I ended up, uh, meeting someone and in our conversations about the UAE and about Kushner, I decided to just ask a question, which was, do you know anything

[00:05:25] about, um, like, uh, uh, financial transactions? And the answer was yes. And, and, and this source sort of revealed the much bigger picture, um, about the bank account and these transactions without having any knowledge or awareness of the Dutch government breaking into Jared Kushner's phone. And so, and that was in, uh, late 2020. So actually, um, Donald Trump was still in the White House

[00:05:53] when I, uh, when this all happened and that was sort of the thread that I pulled on. And you know, it, it, it, uh, it came within the context of understanding this war, the civil war in Libya and outside support for a would be dictator to overthrow the government there. And, and then it, it grew. So that's sort

[00:06:18] of how it started. Yeah. Thank you for that. And one thing for listeners up front, Jared Kushner denies the allegations in this book entirely. And Matthew, you're clear about that in the book yourself. Uh, yes. And I, and I want to say to your, uh, audience that, uh, you know, in all of these interviews that I'm doing about the book, I like to, and I think it's fair, uh, both in, uh, fairness and transparency to say that Kushner denies emphatically and unequivocally that he had any,

[00:06:47] uh, awareness or agreement with any foreign governments about any bank accounts, denies that any bank accounts existed, um, and points out that everything that he did while he was in the White House was done, um, under the direction and with the permission of the president of the United States. That being said, I stand behind my reporting a hundred percent, and I'm quite confident that in time, and it will take some time, uh, what will emerge is that what the reporting

[00:07:16] of my book is probably just the tip of the iceberg. It's probably a small percentage of what, uh, went on. Um, and you know, I'm, I appreciate you having me on because one of the things I'm trying to do is I want, uh, people to read the book for themselves and make a determination on their own as to which version of events they think is more credible. I'm confident that they'll, that my version is probably more credible. Yeah, I'm, I'm confident as well that what's in this book will be something that Americans

[00:07:44] will be hearing about for the next few years for sure. So the book's subtitle names two men, first being Jared Kushner, of course, but I'd argue that maybe the real protagonist or another second protagonist is the other guy in the subtitle, Muhammad bin Zayed or MBZ as he's often called. For listeners who know the UAE mainly as Dubai and an airline, who is he and what does he want?

[00:08:08] He is, uh, perhaps, you know, one of the world's wealthiest and most consequential, uh, government rulers, government heads, who has, uh, used his money in part to keep himself below the radar so that most people have no idea who he is and what he's done and what he's been doing. Muhammad bin Zayed is the,

[00:08:34] uh, ruling, you know, he, his title is president, but there's no election. He is the ruler of his tiny country. Um, and he has been, and his country have been stalwart allies of the U S since essentially since its founding, um, in 1971. Um, it's, he's probably sits on around about a trillion dollars

[00:08:56] of personal wealth that's separate from the upwards of, um, five trillion dollars of national wealth that is split between his family and, um, sort of, uh, ruling families and clans that, that are sit on top, um, very small country. Um, and he has, uh, operated as a major player. They basically,

[00:09:23] um, the UAE turned its oil wealth into, um, they were very savvy, um, investors who diversified their economy early on. They've been extraordinarily successful in that. Um, and that's where they've, how they become so wealthy, but they're a tiny little country with, um, by a lot of us arms. Um, and they have their own military, but it's a small country and they're not very good at it. And so what they've done is they've outsourced, uh, a lot of their, uh, state apparatus

[00:09:53] and functioning. And MBZ is a man who sees Iran and political Islam as his two central, uh, threats, which is why when Trump won the presidency in 2017, uh, uh, talking about coming into the, to the White House to rip it, to want to rip up the Obama administration's nuclear deal with, uh,

[00:10:17] Iran. He, it was music to MBZ's ears. Um, and he found in Kushner sort of common cause with a worldview of remaking the Middle East. Uh, MBZ wants to dominate his region full stop. And he wanted to do it with the shared defense with Israel, who he's, uh, long admired, um, and with the support and backing of the United States. And so he comes in to the scene, um, offering to normalize,

[00:10:46] secretly offering to normalize relations with Israel, um, and to help, uh, bankroll Trump's foreign policy efforts in the Middle East to try to reshape the map and, and change the dynamic. And, you know, and I think all, um, governments and leaders, uh, operate with the notion that in their own best interest, um, in their own best national interest in, you know, monarchies and, and autocracies,

[00:11:15] the difference between a personal interest and national interest is, can be nil. And I think that's, that's the case with MBZ and the UAE. Um, but what people have missed, what the public has not understood is that he, his vision of the world is militant and violent. Um, and he will, uh, happily arm

[00:11:38] factions in conflicts, um, for the sake of creating chaos and then take advantage of the chaos that comes usually in the form of, um, natural resources and geopolitical control, mostly in, in Africa and elsewhere in the Middle East. And so he's, you know, I would say just the biggest player in the Middle East, um, and, and certainly the most consequential Arab leader, um, despite having,

[00:12:08] you know, only a million and a half natural born, uh, Emirati citizens. Um, and, uh, you know, I mean, they have a real military, but it's not one that could work and function, you know, during the war in Iran, for instance, they, they used, uh, Israel, Israel's iron dome to help protect them. And they need U S help and they can't function on their own. Um, and so, uh, there he's just runs, um,

