Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 10/28/26: UAE Secretly Helping Houthis Against Saudis, Kushner Lawsuit Over Bribery Allegations

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10/28/26: UAE Secretly Helping Houthis Against Saudis, Kushner Lawsuit Over Bribery Allegations · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

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  Speaker 1: newsletter at the top for free today. Well, per usual,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: our own.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Ryan Grimm has new reporting over at Dropsite. And this
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  Speaker 2: time it is on the UAE and the Yemen conflict. Ryan,
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  Speaker 2: what do you have for us?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is a news story with my colleague
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  Speaker 3: at Dropsite, Iona Craig, that according to four sources with
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  Speaker 3: knowledge of the situation, the United Arab Emirates, which is
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  Speaker 3: a staunch ally of Israel and the United States, has
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  Speaker 3: been covertly assisting Ansar Allah, which is a staunch ally
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  Speaker 3: of Iran. They're also known as the Houthis. All this
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  Speaker 3: is in their war against Saudi Arabia inside Yemen. So
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  Speaker 3: two sources said that the assistance involved direct communication between
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  Speaker 3: between the UAE and Ansar Allah. All four sources said
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  Speaker 3: that the militias inside Yemen that have been backed by
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  Speaker 3: the UAE have been providing intelligence and targeting assistance to
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  Speaker 3: Ansar Allah. A Yemeni source familiar with this back channel
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  Speaker 3: told us, quote, the UAE has passed a significant amount
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  Speaker 3: of intelligence to the Sana'a-based government. The line of communication
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  Speaker 3: between the two sides remains open. Ansar Allah has established
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  Speaker 3: their own channels of communication internally with military commanders who
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  Speaker 3: remain loyal to the UAE. The sources required anonymity because
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  Speaker 3: they are not authorized to speak publicly about the arrangement.
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  Speaker 3: This arrangement is extraordinary because the UAE is directly aiding
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  Speaker 3: one of its chief regional opponents. The UAE and Ansar
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  Speaker 3: Allah are fierce ideological enemies with directly opposing geopolitical goals.
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  Speaker 3: The UAE is allied with the U.S. and Israel, while
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  Speaker 3: Ansar Allah, as I said, is a close ally of Iran. However,
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  Speaker 3: When it comes to Yemen, their interests overlap to an extent,
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  Speaker 3: producing the classic enemy of my enemy situation. Earlier this year,
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  Speaker 3: the UAE was sidelined in Yemen by Saudi Arabia, so
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  Speaker 3: they stand to regain a strategic foothold in Yemen in
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  Speaker 3: this current conflict. Some of the sources said the assistance
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  Speaker 3: from the UAE is limited to the conflict inside Yemen
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  Speaker 3: and does not include help with intelligence and targeting inside
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  Speaker 3: Saudi Arabia. Ansar Allah has conducted attacks inside Saudi Arabia
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  Speaker 3: including strikes on their main airport recently. Ansar Allah in
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  Speaker 3: recent months has been remarkably effective at targeting commanders among
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  Speaker 3: the Saudi-backed fighters and in anticipating the movements of their forces.
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  Speaker 3: Two rounds of precision strikes on October 7th and October
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  Speaker 3: 2nd at the coalition military base west of Aden put
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  Speaker 3: this on display. One hit the doorway to the office
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  Speaker 3: of the Saudi commander, though he was not present. Another
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  Speaker 3: hit brand new military vehicles, that were brought to the
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  Speaker 3: base a few hours earlier.
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  Speaker 1: Now, the U.S.
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  Speaker 3: Knows this is going on. Recently, a senior American official
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  Speaker 3: warned the Emiratis that the U.S. had learned of the
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  Speaker 3: covert assistance being provided and urged that it be ended.
