Stop us if you’ve heard this one already: Representatives of a foreign government hold a secret meeting with members of the Trump campaign in Trump Tower to discuss ways that this foreign government could use social media manipulation to help get Trump elected. It now appears that, since the election, this government has received favorable treatment from the Trump Administration. But here’s the thing: It’s not Russia.

This isn’t some new scoop. Many parts of this story have been covered in the media. There is simply so much going on with the administration that it’s easy to miss this thread.

Yet there is at least as much evidence that Trump has been purchased by the crown princes and de facto rulers of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia as there is to support the idea that he’s been bought by Vladimir Putin.

During the first two years of his presidency, Trump’s foreign policy has lined up tightly with the interests of the United Arab Emirates’ Mohammed bin Zayed, crown prince of Abu Dhabi, and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman. In a remarkable number of instances, Trump has sided with these two crown princes over his own State Department, intelligence officials, and even Cabinet members.

In a remarkable number of instances, Trump has sided with these two crown princes over his own State Department, intelligence officials, and even Cabinet members.

The Emirati and Saudi influence campaigns are not totally separate from the one involving Russia. During the early days of the Trump Administration, representatives of both the Emirates and Saudi Arabia pushed Trump to curtail sanctions on Russia in exchange for Russia rolling back its relations with Iran.

Like Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have repressive autocratic governments with atrocious human rights records; however, unlike Russia, these two countries have enormous wealth and can operate under the cover of being U.S. allies.

While much has been made of the Russian meeting in Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, little attention has been given to another secret meeting in the same building involving offers of direct assistance to the Trump campaign. While there has been extensive reporting on how the $130,000 paid to Stephanie Clifford, known professionally as Stormy Daniels, might constitute a campaign finance violation, it appears that the Trump campaign may have secretly received up to $2 million in indirect assistance paid by a foreign government.

And while claims of “no collusion” in regard to the Russia investigation are hotly debated in the media, there seems to be substantial evidence of direct coordination between the Trump campaign and the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. These governments were given unofficial, direct access to the White House and have made significant foreign policy requests outside of any State Department channels.

Moreover, there is compelling evidence that people within and connected to the Trump organization received direct financial benefit from these arrangements.

To say that Donald Trump’s first presidential trip abroad, to Saudi Arabia in May 2017, was a lavish affair would be putting it mildly. The Saudi Kingdom saw the trip as a way to help reset U.S.-Saudi relations after a cool relationship with President Barack Obama and, as a result, it went all out. It reportedly spent $68 million on the event, which included sporting events, auto shows, a performance by country music singer Toby Keith, the projection of a five-story image of Trump’s face on the wall of his hotel, and a multimillion-dollar dinner in his honor.

During the trip, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates donated $100 million to Ivanka Trump’s World Bank fund for women entrepreneurs, while presenting Trump with a chance to show off his supposed skills as a deal maker. Trump bragged that he had nailed down $350 billion worth of American weapons sales to Saudi Arabia; experts said the actual amount was far less.

Since this initial trip to Saudi Arabia, members of the Trump Administration have continued to visit the Saudi Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates frequently. In the last week of February 2019, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, met the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with the leaders of the Emirates and Saudi Arabia the month before; and Energy Secretary Rick Perry visited Saudi Arabia in December 2018.

The Trump Administration has consistently taken positions favorable to the two countries. For instance, Trump backed their decision to institute a punishing blockade on Qatar, just days after Trump left Saudi Arabia. Trump did so against the advice of Rex Tillerson, then Secretary of State.

In November 2017, Trump praised Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as he instituted a crackdown on wealthy Saudis in which they were detained and tortured until they agreed to hand over substantial amounts of money.

In May 2018, Trump overruled his own Defense Secretary, Jim Mattis, and pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal, which the Crown Princes bin Salman and bin Zayed had been pushing him to do.

Trump has also looked the other way as the Saudi Kingdom cut off relations with Canada and forcibly detained the prime minister of Lebanon, and Trump got rid of the limited constraints Obama had imposed on U.S. arms exports to Saudi Arabia for use in the war in Yemen. Human rights groups have documented how Saudi Arabia and the Emirates have used U.S.-supplied weapons to commit war crimes.

Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division, tells The Progressive, “The Trump Administration’s cruel insistence that profits to the arms industry justify the unlawful killings, disease, and destruction in Yemen undoubtedly will come back to bite the American people.”

The Trump Administration also failed to push back against bin Salman for locking up women activists who had pushed for the right to drive.

Indeed, it appeared as though there was almost nothing the Saudi crown prince could do that Trump would rebuke. Even the gruesome murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi wasn’t enough. Trump ran cover for bin Salman, insisting the killing was a rogue operation and dismissing the CIA’s assessment that bin Salman planned the hit himself. (Prince bin Salman had reportedly even threatened to put a bullet in Khashoggi a year prior to the murder.)