[00:12:34] a really, uh, consequential foreign policy and policy that most Americans really have no understanding about. You trace his approach back to the Gulf war when he arranged a $4 billion direct contribution to the U S treasury. What did you learn from that about how Washington works? Well, I think the, the, it's obvious, right? I mean, it's transactional and, and what they have, what the UAE has is money

[00:13:00] and what America needs often in its government sometimes. And, and, uh, is money and to pay for, for defense and for, for its military affairs. And so, um, you know, in the, in the case of the Gulf war, the money was mostly symbolic. Um, I mean, 4 billion was a lot, certainly was more, it was more money worth more money in 1991 than it is today. So it's not nothing, but, but it's, it's the symbolism

[00:13:26] of it, which was that here was this tiny, uh, Gulf Arab state that was willing to put money literally in the U S treasury to help it fight a war nearby because, uh, you know, Kuwait was a proxy or stand in for MBZ in terms of what he thought, you know, a state like Iran or Iraq could do to the UAE, which is if they wanted to, they could have just rolled tanks in and gotten rid of the Royal family. And there was nothing, uh, MBZ or his father who was the ruler at the time could have

[00:13:54] done about it. Um, so I think it demonstrates and it shows us, and by the way, there was the Saudi Arabia was no different, right? I mean, it was about how it rewarded, um, Washington with the one thing it had, which is capital. I mean, money, that's it. You know, and that's a, all of this is a pretty simple story. I mean, I almost called the book, no one can say no, because that's what it feels like whenever you're digging into, um, people from the West, former government officials,

[00:14:23] current government officials and their relationship with the UAE, there's always money involved. There's always some dangle of a business investment. There's it's, it just, it's the same story over and over again. And the, the part that is frustrating and I think, you know, significant for, uh, in terms of the journalism is exposing it because it's there, that money has

[00:14:46] bought in Washington, enormous influence and good press coverage by and large. And, um, you know, they've spent so much money on think tanks in Washington that it's difficult to get, I, you know, I found this in the reporting. It's difficult to get, um, policy experts, former government officials who are going to go back into government to say a bad word about the UAE because their checks from their, at their institutions that pay their bills are coming largely, I mean, not only from the UAE,

[00:15:16] but especially from the UAE. They launder policy advice and ideas through these think tanks, basically. Yes, absolutely. And it's, and it's, you know, talk about the, the, the effect and the, the power of AIPAC and, and the messaging that the Israeli, uh, lobby has in the U S the Emiratis has modeled their approach after AIPAC and the Israelis. They, the, the MBZ used to give out,

[00:15:41] um, the book startup nation, both to his aides and to people coming in to visit him in Abu Dhabi, um, because he admired what the Israelis had accomplished, um, in a short period of time, uh, since the founding of the state. And so he, one huge distinction between MBZ and, and, and most other Gulf Arab leaders is, is that he does not hide his, uh, admiration for Israel,

[00:16:08] the state of Israel. And I say that with no, uh, you know, I don't, I don't feel one way or another that those are just facts and that's how he sees it. And so he's grafted himself onto the Israel. And, you know, right now, uh, the UAE is mad at the Trump administration, not for having gone to war with Iran, but for having not finished the job. Right. Exactly. So in December, 2016,

[00:16:34] you're right at that. MBZ cancels a farewell lunch with president Obama without explanation, flies to New York and meets Kushner at the four seasons. Walk us through that meeting and why the story starts there. Well, it starts there because it is the sort of first indicator of sort of break in protocols and in norms, which is, you know, historically and typically the incoming administration

[00:17:00] does not take meetings or have discussions with foreign governments other than congratulatory calls, um, while a president, the outgoing president is still in office. Right. And the Trump administration, uh, the incoming Trump administration didn't give a damn about, uh, protocols or how business was done

[00:17:22] previously. And the UAE was so thirsty for a new policy and a new relationship with the white house that MBZ decides to screw Obama and go see this kid who is running, was going to be running foreign policy for his father-in-law in the next administration and doesn't tell the Obama team

[00:17:49] that he's coming. And so they find out only when the manifest is, is transmitted to the state department and they see that they've got a, you know, head of state who's coming in. Um, and so they knew about it, but it was, it was more just the sort of rudeness of it. But again, it was also MBZ is so thirsty. And the reason why it's important is because here you have, I think it's the setting, uh, you know, it was in a, the penthouse, which is a floor through, uh, uh, space at the top of, um, the four seasons,

[00:18:18] uh, in Manhattan. It's a $52,000 a night suite, um, you know, rented out by one of the world's, literally one of the world's wealthiest men, um, to host and sort of get to know Kushner, um, uh, as they spend to start this new relationship. And in the meeting, what they discuss is broadly, it's not, you know, it's not as if a conspiracy forms, uh, or they plot out a set of plans,

[00:18:48] but it was a, a feeling of each other, two sides feeling each other out. And what MBZ wanted to hear and see was how much Trump's campaign rhetoric he meant. Now that some of that included, uh, his desire to rip up the Iranian nuclear deal with, which MBZ also wanted to do and how much, uh, he wanted to eradicate the last remnants of the Arab spring and, and go after ISIS,

[00:19:13] which MBZ also wanted to do, but also whether or not, you know, the notion that, uh, the sort of Muslim ban, which would come shortly after, you know, almost immediately after Trump took office, what that was about and some of the rhetoric that he had used to sort of racist rhetoric that Trump had, had used on the campaign, whether that was real or not. And so they're, they're feeling each other out. And one of the central things that happens is, is that MBZ lets Kushner know that,