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  Speaker 3: Sources indicated the intelligence assistance, however, was ongoing. UAE Ambassador
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  Speaker 3: to the U.S. Yusuf Al-Oteba did not respond to my
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  Speaker 3: requests for comment. Ansar Allah, meanwhile, denied that the alliance
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  Speaker 3: had come together. Mohammed al-Bukhari, a senior Ansar Allah official,
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  Speaker 3: denied that the UAE was assisting Ansar Allah, but insisted
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  Speaker 3: the Emiratis were committed to neutrality.
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  Speaker 1: He told Dropsite. And we could put this up here.
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  Speaker 3: The UAE has not provided any form of support to Yemen,
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  Speaker 3: neither against Saudi Arabia nor against its proxies within Yemen.
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  Speaker 3: According to our information, the UAE remains committed to to
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  Speaker 3: neutrality and has refused to become re-involved in the aggression
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  Speaker 3: against Yemen alongside Saudi Arabia, despite persistent efforts by Saudi
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  Speaker 3: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to persuade it to join. Now,
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  Speaker 3: last month, Ansar Allah launched a blitz to the Red
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  Speaker 3: Sea coast, leaving them in control of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait,
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  Speaker 3: a key alternate route to the blockaded Strait of Hormuz.
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  Speaker 3: The Saudis have unsuccessfully tried to regain the territory and
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  Speaker 3: since then have been increasingly bombing Sana'a and other Ansar
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  Speaker 3: Allah-controlled areas of Yemen, while Ansar Allah has conducted strikes
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  Speaker 3: on Saudi Arabia. Beginning in 2015, the Emiratis and the
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  Speaker 3: Saudis were allied as part of a coalition backing the
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  Speaker 3: Yemeni government after Ansar Allah took over Sana'a in 2014.
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  Speaker 3: What is left of the Yemeni government, commonly referred to
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  Speaker 3: as the Internationally Recognized Government or IRG, remains largely based
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  Speaker 3: in a hotel in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. But early in
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  Speaker 3: the conflict, the UAE's aims and ambitions were at odds
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  Speaker 3: with the Saudis, causing division in the anti-Houthi side. In
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  Speaker 3: December of last year, that friction resulted in the clashes
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  Speaker 3: between UAE-backed forces and Saudi-backed military units in the south
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  Speaker 3: that led to the UAE effectively packing up and leaving Yemen. Now,
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  Speaker 3: earlier this month, The Guardian reported that the UAE was
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  Speaker 3: re-entering the Yemeni conflict on the side of Saudi Arabia
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  Speaker 3: by agreeing to resume some payments to some of the
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  Speaker 3: forces it had backed. That backing would most likely come
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  Speaker 3: through supporting the so-called Giants Brigades, a predominantly Salafi militia
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  Speaker 3: ideologically opposed to the Houthis, with an estimated 20,000 to
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  Speaker 3: 30,000 largely Southern fighters. The Southern Giants are currently battling
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  Speaker 3: for control of the Khabib mountain range overlooking the Bab al-Mandeb.
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  Speaker 3: This potential support, however, has not been reflected on the battlefield,
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  Speaker 3: a Yemeni source said. Many commanders within the giant's brigades
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  Speaker 3: have deceived the Saudi-backed forces, the sources said, repeatedly abandoning
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  Speaker 3: their positions without any engagement or confrontation. A source told
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  Speaker 3: us that military unit commanders affiliated with the UAE-backed Southern
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  Speaker 3: Transitional Council, the STC, have refrained from fighting the Houthis,
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  Speaker 3: effectively stalling battlefronts, particularly Yemeni. in the southern governance of
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  Speaker 3: al-Dali and Laj that are bordering the Taiz government, and
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  Speaker 3: they frequently withdraw from their positions unexpectedly. A UAE-based senior
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  Speaker 3: official categorically stated to Dropside that STC has no channels
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  Speaker 3: of communication with the Houthis, and they denied that STC
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  Speaker 3: was refusing to fight Ansar Allah in the south. Quote,
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  Speaker 3: the SEC has publicly and consistently maintained that the southern
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  Speaker 3: armed forces will not participate in military operations in the north.
