This seems important

[blogslug]

Businessman Charged With Foreign Lobbying Crimes Paid for Secret Trump White House Mission to Qatar

In June 2017, two former US officials, John Allen, a retired US Marine Corps four-star general, and Richard Olson, a retired State Department official and onetime ambassador to Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, traveled to Doha, Qatar, on a secretive and important mission. They were dispatched by H.R. McMaster, then national security adviser for President Donald Trump, to meet with Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. This was part of a US effort to deescalate a regional crisis. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Qatar’s rivals, had blockaded Qatar and were threatening to invade the small natural gas-rich country, which houses a large American military base.

But the Trump White House did not rely on the US government to arrange and finance this trip. Instead, Allen asked Imaad Zuberi, an Asian American businessman and prolific campaign contributor with ties to US and foreign officials, for help, according to people with knowledge of the trip and emails reviewed by Mother Jones. Zuberi coordinated, joined, and paid for Allen and Olson’s travel, the emails indicate. That’s notable because Zuberi later pleaded guilty to a slew of violations of foreign lobbying and campaign finance laws, along with tax evasion and obstruction of justice. He was sentenced in February to 12 years in federal prison...



Until 2016, Zuberi’s contributions went largely to Democrats. He was a bundler for Hillary Clinton in 2016. But after Donald Trump’s victory, Zuberi reversed course, giving heavily to Trump and the GOP. His contributions included $900,000 to Trump’s inauguration committee. That contribution became the subject of an investigation by federal prosecutors in New York, who suspected, according to people with knowledge of the probe, that Zuberi made the contribution with money received from Qataris who were hoping to win influence with Trump. Zuberi eventually pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for what prosecutors said were efforts to cover up the origin of the money. (The Trump inauguration case was combined with the separate foreign lobbying and obstruction case last year.)

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/04/businessman-charged-with-foreign-lobbying-crimes-paid-for-secret-trump-white-house-mission-to-qatar/?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=naytev&utm_medium=social

So many crimes and scandals, so many cracks to fall through.

[magicarpet]

1. You can not entrust a democracy to a con-man. Their,...

... first inclination is to become a despots and demagogue and transform democracy into a Fascist State to better serve and enhance their narrow interests to the exclusion of all others.