[00:19:42] uh, he is willing to work with and potentially, uh, recognize diplomatically Israel. And, you know, your audience has to remember that in 2017, Kushner's coming in, he has no experience in the Middle East. He has no foreign policy experience. He has no diplomatic experience. He has no government experience. His experience is limited to, uh, being the face of his father's

[00:20:11] business when they are repairing its image after his father has gotten out of prison for felonies. Right. And so Kushner is underqualified, unqualified, and being put into the most consequential foreign policy job, um, in a new administration because he's the son-in-law and, uh, his, you know, he's got

[00:20:36] a real estate background and he has a love, a personal connection to Israel and a family connection to Benjamin Netanyahu. Yeah. So when he hears this from MBZ, it's music to his ears. And so that's sort of the beginning of how these guys come together where they have, they realize they've got similar aims and goals, at least initially. And, and that's where the relationship begins. And that's, that is why I started there. Let's take a break and we'll be right back.

[00:21:19] You also talk a lot about the figures who sort of brought the UAE into the new Trump team's orbit. So in August, 2016, while the campaign is still underway, two things happen on the same day. And that's it. Trump Tower, Don Jr. meets George Nader, a Lebanese American advisor to MBZ, and Eric Prince of Blackwater infamy and Joel Zimmel, an Israeli social media figure pitching an

[00:21:44] online influence campaign for Trump. Meanwhile, in Morocco, Tom Barak, Trump's longtime friend, future chair of his inaugural committee, is aboard a yacht with Sheikh Tafnun, NBC's brother and the UAE's national security advisor. Do you see those as like coordinated efforts or were the Emiratis spreading their bets there? Well, the Emiratis were spreading their bets and they were coordinated only

[00:22:10] from the, only from the standpoint that there were part of the same effort by the UAE to one, interfere with the 2016 election. And we know that because George Nader is later pleads guilty to laundering MBZ's money into Hillary Clinton's campaign when they thought that Hillary Clinton was going to be the likely winner. And the whole idea was, is whoever was going to get into the, become the next president they wanted to have influence on, right? So you have a,

[00:22:39] a, uh, intelligence and, you know, an influence and intelligence operation that the UAE is running into a ally, um, a democracy. And that I think is the, is the takeaway, right? Is that Nader and Barrack are just the, the means in which MBZ is dangling money. Again, same story, dangling money

[00:23:04] to get into the ear of whoever's going to be the president, the next president and to get what they want, which get what he wants, which is to establish his dominance in the region to, uh, solidify his control. And it's just, you know, the, the, the story, you know, I, in some ways it's just like so simple, right? The UAE has one thing, they've got money and everyone around them and underneath them

[00:23:30] are all looking for it in one way or another. And it's just a question of what do they have to do to get it? Nader worked for MBZ and MBS. And so he's a, he's there for an agent, um, with a very dark and, and, and ugly past that MBZ looks past, uh, or, you know, uses, I don't know, we don't fully know. And Tom Barrack, who's one of the president's closest friends, who was a debtor, uh, on some of

[00:23:57] Kushner's family debt on the 666 Fifth Avenue, um, is got the president's ear, the president, uh, the nominees, Republican nominees ear, and he's looking for investment in his, in his investment fund. And, you know, as a reporter, one of the ways that, one of the ways that I sort of came into this story was I was reporting on what later came out about what the UAE was doing. So from a, from a,

[00:24:26] from, as a journalist, what I could see was the UAE was doing something bad against U S democracy and the U S government at the time, you know, this was their, the way they conduct espionage and intelligence operation. They don't have spies the way we have spies. They use their money to co-opt people and to buy their influence. And this was the means in which they were doing it. And I had some

[00:24:52] idea that it had been going on, uh, because the person who had been recruiting and handling Tom Barrack for the Emiratis was this undeclared, he was a spy, but he wasn't a spy, you know, who had gone to an intelligence school. He was just owned. He was an Emirati citizen that they owned. Rashid Amalik. Amalik, right. Who would later be charged. And he was sent to the U S to, to study, uh, at, do business school and to conduct real estate deals, but the real estate deals weren't real.

[00:25:22] They were meant to get him, uh, involved in, you know, sort of the upper echelons of American, uh, the real estate business. And later he comes through that, he comes into contact with Barrack and they use this kid Al Malik as a hook to get Barrack on the line. So that's the context. And, and that's, and so it's sort of like they tried different things. And the first two

[00:25:48] are Nader and Barrack until they eventually make their way to Kushner. And that's what, that's where the book and Kushner sort of come in, which is, um, they're all, NBC is looking for marks. That's what he's doing. He's looking for marks in all of these countries. Um, and he's going to use his money in whichever way he can overtly and covertly. So a week before Trump's inauguration, MBZ hosts a gathering in the Seychelles,

[00:26:16] Zarek Prince, George Nader and Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund. What was MBZ trying to build there? Uh, secret army. I mean, he, he was, this was his Camp David. And, um, one of the misnomers or misunderstandings about the Seychelles meeting people, your, your audience might remember the Seychelles meeting was, was a, was a blip in the Mueller investigation because it came out early

[00:26:41] on, um, that Prince had had this back channel meeting with Dmitriev. And so it was seen as this secret messaging and signaling between Trump and Putin after in the conspiracy theory that, uh, Trump had delivered, you know, Putin had delivered the, the election for, for Trump. And now he was coming in and this was going to be payback. And that was never really right. What it really was,