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  Speaker 3: This should not be confused with an unwillingness to confront
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  Speaker 3: the Houthis.
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  Speaker 1: Quite the opposite.
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  Speaker 3: Any Houthi advance towards the south will be met with resistance.
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  Speaker 3: It is important to distinguish between our policy of not
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  Speaker 3: engaging in military operations in the north and our firm
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  Speaker 3: commitment to defending the south against the Houthis, he added. Yet,
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  Speaker 3: In an indication of both how the UAE operates in
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  Speaker 3: Yemen and sentiment in the south towards the Saudi-backed IRG,
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  Speaker 3: when asked by Dropsite which of the fighting groups formerly
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  Speaker 3: funded and commanded by the UAE would likely be willing
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  Speaker 3: to provide intelligence to the Houthis for targeting IRG forces,
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  Speaker 3: an individual close to the STC quipped, quote, probably all
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  Speaker 3: of them. Ansar Allah's al-Bukhari, in his statement to Dropsite,
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  Speaker 3: elaborated further. He says, Saudi Arabia was the one that
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  Speaker 3: forced the UAE out of the coalition waging war on
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  Speaker 3: Yemen in a humiliating manner, effectively shooting itself in the foot.
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  Speaker 3: Given this experience, it is only natural that the UAE
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  Speaker 3: would refuse to rejoin the Saudi-led coalition in its aggression
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  Speaker 3: against Yemen, despite pressure from Saudi Arabia, the United States,
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  Speaker 3: and Israel, particularly after Yemen demonstrated its remarkable ability to
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  Speaker 3: to defend itself and impose a principle of blockade for
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  Speaker 3: blockade and escalation for escalation. So even as al-Bukhari is
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  Speaker 3: denying the alliance, those are rather conciliatory remarks toward the UAE,
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  Speaker 3: which Ansar Allah has enormous enmity toward. He goes on, however,
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  Speaker 3: this does not mean that an alliance exists between the
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  Speaker 3: UAE and Yemen out of spite toward Saudi Arabia or
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  Speaker 3: as a means of settling scores with it. As for
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  Speaker 3: reports circulating about an attempt by the UAE to contact
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  Speaker 3: us to form an alliance against Saudi Arabia, they are
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  Speaker 3: entirely baseless. Saudi Arabia does not need to beg countries
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  Speaker 3: around the world to defend it, nor does it need
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  Speaker 3: to worry about the possibility of a future Yemeni-Emirati alliance
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  Speaker 3: against it. All it needs to do is agree to
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  Speaker 3: end the war and lift the blockade on both sides.
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  Speaker 3: This is the only genuine way out of this conflict, unquote. Now,
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  Speaker 3: al-Bukhari's reference there to, quote, the possibility of a future
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  Speaker 3: Yemeni-Emirati alliance, contains a thinly veiled suggestion. Saudi Arabia, he says,
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  Speaker 3: need not worry about such an alliance as long as they.
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  Speaker 1: End the war and lift the blockade.
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  Speaker 3: If they do not do so, however, he's saying, the
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  Speaker 3: threat of such an alliance hangs over the conflict. So
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  Speaker 3: we posted this story, Emily, yesterday, and there was an
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  Speaker 3: interesting reaction to it. On the one hand, a lot
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  Speaker 3: of people were saying, well, of course, this is how
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  Speaker 3: the UAE operates. We've assumed that this was the case.
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  Speaker 3: While some kind of partisans of Ansar Allah have said,
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  Speaker 3: we don't believe this to be the case, because to them,
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  Speaker 3: it's embarrassing that they would be cooperating with an American ally,
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  Speaker 3: an Israeli ally. And the Emiratis have carried out probably,
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  Speaker 3: let's not compare atrocities, but the Emiratis have carried out
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  Speaker 3: some of the most disgusting and outrageous crimes against humanity
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  Speaker 3: inside Yemen over the past decade.
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  Speaker 1: Including there was this.
