Trump’s personal attorney solicited $1 million from government of Qatar – By Karen DeYoung, Josh Dawsey, Rosalind Helderman (washingtonpost.com) / May 16 2018
Michael Cohen, President Trump’s personal attorney, solicited a payment of at least $1 million from the government of Qatar in late 2016, in exchange for access to and advice about the then-incoming administration, according to several people with knowledge of the episode.
The offer, which Qatar declined, came on the margins of a Dec. 12 meeting that year at Trump Tower between the Persian Gulf state’s foreign minister and Michael Flynn, who became Trump’s first national security adviser. Stephen K. Bannon, who became chief White House strategist, also attended, the people said.
Cohen did not participate in the official meetings but spoke separately to a member of the Qatari delegation, Ahmed al-Rumaihi, who at the time was head of the investments division of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority.
Details emerged last week on how Cohen leveraged his relationship with Trump to receive millions of dollars from companies eager for insight and entree into the new president’s inner circle. They included AT&T, the global pharmaceutical giant Novartis, a Korean defense contractor and Columbus Nova, a New York-based investment firm with ties to a Russian oligarch. All have confirmed payments to Cohen.
But news of the Qatar solicitation marks the first time Cohen is believed to have pitched his influence directly to a foreign government.
A spokesman for Rumaihi, after first saying he would be available for an interview, said he was no longer available late Wednesday. The private company Rumaihi — who is no longer in government — founded last year, Sport Trinity, did not respond to a request for comment. The Intercept reported Wednesday that Rumaihi had confirmed the solicitation, and his refusal to pay Cohen, in an interview.
Cohen and his lawyer did not respond to a request for comment. Qatar’s embassy in Washington declined to comment on the revelations.
Cohen’s offer to Qatar came as he was bragging to others that he could make millions from consulting on Trump and that foreign governments would be interested in having his expertise. At the time, Cohen was also angling, unsuccessfully, as it turned out, to enter the White House, telling associates that he might become counsel or chief of staff.
As Cohen collected clients, he texted associates articles that described him as Trump’s “fixer” and asked them to spread them around.
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, which conducted raids last month on Cohen’s New York residence and office, are investigating his activities. Cohen’s attempts to sell access were first publicly alleged last week by Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for Stormy Daniels, an adult-film star who was paid $130,000 by Cohen before the election to keep quiet details of an alleged sexual encounter with Trump.
Trump, who said last month that he knew nothing about the Daniels payment and did not reimburse Cohen, reported an apparent reimbursement payment to his lawyer on financial disclosure documents released Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Avenatti has expanded his public allegations against Trump and those around him. Early this week, he tweeted a photograph of Cohen and Rumaihi, taken on the day of the December 2016 Trump Tower meeting.
Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Thani was one of a number of senior foreign officials who visited transition headquarters at Trump Tower between the November election and January inauguration. Requested by Qatar, the session followed a meeting between then-candidate Trump and Qatari Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2016. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton canceled a separately scheduled meeting with the ruler due to what her campaign said was a scheduling conflict.
Qatar, whose natural gas resources and small population have made it the richest per capita country in the world, is home to the Middle East headquarters of U.S. Central Command and a major U.S. air base where 10,000 American troops are stationed. It is a substantial purchaser of U.S. defense equipment and a major investor in this country. Its government was deeply interested in continuing close relations, and there was, the people knowledgeable about the meeting said, a lot to talk about at the Dec. 12 Trump Tower meeting. These people spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about sensitive issues.
Rumaihi was one of several Qatari officials accompanying the minister. Five days earlier, he had first encountered Cohen at a breakfast fundraiser in New York, where businessmen and transition officials were chatting about the new administration and exchanging contact information. The two also met later in the week at a New York hotel restaurant, where Cohen discussed Trump’s plans to solicit investment in a massive U.S. domestic infrastructure program.
Rumaihi told him that Qatar expected to invest in the program, and Cohen offered to help find projects for Qatar to sponsor, in exchange for a $1 million up-front fee.
Rumaihi, these people said, declined to pay.
The subject came up again at Trump Tower, when Rumaihi and Cohen, neither of whom attended the meeting between the foreign minister and Flynn, chatted outside.
The next day in Doha, the Qatari capital, the government announced it would invest$10 billion in the infrastructure program.
Four months later, on the eve of Trump’s first presidential trip abroad to Saudi Arabia, Qatar’s main rival in the Persian Gulf neighborhood, Saudi Arabia announced it would invest $20 billion in the U.S. infrastructure fund.
It was immediately following Trump’s trip to Riyadh that the Saudis, along with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt, said they were severing relations with Qatar and instituting a blockade of its territory. Qatar’s more eclectic and liberal foreign and domestic policies had long irritated its neighbors in the region, and Trump’s visit had apparently convinced the Saudis that he would take their side in a dispute.
Trump tweeted his support for the Saudi-led move, saying he had heard in Riyadh about Qatar’s support for terrorism. It was not until September, just before his meeting with Tamim, that Trump was convinced by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to take a more balanced view of the situation.
Since then, the president has repeatedly called, to no apparent avail, on all parties to the Gulf dispute to settle their differences and focus on uniting to fight the Islamic State and other terrorist groups.
But the diplomatic conflict among them persists, with the Saudis, Emiratis and Qataris each spending millions in this country on lobbyists, public relations groups and campaigns to denigrate each other and showcase their close relations with the United States.