[00:27:07] was this was the UAE and MBZ's camp David. And as part of their plans of redrawing the maps in the Middle East and going after, uh, trying to resolve the conflicts in Syria, in Yemen, in Libya, in Somalia, he was looking, he went back to a person he knew who was Eric Prince, who was pitching a, uh, foreign

[00:27:29] mercenary army. And the Russia meeting was as an aside, Hey, MBZ is saying, let's see if we can get Trump and Russia to find common ground on Syria so that we can all jointly go after Iran. That was basically what the, that was. And, uh, Prince is a hustler. He oversold his connection to, uh, uh,

[00:27:57] Trump, the incoming administration and Nader also a hustler, uh, oversold that same relationship to, uh, Kirill Dmitriev who was Putin's emissary. And that, and we know from, from the Mueller investigation that the very short meeting when it was over, Dmitriev was really upset with Nader for having introduced him to Prince because Prince, uh, had no strategic position. He had no understanding of

[00:28:25] what was going on. Prince had been there as a hustler trying to tell him, Hey, Libya is mine. I'm going to be sending mercenaries there. Let's make sure that we're not, uh, my mercenaries are not shooting your Russian mercenaries as we're all trying to help this guy Khalifa Haftar overthrow the government in, in Tripoli. That was what it was really about. And so, you know, part of what I, the reporting of the book tries to do is to recast and reshape an understanding of what was going on

[00:28:54] at the beginning of the Trump administration. Yes. Russia had interfered in the U S election. No, it was not, you know, the, the conspiracy that, you know, the Mueller investigation was, was based on all the, a legitimate investigation, but did not show the kind of collusion and conspiracy that, you know, the, the, the left and the media had, had sort of hoped was there. But while that was

[00:29:20] happening, the Emiratis walked right in through the front door of American democracy. But the difference between the UAE and the Russia is the UAE is a supposed ally that houses U S troops and forces. Um, and so that's the, the perniciousness here. I mean, that's why what Kushner would later organize with, with MBZ is so dangerous and why it needs to be fully more fully uncovered is because

[00:29:51] it wasn't with an adversary. It was with an ally. And yet, um, it's an ally who was willing to violate U S law and interfere with, you know, one of the most sacred things of American democracy, which is our free elections. Right. So Qatar is where you can watch this influence work in real time, like start to bear fruit. So in Riyadh, May, 2017, you report a private evening meeting where MBZ

[00:30:18] and Mohammed bin Salman, MBS, who was then, uh, the Saudi's deputy crown prince about a month still, I think. Yeah. And he was also the, the, the, uh, uh, defense minister made their case against Qatar. Um, and Kushner's reply was, we'll close our eyes. What did, what did they hear in that? Well, right. So, um, MBS and MBZ lay out that they're going to go after Qatar and they tell

[00:30:45] Kushner that they have like an escalation plan, which starts at a blockade, but could escalate into a military invasion and Kushner essentially gives them the green light, uh, by not saying no. Um, and then, but more importantly, more significantly tells, doesn't tell anyone else in the administration and most significantly says nothing to the secretary of state Rex Tillerson,

[00:31:11] who happens to be at this, on the same trip. He's not in this meeting. He's, he's not invited. Um, and so Tillerson and, uh, secretary of defense, James Mattis are both, uh, taken aback when a few weeks later, about a month later, the UAE and the Saudis declared this blockade on Qatar. And so that sets off this diplomatic war and an internal administration civil war between Kushner and

[00:31:38] Trump on one side and Tillerson and Mattis on the other. And what's important to remember is, is that Qatar like the Saudis and the Emiratis is an American ally. They have 10,000 U.S. troops on a base that is, was at the time, uh, crucial for the war, U.S. war in Afghanistan and the U.S. war against, uh, ISIS in Syria and Iraq. And so the idea that the president's son-in-law, um, not a

[00:32:08] cabinet secretary, uh, not a director of CIA, just the senior advisor to the president, um, would have sent, um, or at least know that these two, uh, government allies intend to start a diplomatic confrontation against a third ally with the potential for a military invasion and not tell anyone else is, uh, gross, uh, government misconduct, uh, leaving aside any kind of legality, just,

[00:32:38] you know, not how the government is supposed to work. And, and, you know, it's very, uh, came out publicly and there's nothing new in this sense from what is in my book, um, that it was, Tillerson was extraordinarily upset. It caused an enormous amount of problems. What is different and new in, in the reporting here is that at the same time or around the same time in the summer of 2017,

[00:33:02] MBZ and MBS, the same two rulers who have started this blockade against Qatar have also now started an agreement and begin to flow money into some secret accounts that Kushner is going to be given access to. Now there's a lot of questions about what Kushner may have agreed to, um, in exchange for access to those accounts where all of the money ultimately ended up. It was, uh, at one point it

[00:33:31] was, um, uh, what I report in the book is around $2 billion float into these sort of two pools of money, but the, but it is the, what's important to understand is again, it comes, it starts to come, it flows through the rest of the, the trend, the, the term, but it starts around the time that the UAE and the Saudis announced this, uh, blockade. And so now you've got this diplomatic war

[00:33:58] and Tillerson finds out that the Saudis and the Emiratis may roll tanks into, uh, Qatar and try to overthrow, uh, the ruling family in Qatar and, uh, blocks MBS. He tells him you cannot do this. MBS was not yet a crown prince. He didn't quite have his feet under him, um, to make such a bold decision.