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  Speaker 3: Associated Press investigation into a torture dungeon that the Emiratis
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  Speaker 3: were operating where they were literally roasting detainees over a spit,
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  Speaker 3: like the most extreme forms of torture that you could
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  Speaker 3: possibly imagine. And so the idea of even a short-term
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  Speaker 3: alliance of convenience with a country that was doing that
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  Speaker 3: in Yemen would just be, you know, is just politically...
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  Speaker 3: untenable to discuss publicly. So what you have is you
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  Speaker 3: have the major actor you know, publicly denying that this
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  Speaker 3: is going on. But what I can say is that
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  Speaker 3: we would not have gone to press with this investigation
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  Speaker 3: if we were not 100% certain that this was happening.
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  Speaker 3: And it raises real questions about the United States relationship
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  Speaker 3: with the UAE.
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  Speaker 1: The U.S.
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  Speaker 3: Is in an open war with Iran, has a ceasefire
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  Speaker 3: with the Houthis. And here is the UAE working with
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  Speaker 3: the same organization that Iran is working with against our allies,
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  Speaker 3: our other quote unquote ally, Saudi Arabia.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: So what do you make of what this means for
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  Speaker 3: our relations in the region there?
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  Speaker 2: Well, that's what I was going to pick up on
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  Speaker 2: with you is just you're reporting that the U.S. is
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  Speaker 2: aware of this. Can you tell us any more about
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  Speaker 2: how do we know with what confidence the U.S. believes
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  Speaker 2: this is happening? Are they fully confident this is happening?
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  Speaker 2: How long have they known? What can you tell us
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  Speaker 2: about that?
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  Speaker 3: My understanding is that they know that this assistance goes
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  Speaker 3: back to before that blitz to the to the coast
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  Speaker 3: that Ansar Allah pulled off and they they're confident about it.
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  Speaker 3: and that they have conveyed to the Emiratis, hey, we
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  Speaker 3: know this is happening. This is against American interests in
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  Speaker 3: the region. Now, from the Emirati perspective, they don't see
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  Speaker 3: this as, they're not giving help inside Saudi Arabia. So
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  Speaker 3: they're not helping target the airports, not helping target the
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  Speaker 3: oil infrastructure. But what they're helping do is push Saudi
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  Speaker 3: forces Saudi-backed forces out of the region and giving more
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  Speaker 3: space then for their own forces. The idea that there's
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  Speaker 3: going to be some type of long-term coalition with Ansar
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  Speaker 3: Allah is silly. That's headed for confrontation. But my understanding
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  Speaker 3: is that the hope among the Emiratis would be that
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  Speaker 3: they would then remain in control of a swath of
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  Speaker 3: southern Yemen and reach some form of detente Because, you know,
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  Speaker 3: there was a North and South Yemen up until about, what, 1990.
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  Speaker 3: And there's a Southern separatist movement that wants to go
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  Speaker 3: back to there being two Yemen's. And so they're hoping
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  Speaker 3: that they can get to that sort of a stable
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  Speaker 3: situation and they can focus their energy instead on the
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  Speaker 3: Horn of Africa, where the UAE has all sorts of
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  Speaker 3: interests in commodities and port infrastructure and the kind of
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  Speaker 3: flow of goods, money and minerals.
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  Speaker 2: And do you think this makes it us more or
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  Speaker 2: less likely or Trump more or less likely to escalate
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  Speaker 2: American intervention after the midterms? I would assume less.
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  Speaker 1: It's certainly another sign of the wheels coming off.
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  Speaker 3: But the Trump administration seems intent on going back to war, period.
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  Speaker 2: And bear in mind, aren't they building a Trump golf
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  Speaker 2: course in Abu Dhabi right now? And isn't MBZ also
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  Speaker 2: leveraged with Kushner?
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  Speaker 1: Big time.
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  Speaker 3: In fact, we're going to be talking to Matt Cole
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  Speaker 3: in a moment about the roots of that relationship. A
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  Speaker 3: lot of it comes back to Yemen. MBS was the
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  Speaker 3: minister of defense in Saudi Arabia before he became crown prince.
