Thread by @grantstern

*** THREAD ***

The Prince, The President, The General, and a Fixer.

My reporting uncovered a key #TrumpRussia dossier meeting between Qatar's Foreign Minister, a top asset manager and the Trump presidential transition, including fixer/bagman Michael Cohen.

Five days ago, I tweeted this link to go into my first #TrumpRussia story about claims that a wealthy Qatari businessman claimed he paid off General Flynn.

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The sworn claim itself, by a former Steve Bannon business partner, was incendiary.

That General Flynn had taken a payoff from a Qatari.

Also, his goal of bankrolling a white national political polemicist is an eye-catching headline, but not the story...

washingtonpress.com/2018/05/11/a-q…

But the story took on a life of its own when I received an anonymous tip about the @cspan video of a meeting between Ahmed Al-Rumaihi and the Trump Transition team, chaperoned by Michael Cohen.

That led to today's Exclusive, that gives a lot more depth to the players in this story than they have received on TV, so I'm going to tweetstorm the rest of it here tonight.

But you can read the #TrumpRussia story and share it here in just one link:

washingtonpress.com/2018/05/15/new…

The reason this Qatari-Trump Transition meeting is so critical, is its time relation to events in the #TrumpRussia dossier, a verified, really happened, massive privatization deal with Rosneft.

Qatar is the buyer.

The dossier said Trump was the broker.

thesternfacts.com/trump-russia-d…

Qatar and Russia spent most of the last two decades on the opposite ends of political decisions and warring factions in Syria.

But they came together over oil money since Rosneft's shares pay a might large dividend.

rosneft.com/Investors/Divi…

But US sanctions against Russia were a major impediment to anyone buying Rosneft's shares.

Enter Qatar who has a lot of money and nowhere to put it, the capacity to skirt sanctions somewhat, and the dossier says that with Trump's assistance, the two parties came together.

Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani attended this meeting.

He's a member of Qatar's Royal Family.

Keep in mind that Trump met with a prior Foreign Minister seeking loans in 2010.

Money was on the table in this #TrumpRussia meeting too.

Ahmed Al-Rumaihi was anxious at the meeting, but he's not the main decisionmaker. That would be his business partner Faisal Al-Hamadi.

Al-Hamadi is the Director of Asset Management at the QIA, a $300 billion sovereign wealth fund.

Last year, Al-Hamadi hired former #Republican AG Ashcroft on a foreign agency contract, Al-Rumaihi procured the deal in his care, on behalf of the Qatari government.

It is the latter, Mr. Al-Hamadi who is a Harvard-educated CFA and a Director of the parent company.

Crucially, Faisal Al-Hamadi had to have been one of the decisionmakers in the #TrumpRussia oil deal, since he manages the assets and there was a complex, financed transaction which only STARTED on 12/7/16 and didn't close until a month later.

In other words, the #TrumpRussia oil deal didn't HAVE to close at that point.

The Qataris may have needed something from Trump at that moment, to make the oil deal happen.

Let me just point out now that taking a bribe by a public official can be prosecuted without the quid pro quo being proven.

There's an extortion statute called the Hobbs Act.

Downside: Can't prosecute the payer.

justice.gov/usam/criminal-…

Anyhow, the Trump Tower meeting that Qatar's Foreign Minister and representative of the Director of QIA's asset management which happened on December 12th represents a milestone in the dossier by presenting circumstances that point to opportunities for the Trump Transitioners....

To solicit and accept the kind of funds spoken about in the #TrumpRussia dossier.

But what we can't leave out is this:

Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak visited Trump Tower the SAME DAY but avoided the lobby cameras.

He visited reportedly to meet Avi Berkowitz.

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If you'll recall, the Qataris have basically announced that they're blackmailing Jared Kushner, only giving him a $200 million range loan instead of the $500 million he reportedly asked for... nbcnews.com/politics/natio…

The #TrumpRussia dossier says there's a $500 million brokerage fee.

Kushner was reportedly asking for $500 million from the Qataris, eventually leading to a blockade, and a loan.

theintercept.com/2018/03/02/jar…

Then today, news broke of a $500 million Chinese investment into a Trump project, in exchange for Trump's "Make China Great Again" tweet promising to rescue phone maker ZTE who deployed spyware on cheap phones in America and secretly surveilled people.

huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-ch…

Anyhow, what you're seeing is motive, opportunity and desire all wrapped into the circumstantial evidence of a group of ultra-wealthy, high-ranking Qatari diplomats holding a #TrumpRussia meeting that nobody announced and that participants denied even after a video was released.

And the meeting took place just over a month BEFORE the #TrumpRussia dossier was released (and a month after the original #DworkinReport came out), but the events fit the narrative of Steele's Dossier.

thesternfacts.com/scott-dworkins…

To this date, nobody has disproven a single major item in the #TrumpRussia dossier.

The circumstances and high-level players in the Qatar / Trump Transition meeting lend new credence to the idea that Trump was involved as a broker in a Russian oil deal.

buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/t…

If that's not enough, I discussed the #TrumpRussia dossier implications and the potential criminal implications of Flynn taking a payoff, of the entire Trump Tower meeting and who was there last night with @funder on the #DworkinReport

soundcloud.com/dworkinreport/…