[00:34:20] And he stands down and the Qataris get a little bit of relief, but they can't get the administration to, uh, defend them and they internally or, or publicly. Um, and they can't get a clear indication as to how to resolve the conflict, uh, with the Qataris and the Saudis. And so they keep saying to

[00:34:45] the white house, what can we do to find a diplomatic solution to this problem? And they don't get a direct answer back. They get an indirect answer. And the indirect answer is the Kushner family has this building on 666 5th Avenue that needs, uh, to be bought out because it has a 1.2 billion dollar debt that's due. And the Qataris say, no. I should also say at this point that, that before the

[00:35:11] blockade begins, the Kushner family, Charlie Kushner, Jared's father twice went directly to the Qataris and asked them to invest in, to buy out the building. The first time it was for half, uh, the debt. The second time it was for the whole debt. Each time the Qataris say no, lo and behold, uh, the Saudis and the Emiratis, uh, declare a blockade. And Kushner is given access to this,

[00:35:38] uh, these secret, uh, bank accounts or the pools of money, uh, by MBS and MBZ. The Qataris ultimately discover and find out that MBZ and MBS have promised Jared access to this money and, uh, continue to get an answer, indirect answer about how to resolve the problem by solving, by, by solving the Kushner family, uh, Kushner company's, uh, problem, which was their building and the debt that was due on

[00:36:07] it. And so in March of 2018, Trump fires secretary Tillerson and the Qatari royal family panics. And I, and I was told, uh, uh, my sources, including some with direct knowledge, uh, and it was true panic. They thought that this meant this was a sign that, uh, the Saudis and

[00:36:31] the Emiratis were now going to come back in and try to overthrow the royal family. Right. And so at this moment, one of the things that certainly extraordinary things about the reporting is, is it's like Jared Kushner in his shadow diplomacy had gotten himself involved in a real life game of thrones episode or storyline where, um, he is navigating between three, two sides of, um, these gulf,

[00:37:00] these very wealthy gulf, uh, monarchs, um, rulers. And after Tillerson's fired this, the M the Qataris decide they felt that they had a gun to their head, that this was essentially from their point of view, extortion. They were being extorted by the Trump white house. And so they signal that they are going

[00:37:24] to, um, arrange to get this building bought, um, in a way that everyone can deny, uh, happened. And that signal gets sent and Trump starts to make publicly different statements about the blockade. He sends a note to, uh, MBS through the new secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, that the blockade has to

[00:37:45] come to a peaceful resolution and the emir of Qatar, um, the ruler of Qatar, um, uh, Tamim Al Thani is invited to the white house. Trump says he's a great friend. Um, and ultimately a Canadian real estate firm, a very big one. Um, uh, one of their funds purchases 666 5th Avenue. Um, the fund has as one of

[00:38:12] its passive investors or one of its investors, the Qatari, uh, sovereign wealth fund, um, which had, uh, put in 1.8 billion a few years earlier. And so, um, by the time summer of 2018 comes by, Kushner has access to these two pools of money from MBZ and MBS secretly. And the Qatari, uh, government has

[00:38:37] secretly arranged to, uh, buy out the debt on his family, uh, his family's, uh, business. And so that is at the heart of what happened and it is, you know, I don't think there's any way to interpret that those sequence of events without saying that Kushner's running a, a shadow foreign policy in

[00:39:00] which he's bending us policy for his benefit and his family's benefit. So to clarify this for folks, cause like game of Thrones, there's a million characters. And if you miss five minutes, you're kind of lost for a while to catch back up again. So do you read the Qatari's rejection of Charles Kushner and then Jared's position at the Riyadh meeting, the blockade on Qatar, the

[00:39:30] firing of Rex Tillerson, then the Qataris switch and they do buy out 666 5th Avenue. And then the Trump administration changes their position on Qatar. You read that as all one connected timeline. Uh, I do. That doesn't mean that everything that you've just described was explicitly a quid pro quo.

[00:39:53] We don't know that what the reporting does show is that the Emiratis and the Saudis urged and pushed Kushner to fire, to get Trump to fire Tillerson. Um, that the, uh, there were explicit efforts by the Kushner family to get the Qataris specifically, the Qataris, as opposed to the Saudis and the Emiratis,

[00:40:18] for instance, to buy the building. Um, I think the, well, I think it's really important to be transparent about what the reporting shows and what it doesn't show. Um, the sequence of events happened, you know, you put a chronology together and, um, you don't need a quid pro quo to

[00:40:42] demonstrate that these events are, are connected, right? I mean, that's in reality. Um, it doesn't take corruption doesn't require one person saying, I will give you X if you do Y corruption often is, I will give you X. And then subsequently when asked, um, the other person who has received the money, um, or with the benefit says, I will do Y and it is in, uh, that person or entities, you know,

[00:41:09] benefit. And, and so, um, I don't know, I can't say that it is explicit, but I don't think it's unconnected. And I think that the reporting demonstrates, um, there's also, you know, the book reports that, that, uh, Kushner was, um, their, MBZ had a reward, had conditioned, uh,

[00:41:34] at least one payment or bonus for Kushner. If Tillerson was fired, I also report in the book that Kushner asked for that, uh, payment to be sped up after Tillerson was fired. What the book does not say is whether he did receive any of that money and whether any, whether that bonus was given. Um, and so, you know, it's, I think with all of these, uh, details in the reporting,

[00:42:03] there are many, many more unanswered questions that need to be answered, but there is enough in what I have reported and I stand behind, um, that, that says, yeah, the public needs to get an answer to these questions because they're, they're very troubling. They're very troubling. Yeah. Let's take a break and we'll be right back.