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  Speaker 3: And he, in launching this war against Yemen, raised his stature.
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  Speaker 3: And then in 2017, he was able to basically violently
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  Speaker 3: oust MBN, who was in line to be king and
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  Speaker 3: was crown prince at the time, made himself king. crown
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  Speaker 3: prince and he did so with the aggressive assistance of
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  Speaker 3: the uae of mbz so mbs was put into place
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  Speaker 3: significantly by mbz uh and now here they are um
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  Speaker 3: you know at you know effectively in a proxy war
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: with each other absolutely insane There's a new book out
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  Speaker 3: making explosive revelations by investigative journalist Matthew Cole. It's called
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: Princes and Thieves, Jared Kushner and Mohammed bin Zayed's secret
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: plot to remake the Middle East. Now, you may have
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: seen an excerpt of it making the rounds this weekend
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: in Vanity Fair, which focused on three slush funds that
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: Matthew Cole reported had been created by by both Saudi
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: Arabia and the UAE, Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed,
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: that Jared Kushner had access to and was able to
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  Speaker 3: distribute funds from. Now, Matthew Cole joins us now, my
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: former colleague and the author of this new book.
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  Speaker 1: Matt, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me, Ryan.
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  Speaker 1: I want to make one correction. There were two funds,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: not three. There was a third account. We can get
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: into that later. But in terms of pools of money
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: that were available for Jared Kushner, there were two. What
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: was the third one? The third one was in the
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: course of the negotiations, the secret relationship and negotiations going
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: on between Kushner, Israel and the UAE. Kushner negotiated a
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: sort of a rainy day fund for Israel. the UAE
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: to get defense help from Israel in case there was
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: ever an attack from Iran. And actually, it's important to
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: note that all he did was, there's no suggestion that
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: his involvement in that, there was anything wrong with it
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: at all. It was one of the reasons why it's
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: in the book was to indicate that the mechanism that
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: they were using was the central bank, which is the
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: same mechanism that the US government uses when it supplies
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: money for Weapons and defense items that it gives to Israel.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: And so it was in that same mechanism that what
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: I call the beta account was set up. And so
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: and one of the other reasons I was in there
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: is that there is some indication now, you know, that
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: happened in 2018, that negotiation and money and agreement between Israel,
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: the UAE and Kushner at the time. We know now
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: from the spring during after the war in Iran started that.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Israel provided part of the Iron Dome to the UAE
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: and operated it for the UAE in the UAE. And
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: so it's possible that the money that was in that
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: account paid for that. It would make it would be
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: very logical. Right.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: And what's interesting about all of this is that while
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: it's been met with a lot of shock, these kinds
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: of slush funds range from the fairly mundane, normal parts
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: of kind of business in the Gulf. to kind of
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: more extraordinary when they become more for the personal benefit
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: of particular officials. But the book has gotten an enormous
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: amount of attention. You know, Chris Hayes covered it. You know,
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: you were on Chris Hayes. People should check out that interview.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: John Stewart recently, the New York Times, and you can
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: put E3 up on the screen, New York Times recently
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: discussed the book, calling it the revelations, you know, quite
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: head-turning and urging Congress to, to take a closer look
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: at what you found here to try to pull on
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: some more of these threads. Now, before we get into
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: some of this, of course, let's talk about the reaction
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: from Jared Kushner. We can put up E4 here. His
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: lawyer has threatened to launch some sort of defamation suit.