“Trump’s cover-up of [bin Salman’s] responsibility for the killing was the worst political cover-up in history,” Abdullah Alaoudh, a senior fellow at Georgetown University, who was a friend of Jamal Khashoggi, tells The Progressive. “Trump is willing to go against the CIA, against Congress and his own Cabinet and his own administration to support [bin Salman]. It blows your mind.”

A former intelligence official with decades of experience in the Middle East, who spoke on condition of anonymity, calls it “really unprecedented for a President to completely dismiss the assessment of the entire intelligence community.”

And Nabeel Khoury, who served as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Yemen from 2004 to 2007, tells The Progressive, “Giving [bin Salman] a pass for the murder of Khashoggi for the sake of deals, quite apparently goes beyond the national to the personal interests of those making them, on both sides.”

“Trump’s lack of knowledge and expertise makes him sort of a blank canvas. It’s just a lot easier for them to influence him than with previous Presidents. He’s kind of an easy target for foreign influence operations,” Ben Freeman, the director of the Center for International Policy’s Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative, tells The Progressive.

But how did this relationship between Trump, Crown Prince bin Salman, and Crown Prince bin Zayed develop?

The meetings between the Trump team and Russia’s then U.S. ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, and lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya are now infamous. But another secretive meeting at Trump Tower, just months after the meeting with Veselnitskaya, has received far less attention.

This “other” Trump Tower meeting contains all the elements that are only hinted at in the Russia meetings. A representative of a foreign government offers to help the campaign, specifically through social media manipulation. The campaign responds positively and, in return, may have received substantial support.

The August 3, 2016, meeting was set up by Erik Prince, the founder of the notorious private military contracting outfit Blackwater who later acted as an informal adviser to the Trump team. Prince is the brother of Betsy DeVos, now Trump’s Secretary of Education.

Others in attendance: George Nader, an American businessman and convicted pedophile, who represented the crown princes of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia; the President’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.; Trump campaign adviser Stephen Miller, later a top White House aide; and Joel Zamel, a former Israeli intelligence agent who founded Psy-Group, a “social media manipulation” firm staffed by former Israeli intelligence agents, who pitched the Trump team on social media manipulation strategies.

‘We had a relationship with Saudi Arabia once upon a time where the U.S. drove the relationship. Now Saudi action drives the Trump Administration.’

Nader, who pleaded guilty in 1991 to a federal child pornography charge in Virginia and was convicted in 2003 of sexually abusing ten minors in the Czech Republic, told Donald Trump Jr. that the crown princes of both the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia “were eager to help his father win election as President,” according to a New York Times report. The leadership of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates strongly disliked Obama’s policy in the region, which they saw as too supportive of the Arab Spring and Iran, and too hands-off in the war against Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Trump Jr. responded positively to the offers of help. Immediately after the 2016 election, Nader allegedly paid Zamel’s company $2 million for his efforts related to social media.

Then, on December 15, 2016, Crown Prince bin Zayed made a secret visit to a New York hotel to meet directly with Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner, and Steve Bannon. The Emiratis didn’t inform then-President Obama, whose administration found the meeting suspicious.

Afterward, Erik Prince contacted bin Zayed, saying he was acting as an unofficial surrogate for the Trump team and wanted the crown prince to set up a meeting with an individual close to Putin for the purposes of setting up a secret communications back-channel between Russia and the incoming administration. On January 11, 2017, just days before Trump’s Inauguration, a secret meeting took place in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean. Attending were Erik Prince and Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian believed to be close to Vladimir Putin, bin Zayed, and Nader.

One topic discussed, The Washington Post reported, was whether the United States might improve relations with Russia in exchange for Russia distancing itself from Iran, which the United Arab Emirates regards as its enemy.

Jared Kushner was interviewed twice by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team as part of the investigation into alleged foreign collusion by the Trump Administration. Steve Bannon was interviewed three times, Erik Prince was interviewed once, and Trump’s short-lived National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has been charged with illegally lobbying for the Turkish government.

Before Elliott Broidy pleaded guilty in December 2009 to bribing officials in New York State, he’d been a major Republican donor who threw big fundraisers at his home in Bel-Air. Broidy grew rich founding an investment firm and was friends with a circle of Jewish conservatives from Southern California who donated large amounts of money to the Republican Party.

Following his guilty plea, Broidy’s reputation was significantly diminished. Yet when Steven Mnuchin, chief fundraiser for Trump’s campaign, needed people to raise money for a candidate many found distasteful, he called Broidy, who accepted the role.

After Trump’s unlikely election victory, Broidy, acting as vice chair of the Inauguration committee, brought two high-level Angolan officials to the Inauguration, according to a report in Rolling Stone; Angola later made a payment on a contract with Broidy’s defense-contracting company, Circinus, LLC.