[00:42:38] I want to turn to who else was watching this all unfold at the time. So you report that in late 2017, the MIVD Dutch military intelligence recruited, who's very good in the cyber area, recruited a hacker working for the GRU Russian military intelligence and found screenshots of Kushner's iPhone on a Russian server. And by 2018, you report the Dutch had their own window into the phone through this agent that they flipped. Like they could see what he's clicking and scrolling

[00:43:08] through on his phone, like in real time. In 2014 and 2016, the Dutch warned Washington about Russian intrusions. This time they didn't. Why, why not? Well, the obvious question is, is because, uh, they're a NATO ally and they made the unilateral decision first to, uh, get themselves into the phone. But I think the, the context of what this, of what all of this matters, right? So in the referencing that you had there 2014 and 2016,

[00:43:36] it was about the Russian government, um, attacking the U S government, you know, through, with cyber operations. And so, um, now in 2017, you have a, an American president who is extremely hostile to NATO and has a bizarre, um, if not soft relationship with Putin and Russia in which, um,

[00:43:59] he has stated that when Putin denied that, that the Russians had, uh, interfered in the 2016 election and interference that the Dutch knew firsthand had occurred, um, the international intelligence service, Trump says, I believe Putin when he says, um, it never happened. And so there were huge questions and big alarms in every NATO country at the time about what the hell was going on with the American president

[00:44:27] and what his relationship was with, um, Russian leader, Vladimir Putin. And so, um, the Russian intrusion that they discover into Kushner's phone is a mystery to them. And they decide that they're going to go in and figure out how the Russians did it themselves. And when they do, um, it only leads to more questions. And so there was, and you know, and the question is a good one, except that it's

[00:44:56] important to remember that intelligence agencies spy, that's what they do. And the value of their information comes in keeping the secret, not in sharing it, at least initially. Um, and so they don't say anything because they've just broken into the president's son-in-law's phone who happens to be, you know, one of the most influential and consequential members of the administration and their NATO allies. So, um, and then they start to see this money in this account. And the question

[00:45:24] then becomes, for instance, is this the Russian government giving money to, to Jared Kushner? I mean, it was, it was because of the Azerbaijan connection and because they had first learned about the, the, the access of by the GRU. So you have all these questions that the, that a government, the, the Dutch government wants to try to understand. And that's what intelligence collection is, right? It's, you know, trying to solve mysteries. So that's, that was the, the, the purpose of keeping it secret.

[00:45:53] And, and, and they would have kept it secret. Um, you know, they did generally speaking, keep it secret until now. Yeah. So the, the, the book subtitle calls this relationship with Kushner, a plot to remake the Middle East. In one sense, it, it worked. The Abraham Accords normalized relations between Israel and the UAE. The premise was that in, in doing the Abraham Accords, the premise was that you could bypass the, the Palestinian question. Like you don't have

[00:46:22] to resolve it, just sort of leave them there. We'll get good relations with the rest of the Middle East, and it'll be fine. You argue October 7th showed that it couldn't. I totally agree with that. But furthering the Abraham Accords and the possibility of the Saudis and Israel normalizing relations was also a big factor in Hamas's decision to attack Israel. The region has been at war in one

[00:46:46] form or another ever since the Emiratis and the Saudis themselves getting attacked extensively throughout, at least since February. So they did remake the Middle East, but did they get the Middle East that they wanted? Do you think? Uh, no. Although I think it's still an ongoing thing. I mean, I've, one of the things that I think happened is, is it go back to the secret meeting at the Four Seasons in Manhattan in December of 2016.

[00:47:12] It's not that they agreed explicitly to end up with regime change in Iran, but by focusing on, uh, trying to neutralize the Iran, what they perceived as an Iranian threat and ripping up the, the nuclear deal that Obama had negotiated, they definitely started the clock on what I think became was confrontation

[00:47:36] with, with Tehran because they, they put back into play the nuclear program and the nuclear, uh, component of the problem, um, the diplomatic problem with Iran. And so you had a bunch of people who had a like-minded vision of the Middle East and they set on a course, as you point out, mostly failing,

[00:47:59] but with the same idea, which was regime change in Iran and, um, it sort of zigzags, right? And then you get to the second term and, um, it's back on course. And, and that was the purpose of, I mean, going back to the very beginning, the original idea, uh, that became these secret pools of money between Kushner and MBZ and MBS was that MBS and MBZ were going to fund a foreign policy victory fund

[00:48:29] for President Trump. And what that was going to be was relatively overt. The idea was, was that they were going to support Trump's foreign policy initiatives all over the world. And in doing so, give him a second term, I gave him something to run on for a second term. And because they liked what they saw, what they were getting in, in Trump, right? Trump was going to support and did support MBS's rise to replace overthrow of his cousin and, and become the next in line, uh, to rule Saudi Arabia.