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: I don't know if he has done that yet, but
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: that is a threat that's out there.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: Let me take the opportunity to say that Jared Kushner
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: and his lawyer unequivocally and deny everything that's in the
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: book that they have. They said all of it is untrue.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: They've described the reporting as crazy, insane. I think the
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  Speaker 1: last one that I read from Mr. Kushner was that
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: he thought that this demonstrated or suggested sinister intent. And so,
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  Speaker 1: you know, his we went to him before we obviously
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  Speaker 1: before we published the Um, they denied everything. I sent him,
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  Speaker 1: I think, you know, 50 or 60 questions. Um, every
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: one of them was denied. We printed.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: And we can actually link to that because his lawyer
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: posted those questions and responses.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: So we can link to that in the description. That's right. And,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: and so he denies everything. Um, we, uh, printed all
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: of those denials. The book reflects those denials. After he
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: provided those denials through a lawyer, I went back to
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: some of my sources, my key sources, to discuss it
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  Speaker 1: with them and was unmoved by his denials. I stand
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: by the story. My sources are very, very firm on
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: the information that's in the book. And I believe that
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: what's in the book is the truth. And in fact,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: I think what we're going to find over time is
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: that this is really just the tip of the iceberg.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: You know, there's the we can get into the details
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: of there's a lot of different stories. And obviously, the
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: bank accounts and the hacking has been explosive. But it's
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: really part of a larger story of how Kushner ran
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: a shadow foreign policy from the White House and found
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: himself in sort of like a real life Game of
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Thrones in between three very wealthy Gulf Arab rulers at
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: a time in which His family was facing an enormous debt,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: and he was trying to find a lasting solution to
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: And so we reached out to Jared Kushner. He didn't
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: respond to our request. We invited him onto the program.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: and that invitation.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Maintains.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: The White House forwarded their public statements to us. So
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: we reached out to them for comments. Stephen Chung, for instance,
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: said this BS Vanity Fair article comes from a book
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: that is complete fiction and was fabricated from the warped
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: mind of failed spy thriller writer He presents no evidence
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: or even a shred of documentation, just mysterious words from
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: unnamed sources.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Total fake news.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: Now, Vanity Fair noticeably has left its article up despite
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: the demand for retraction. Simon & Schuster is the publisher
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: of this book. Before we get into it, I want
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: to talk about this particular property deal that led to
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: the kind of uncovering by the Qataris of this slush fund.
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: Right before we get into that, can you talk about
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: what the fact-checking and legal review process was? For Simon &
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: Schuster to publish, I think Jon Stewart called it a
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: big swing. For Simon & Schuster to publish a big
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: swing like this, they don't do it haphazardly.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: What can you tell us, without.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: Revealing any sources or kind of internal reporting, what can
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: you tell us about what kind of fact-check and legal
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: review process this went through?
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Well, we went through an extensive one. We got both
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: fact-checking and probably the most thorough legal review I've ever
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: had in 25 years as a reporter. This doesn't come
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: out of nowhere. I built this from five years of
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: reporting and another seven or eight years prior to that,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: beginning when you and I were colleagues at The Intercept.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: This is a methodical brick-by-brick, built on a foundation brick-by-brick,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: and it's You know, I had the book, I think,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: includes over 50 sources. And so, you know, we held
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: I held myself to a very high standard, the normal
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: standard I've held myself to my entire career. And we're
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: very confident that what's in the book is absolutely true.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: And in fact, you know, again, I keep saying this.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: It's it's it's not just true. It's underselling it. I mean,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: I was conservative in what I didn't put in that
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: I couldn't verify or didn't have enough sourcing to to
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: justify putting into the book.
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: And so let's put up E8 here, because I want
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: to start with this extraordinary real estate transaction. This is
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: a story that I was part of actually reporting back
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: at the Intercept. Our headline at the time was Jared
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: Kushner tried and failed to get a half billion dollar
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: bailout from Qatar. And what's important about continuing to follow
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: the money is that failure turned into success, as you
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: ultimately found. And there was some reporting over the past
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: several years that kind of alluded to how this unfolded.
