New News: Saudi Arabia Helped Get Trump Elected So US Would Pull Out of Iran Nuclear Accord

The New York Times reported today that representatives of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and even Qatar met repeatedly with Donald Trump Jr. and members of his father’s campaign before the 2016 election– and that this relationship was reinforced after the election.  These revelations are extremely complex and involve persons who have been Trump supporters for a long time but have managed to remain behind the scenes, as well as foreign individuals whose meetings and relations with Trump staff have not been transparent to the American public; thus I recommend close reading of the NYT story and other news sources to ascertain just who was involved and what their motivations and capabilities may have been.  They may have done some significant things that remain completely opaque and will be difficult to expose.

The NYT story states that a “friend” of Donald J Trump Sr. , Erik Prince of Blackwater, facilitated these meetings and had a murky relationship with members of Trump’s campaign and two foreign data processing and internet “influencing” firms: Psy-Group of Israel and WhiteKnight of the Philippines.  Mr. Prince has been a Republican donor for years and was close to Mr. Trump without being officially tied to him by an administration appointment– although he has been a big beneficiary of American and Saudi payments to the private security firm he founded, Blackwater (see below).

A proposal was floated within one of these foreign firms, Psy-Group, for influencing the presidential election in Mr. Trump’s favor with social media posts and the like; the estimated cost was $300 million.  There is no definite confirmation that this proposal ever was carried out, but the other firm, WhiteKnight, spent a couple of million dollars on a presentation that showed how much social media had facilitated the election of Mr. Trump.

Erik Prince has a long and close relationship with the Saudi and UAE crown princes, in addition to being the brother of Betsy deVos, currently the Secretary of Education (who is bent on destroying the American public school system as well as ending investigation of shady “for-profit” schools like Trump University).

Fortunately, Mr. Mueller of the FBI special investigation unit is all over this information and has already interviewed the principals of the Israeli firm.  There is some news that the Israelis may have recovered computers from the WhiteKnight [should be Psy-Group– they are the Israelis] offices in the process of liquidating it (presumably this is the Israeli equivalent of bankruptcy, which would be a neat way of folding up a company that illegally influenced the US election process and was no longer needed.)

This information leads us further down the rabbit hole of corrupt behavior by Mr. Trump and his associates.  It appears that they were willing to do nearly anything to get assistance to “rig” the presidential election.  They called upon Russian associates who had helped them with loans in exchange for turning a blind eye to money-laundering activities; they turned to Arabs who had offered to finance the white elephant buildings owned by President Trump’s son-in-law (he is now finalizing a deal with Qatari sources that was supposed to have fallen through last year due to bad publicity).   They apparently even turned to Israelis who hated the Iranians (a feeling that was entirely mutual) and who wanted to support Mr. Trump to gain special advantages for Israel.  There will be difficulty proving many of these suspicions because those who accept illegal assistance (say, from foreign nationals) in exchange for favors are unlikely to allow themselves to be definitely overheard saying so before the election, nor to put anything in writing that would reveal the corruptness of the bargain that they make with a nod of the head.

In the case of Mr. Trump and the Saudis, it is clear that they, like the Russians, disliked Ms. Clinton because of her foreign policy principles and were interested in facilitating the election of someone they could influence.  Mr. Trump delivered with his abrogation of the Iran nuclear accord despite the pleas of numerous Americans and Europeans, many of them highly placed.  It is quite possible that certain Israelis had the same attitude towards Ms. Clinton (those of a like mind with Mr. Sheldon Adelson of Las Vegas) and that they helped Mr. Trump, with the quid pro quo being the move of the American Embassy to Jerusalem.

Note that not all Israelis share the attitudes of Mr. Adelson; perhaps Mr. Netanyahu, who is himself neck deep in corruption allegations, would be a good example of the polarization of attitudes within Israel.  Also note that American law prohibits foreign nationals as well as governments from helping partisans in elections– specifically, Americans are prohibited from “accepting anything of value” from foreign citizens in connection with election campaigns.  The law was broadly written in an attempt to make any activity, from money donations to door-to-door canvassing, illegal for foreign citizens.  Mr. Adelson, on the other hand, was free to contribute whatever he wished to political action committees, since he is an American citizen.  Donald Trump, Jr. and his associates seemed to have been unaware of this law when they agreed to meet with Russian nationals, as we have previously seen, and they showed similar ignorance and/or unconcern when they met Saudis, Emiratis from the UAE, and Israelis.

(About Erik Prince and Blackwater: A security detail composed of employees of Blackwater committed the Nisour Square Massacre (see Wikipedia entry) in which 17 innocent Iraqis died on September 16, 2007– the upshot being that the firm had to repeatedly change its name and nominal ownership; it is now known as Academi and is one of a group of security companies owned by Constellis Holdings).

(The Nisour Square Massacre was a result of lax oversight of the private security details, composed of ex-special forces soldiers, which were used in Iraq to substitute for currently enlisted American soldiers to protect American and other civilians.  Erik Prince was ultimately responsible for this and many other lesser incidents, some of which caused further loss of life for innocent bystanders, because he founded Blackwater (in 1997) and was its boss while Americans fought in Iraq.  This laxness towards aggressive behavior by Americans was partially responsible for Iraq’s refusal to extend American soldiers’ immunity from prosecution in Iraq after 2011– which led directly to the complete withdrawal of virtually all US soldiers from the country and indirectly to the infiltration of Iranians into positions of influence in Iraq… which led to the current situation in this area, in which we are attempting to depose the ruling regime in Iran without invading the country or accepting responsibility for any of the potential consequences, like the current anarchy in Libya.)

(Those who wish to depose the current regime in Iran are looking for revenge (or justice?) for the takeover of the American Embassy in Iran by revolutionaries after the Shah of Iran was deposed in 1979 and the protracted hostage situation– although some cynical historians might allege that this incident facilitated the election of Ronald Reagan and weakened the campaign for re-election of Jimmy Carter… which directly or indirectly led to the Republican takeover of American local, state, and federal government over the last 40 years… and which may have led to widening income inequality and wealth inequality over the same period; which may have been associated with mass incarceration in the United States (the US has by far the largest prison population per capita in the world), the failure of US citizens’ life expectancy to increase, in fact the reduction of life expectancy in the last few years, the opioid epidemic and finally, the fact that my coffee is cold– which is due to the fact that the electric coffee cup warmer that I was given as a novelty present in 1982 (note the date) was manufactured in China to low quality standards instead of in the US and stopped functioning after only a year.)