[00:48:58] Um, they, he was going to rip up the Iranian nuclear deal, right? They had, they had reason to support him. Now that original foreign policy ideas faded because it was, it was unwieldy. And not really possible. It was not really feasible. Um, but so what you had was the hope that there were going to be two Trump terms because it was going to take a while and their vision, the Emirati vision in particular, but at the time the Emirati and the Saudi and the Israeli vision was let's

[00:49:27] overthrow the ruling family in Qatar. Let's, um, get a, uh, would be dictator and strong man to control all of Libya and finally replace and, and stabilize, uh, post Gaddafi Libya. Um, let, uh, let's control and end the war, uh, with victory against the Houthis in Yemen. Let us, and this is

[00:49:52] in the book also, and people has gone, uh, largely ignored and missed. Let us replace the King of Jordan, King Abdullah, uh, the second in Jordan, because we want to play with the borders, um, with the West bank and trade some land and people, um, between the Jordan and Saudi Arabia as a way to diminish the size of the number of Palestinians in the West bank and give the Israelis, give, uh,

[00:50:19] Netanyahu, um, a chessboard that he can then say, okay, now I will finally recognize that we can work to recognize a Palestinian state because it's, it has a much smaller population and isn't a threat to us. Right. So they were playing these geopolitical games in which they were trying to overthrow and replace, you know, leaders, um, that almost all failed. I mean, in fact, they did all fail. Um, and then they, what they get out of it, what they try to do at the very end of, of the,

[00:50:49] the first Trump term, when the election, the reelection campaign comes in is let's announce the, the Abraham Accords and give Trump some, a success. And it was a success, but what my reporting is, you know, I think what's significant here about what's in the book is it's the secret side that matters as much as what was going on publicly, that there was a secret financial arrangement going on in the backgrounds that led to the, to this deal, that there was more to it than we understand.

[00:51:18] And, and, and likewise, you know, the question is, um, did any of these secret arrangements, uh, come into or factor into Trump's decision to go to war in February with Iran? And I don't have an answer to that question. I'm, I'm hoping that the public will demand that. I'm hoping Congress will ask that question. I'm hoping other journalists will ask that question because I think I have a hard time believing that it isn't relevant. So this story has a personal dimension for you. You write

[00:51:48] that Emirati intelligence put spyware on your phone in Abu Dhabi in 2017, that Eric Prince's, uh, defamation suit against you since dismissed was funded by the UAE. And there's a chapter about, uh, Habib Al Sayyik, a Emirati poet who you report died in the custody of their security services in 2019 after criticizing normalization with Israel. Later, a former Emirati intelligence

[00:52:13] officer declines to talk with you because he says, quote, didn't want to be Habib. What is reporting on this government in this whole web here cost, you think? Well, it's, uh, it's an excellent question. And I'm really happy that you, uh, uh, raised the, uh, murder of Habib Al Sayyik because it's a, a really significant event. You know, it, the UAE and MBZ, they have their own version of Khashoggi. Um, and

[00:52:42] the point, uh, besides the fact that it is a scandal and, uh, needs to be made public is to demonstrate the worldview of who Kushner and Trump were embracing when they decided to work with, with these, uh, foreign governments. And, you know, yes, part of it is personal, although the story is not about me, you know, it's really just trying to, to, the reason why that those details are in the

[00:53:07] book is because I want the readers to understand what the S the, uh, the consequences and the stakes are for the 50 confidential sources that I, uh, relied on to, to develop and report the story out. And so, yes, in 2017 in the UAE reporting on not this exact stuff, but related government UAE government, uh,

[00:53:33] things unbeknownst to me at the time, they, uh, hacked my phone and had my phone under full control for about six months. I was also under physical surveillance when I was in the UAE at the time. Um, and I, that I knew, uh, and then later, uh, again, what I, what may seem unrelated, but is in fact very related after reporting for the intercept, uh, that Eric Prince had, had tried to work out a

[00:53:59] deal with Wagner, um, in Africa, uh, you know, the Russian mercenary firm that was essentially an arm of the ministry of defense. Um, he sued me, uh, three times and, and we won all time each time in the story was accurate, but in, in time I learned that the UAE had, had paid for it because as the book will,

[00:54:22] will lays out, he was secretly working for the UAE for four years as their agent, um, doing arms deals and trying to, uh, uh, build an, a mercenary army for them. And so in both cases, what you see is a government that wants to, uh, figure out, uh, who a journalist is talking to and find out how to stop

[00:54:46] leaks. And, you know, this is a government that, that has, you know, a big sponsorship with the NBA and with the New York Knicks. And when I watch television, I see ads for what a great place, uh, Abu Dhabi is to visit. And the part that they don't tell you in those commercials is that there is no free speech, that if you speak, uh, out with an opinion that is contrary to the ruler, you may be tortured to death as Habib Al-Sayed was. And, you

[00:55:14] know, I don't have to agree with Habib Al-Sayed's politics, um, as a, as a journalist. Um, uh, but he wasn't even, you know, unlike Khashoggi, he wasn't a dissident. He was close to the ruling family. Um, but he had an opinion that was contrary. And part of the reason why that story, one of the reasons why that story is in the book is because it was my, my sources made very clear to me that one of the

[00:55:39] reasons why he was murdered was the ruling family wanted to send a message to everyone around them that the deal that they had with Kushner was going forward. And the deal that they were working on with Israel was going forward and that everyone better row in that direction. And, uh, you know, again, it's not that Jared Kushner or Donald Trump had any knowledge of the murder, had anything to do with the murder, but it, that is the worldview that they embraced when they are working with them and