But Broidy was really interested in securing contracts with deep-pocketed countries like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. On the night of Trump’s Inauguration, Broidy met George Nader, and almost immediately afterward they went to work on a plan. The first phase involved a public relations campaign against Qatar, which the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia had long-standing disagreements with over its support for the Arab Spring and its tolerance for Muslim democratic movements.

The campaign attempted to turn the United States against Qatar, a small Persian Gulf kingdom that had been a longtime U.S. ally. The plan to influence Congress and the Trump Administration was finalized in March 2017, and Nader asked Broidy to invoice him $2.5 million.

This influence campaign involved doling out nearly $600,000 to members of Congress and Republican political committees. The Associated Press, which initially reported on these payments, “found no evidence that Broidy . . . broke any laws.”

In a November 2017 email to Nader titled “Strictly Confidential,” Broidy outlined eleven different efforts being undertaken to pressure the Trump Administration to adjust its policies.

One prong involved getting then Representative Ed Royce, the Republican chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to speak at a conference on Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood, ostensibly put on by two conservative think tanks. Following the conference, Royce received $5,400 in campaign gifts from Broidy, the maximum allowed by law.

Broidy and Nader attempted to set up a quiet meeting between Trump and bin Zayed at a quiet location away from the White House. H.R. McMaster, Trump’s National Security Adviser at the time, blocked the effort.

Broidy told Trump that the crown princes of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia were going to use his company to create an all-Muslim counter-terrorism force, which would fight against the Taliban and ISIS. Reported Rolling Stone, “Trump loved the idea.” Broidy then made a pitch for Trump to visit the Saudi Kingdom, which later became Trump’s first trip abroad.

Even though Nader and Broidy facilitated a communications channel between the crown princes and the White House, neither was registered as a foreign agent, as required by law. These meetings were not reported by the White House, but became public when Broidy’s email was hacked. Broidy has maintained that he was not required to register as a lobbyist, since he was not being directed to act by a foreign agent.

Nader was on his way to Mar-a-Lago to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Trump presidency when he was picked up and questioned by agents working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller. He was granted partial immunity for cooperating with the special counsel and later met with high-level officials in Iraq, which has increasingly become a new front in the influence war between Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

“Days after Broidy’s meeting with Trump,” the Associated Press reported, the United Arab Emirates “awarded Broidy the intelligence contract the partners had been seeking for up to $600 million over five years.” Broidy disputes this reference to timing, and other sources have reported the value of this contract at $200 million.

In April 2016, according to a New York Times report, Trump’s billionaire friend Tom Barrack began communicating with Yousef al-Otaiba, the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the United States, assuring al-Otaiba that despite Trump’s rhetoric about banning Muslims, he was someone the Emirates could work with.

Meanwhile, Barrack sent al-Otaiba an email about Trump. “We can turn him to prudence,” he assured the ambassador. “He needs a few really smart Arab minds to whom he can confer—u r at the top of that list!”

Barrack served as a major fundraiser for the Trump campaign and suggested Trump hire Paul Manafort as campaign manager. And while Barrack has not been formally involved in the Trump Administration, his company has raised billions in investments since Trump won the Republican nomination, with nearly a quarter of it coming from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Barrack’s connection to the Trump Administration, the Times noted, extends beyond the President. In 2010, he took on $70 million of the debt owed by Jared Kushner for the 666 Fifth Avenue skyscraper. Early in his career, Barrack negotiated oil drilling rights with the Ambassador al-Otaiba’s father. In 2009, al-Otaiba and Barrack made a deal where Barrack’s private equity firm sold a Beverly Hills hotel to a venture owned in part by an Abu Dhabi investment fund.

By May 2016, Barrack had introduced al-Otaiba to Jared Kushner, and soon after the two attempted to arrange a meeting between Paul Manafort and Mohammed bin Salman (then deputy crown prince of Saudi Arabia) in June 2016, but Manafort canceled. Barrack informed al-Otaiba of changes made to the Republican platform, which no longer called for the release of the twenty-eight pages redacted from the 9/11 Commission Report, which found the September 11 hijackers may have had connections to the Saudi royal family and government.

Federal prosecutors are looking into the possibility that the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia made illegal donations to President Trump’s inaugural committee and to a pro-Trump super PAC with the intention of buying influence with the Trump Administration. Tom Barrack raised money for both funds.

Saudi Arabia also financially backed a lobbying firm, who booked more than 500 nights at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., around the time of the Inauguration.

Barrack has been interviewed by investigators for the Mueller investigation, but his spokesperson has said he is not a target of the investigation.

Early in the Trump Administration, according to another New York Times report, Kushner began making unofficial contacts with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The contacts worried some American officials because they believed Kushner’s inexperience left him open for manipulation.

Shortly after Trump won the election, a high-level Saudi team visited the United States and identified Kushner as a convenient entry point into the administration. John Kelly, then Trump’s Chief of Staff, attempted to restrict contact between Kushner and Prince bin Salman, but the two kept chatting, using the messaging platform WhatsApp.

The Saudis pitched themselves as having the key to reaching a long-elusive Middle East peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. They talked up the potential of billions of dollars in weapons deals and investment in American infrastructure. They talked about setting up “an intelligence and data” exchange to help the Trump Administration with its extreme vetting of immigrants.

Kushner appeared to buy into Saudi Arabia’s plan and pushed for Trump to make Saudi Arabia his first visit abroad, over the objections of Rex Tillerson at the State Department. In March 2017, Kushner helped usher Prince bin Salman into a formal lunch with Trump at the White House, giving the two their first face-to-face meeting.

Following Trump’s visit in May 2017, Prince bin Salman moved to sideline the then-Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, with bin Salman taking over as crown prince. Within days, the new Crown Prince bin Salman began a blockade of Qatar. According to a report in The Intercept, Saudi Arabia had planned to invade Qatar, but was stopped by Tillerson.

The crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates both took credit for pushing Tillerson out of his position as Secretary of State in March 2018.

Following the murder of Khashoggi last October, Kushner emerged as one of Crown Prince bin Salman’s staunchest defenders.

“If you follow that Saudi love affair, you really see how Mohammed bin Salman is able to effectively manipulate Jared Kushner and through Kushner he’s able to manipulate Trump and really get the U.S. to ignore so much crazy stuff that he was doing, all the way up through the murder of Jamal Khashoggi,” says Ben Freeman of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative.

Kushner had visited with bin Salman in Saudi Arabia in the fall of 2017 and just days later the crown prince initiated a crackdown on hundreds of wealthy Saudis. On the trip, Kushner allegedly discussed the names of Saudis who were disloyal to bin Salman; he denied this. This is information that may have been available to Kushner through the President’s daily briefings.

A source told The Intercept that bin Salman bragged about how Kushner was “in his pocket.”

In one of the most recent examples of Trump taking actions that benefit bin Salman, the President blew off a Congressionally required assessment about whether the crown prince had violated human rights in killing Khashoggi.

“We had a relationship with Saudi Arabia once upon a time where the U.S. drove the relationship,” Chas Freeman, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, tells The Progressive. “Now Saudi action drives the Trump Administration.”

The anonymous former intelligence official goes further in criticizing Trump’s whitewashing of bin Salman’s bad behavior: “The actions of the President border on treason.”

On February 19, a Democratic committee released a report raising concerns that the Trump Administration is planning to ignore White House lawyers and rush delivery of sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.

Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had backed a plan to build a whole host of nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia. Flynn is gone, but the plan lives on.

“Reactors are basically nuclear weapons boxed starter kits,” Henry Sokolski, who served as the deputy for nonproliferation policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 1989 to 1993, tells The Progressive. He believes the erratic Saudi regime controlled by bin Salman could have a nuclear bomb in as little as four to five years. “You’re banking on the Kingdom being stable,” he explains. “Taking a look at who’s running it right now, that’s not a sure thing.”

The only smart course, Sokolski says, is for the United States to stand up to Saudi Arabia: “You just say no. Their word is worthless after the Khashoggi murder. We should have our red lines.”

Yet the exact opposite appears to be occurring. Trump’s foreign policy seems to be clearly and consistently run to benefit Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

“[Bin Salman] believes he bought Trump’s silence with all the superficial weapons deals,” says Alaoudh of Georgetown University. “The Saudi regime has imprisoned U.S.-Saudi relations in one man and now Trump has put all the eggs in one basket [bin Salman’s]. That’s not in the best interests of Americans or the Saudi people.”

Some observers have fretted that if the United States were to seriously push back against Crown Prince bin Salman and Crown Prince bin Zayed, it would risk driving them into closer alliances with Russia, China, and India. But the former intelligence official sees it differently: “We have tremendous leverage over them and we should use it.”

As long as Trump is President, that seems unlikely.

Editor’s note: The original version of this article was changed to address omissions called to our attention. We changed a reference to Elliott Broidy’s involvement in a “secret lobbying push” to “influence campaign,” and added this sentence of explanation: “Broidy has maintained that he was not required to register as a lobbyist, since he was not being directed to act by a foreign agent.” We have also noted, with regard to the $600,000 in donations made by Broidy to members of Congress and Republican political committees, that the Associated Press, which initially reported on these payments, “found no evidence that Broidy . . . broke any laws.” Finally, we acknowledge that Broidy has disputed the AP’s reporting regarding the timing and value of contracts he received, noting that the latter has been elsewhere reported as $200 million.