[00:56:07] they embrace them publicly and they embrace them secretly. And that's the, you know, that's what's at the heart of the book. So there's been much debate or discussion in our domestic politics lately about allies who take advantage of the United States who don't respect us, right? Various points in the last couple of years, the administration has pointed this charge at such nefarious countries

[00:56:30] as Denmark, Canada, Ukraine, even the UK as offenders here. Yet, if your reporting is right, two of America's closest Gulf partners spent years buying influence at the very top of the U.S. government. By that standard, aren't the UAE and Saudi Arabia the clearest case of allies taking advantage of our national leadership, corrupting our, our, our politics for new Congress coming in,

[00:56:59] in January. And Jared Kushner will be called up to the Hill next year to account for stuff that you report in this book. What would accountability look like for the foreign side of this coin? You know, they're, they're foreign partners who made this possible. Like what is, what does that look like? Is it even possible to get accountability for that? Oh, that's a good question. Um, I don't know. And the, the, the short answer is, I don't know whether it's possible to get full accountability.

[00:57:28] I think the first step is getting full awareness, right? The first step is fact finding and figuring out the, uh, what the contours of the secret agreement between Kushner and these governments was, were, was, um, and you know, I've say in the book, you know, I think that the most important question that's unanswered is what did president Trump know? Did he know? Um, what did

[00:57:56] president Trump, if he did know, what was he, what was his understanding of it? Did, did he have any access to these accounts? Did any of the money end up, uh, did he have any access to the money? Um, uh, you know, I mean, these are, I don't pretend to have the answers at all. Um, but let's, we have to find those, answer those questions first. And then the question of how to deal with, and I think what it, what it means is you're going to, there's going to have to be a serious,

[00:58:24] and I absolutely hope that it, that one of the consequences of this reporting is that there is a serious recalibration of how the U S government interacts and interfaces with, um, the Saudis and the Emiratis in particular, but also with the Qataris. I mean, I think in, in general, you know, into the list, uh, you made the, the apt, uh, observation that this administration has, uh,

[00:58:51] accused European allies of perfidy and, uh, betrayal and, uh, you know, essentially being bad friends, um, while at the same time embracing autocrats, dictators, totalitarians, um, who, uh, have something to offer, uh, the president and his friends or his family, um, in exchange for, uh, American diplomacy.

[00:59:20] And so what has happened, and I think partly people voted for this and because of this on Tuesday is Trump has completely upended American foreign policy and its place in the world. And in a way he has gaslit the public about who America's allies are and who America's adversaries are. And, you know,

[00:59:46] right now to, to case in point right now, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are about to lead negotiations with the Russian government and the Ukrainian government in Abu Dhabi. Um, as if the UAE was a neutral, uh, uh, starting point and, and background that they, that they should be backing, um, these negotiations and there are no other American government officials sitting at the table.

[01:00:15] And so it, you, it's just the, this is a crime story where everyone has gotten away with it and every American is a victim. And until, um, the public demands answers or gets answers to some of these very central questions, um, you know, until we have those answers, I can't know how to answer the question of, of how to recalibrate or what accountability looks like. I can only know that

[01:00:41] the starting point is making the information public. And I hope, you know, and I do believe that the reporting in this book, which I think is just the tip of the iceberg, that it was much worse. And I have indications from the reporting that I left out of the book that the, that the dynamic between Kushner and MBS and MBZ was worse than what I have in the book. Um, until that is known, we can't know how to redress it. But have any Democrats in Congress who are about to take control of these committees,

[01:01:10] have any of them been in touch with you or asked about your reporting here? I, um, what I can say is, is that there has been some, uh, I've heard in interviews, uh, representative Jamie Raskin has mentioned the book and the reporting in the book as a sort of starting point, um, in terms of what he says, the investigations into Kushner may look like when he chairs the judiciary committee. Um, Rahm Emanuel is, uh, talking about, uh, a Jared Kushner rule,

[01:01:39] uh, which is like an ethics rule that would prohibit U S government officials from taking money from foreign governments for a two year period after leaving office. And as referenced the book, um, as part of, uh, the rationale behind that, um, you know, this book is, is for the public and, uh, you know, the, that includes Congress, um, to take that information. And, and, and, you know, I hope, I hope all avenues of following up this reporting are taken

[01:02:09] by the public, by the press and by Congress, you know, and, and, uh, if there, if, if there is evidence that, uh, Kushner or Trump or anybody else, uh, violated U S law, I would hope that, you know, law enforcement took a look, but you know, that's not my role. I'm not a prosecutor. Yeah. Well, thank you for that. Matthew, this has been a fascinating conversation. Um, and again, like I, yeah. And again, like I said, this is something that we're going to be hearing about

[01:02:36] for the next couple of years, at least. And definitely, as you said, I think we've, we don't even know the half of it, but so once again, the book is princes and thieves, Jared Kushner and Mohammed bin Zayed secret plot to remake middle East for folks watching. That's what it looks like. It's out now, wherever you get your books, we'll have links to it. And Matthew Substack, uh, the call report in the show notes, Matthew, thank you again. Really awesome.

[01:03:04] Thank you. Thank you, Matt. I really appreciate you. I appreciate you having me on and letting me talk about what I think is a important journalism.

[01:03:41] Thanks for listening. This is secrets and spies.