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: So tell us about this building, this 666 Fifth Avenue
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: that Kushner bought, I believe it was in 2007, and
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: how it ended up playing a role, such a pivotal
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: role in our foreign policy in the Gulf and also leads.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: To some of what you uncovered.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: So, you know, the 666 Fifth Avenue was the Kushner
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Company's trophy purchase in 2007. It was part of a
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: plan to sort of remake and relaunder the Kushner Company's
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: image because Jared Kushner's father, Charlie Kushner, had gone to
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: prison for tax fraud and sexual blackmail. And it was
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: Remaking is part of that process. Jared took over the face,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: took over as the face of the company. They buy
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: this huge property, which at the time was the most
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: expensive single building purchase in the country. And they bought
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: it right before the market dropped in 2008 and it
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: became a albatross. And so very quickly after they bought
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: that building, they were looking at a massive debt of
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: over a billion dollars. Fast forward to Trump winning office.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: The debt loan, the loan on 666 was due, I believe,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: in 2019, early 2019. And so they were facing this
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: and it had the potential to wipe out the family's wealth,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: certainly the company. I mean, they just didn't have the money.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Badly underwater at that point. Very badly underwater. It wasn't
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: worth anywhere near it. In fact, one of its owners,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: one of the minority owners in the building at the
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: time said that it was worth more as dirt. The
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: dirt underneath it was worth more than the building itself. And, um,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: and so he came in and that's valuable dirt, but
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: so he, he comes into office. Um, he comes into
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: the white house as underqualified gets the job, um, because
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: he's the son-in-law and his family's in debt, big debt.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: And so there is this pressure that's there from the
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: beginning and the report that you pulled up, which was
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: the effort, uh, for him to try to sell it, um,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: the family to try to sell it, I should say.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: The building just before Trump comes into office, but while
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: he's running and after he wins, it goes awry. And
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: that's because the Qatari official, former official who they were
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: trying to sell it to, was nervous about how it
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: would look if they were to put in $ 500 million.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: So he says no and nixes it. And what transpires
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: over the next several months, again, some of the reporting
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: that you did while we were at the intercept together
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: and is cited in the book. And I confirmed independently
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: is that even while, um, Trump, uh, Kushner was in
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: the white house, um, in early 2017, his father is
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: desperately trying to get the Qataris to, to pay for
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: the building. Now let's bring ourselves up to the late spring,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: early summer of, of 2017. MBZ, the leader of the
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: UAE and MBS, the, uh, sort of king-in-waiting who's trying
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: to move Iran up towards the throne from Saudi Arabia,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: decide that they want to have a blockade against Qatar.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: And at that moment, as the reporting indicates and my
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: reporting shows and other reporting has backed up, Kushner essentially
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: greenlit the blockade without anyone else in the U.S. government knowing.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Kushner and Trump on one side and Secretary Tillerson and
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Defense Secretary Mattis on the other about this blockade.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: There's a 10,000 member, 10,000 service member base in Qatar,
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: which is now being blockaded by our allies. So let's
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: give people that context.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that your readers, your viewers know. But, you know,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar all have U.S. troops
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: and presence. They're they're allies. And so this was a
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: conflict that arises between, you know, two allies ganging up
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: against a third. And so there's this civil war over
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: in this fight inside the administration at the senior levels
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: about what to do and how to respond. And one
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: of the things that was slightly reported, but it was
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: missed at the time, was that part of the blockade,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: one of the things that was going to happen in
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: the blockade was that the Saudis were going to roll
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: militarily over the border into Qatar, with a UAE support
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: in the air to try to overthrow the Qatari emir,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: Tamim al-Thani. And so that only gets prevented because Secretary
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Tillerson phones MBS, who had not yet become crown prince,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: and says, absolutely not, you cannot do this. And MBS
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: backs down. From the Qatari perspective, they were aware and
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: understood that Tillerson essentially had prevented them from being from
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: a military incursion by the Saudis. OK, so that's sort
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: of the start. At the same time, OK, and what
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: the book lays out is around the same time that
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: the blockade begins. MBZ and MBS have agreed to and
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: started initially providing these pools of money into bank accounts
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: for Saudi in coordination with Jared Kushner that he's going
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: to manage. There are a lot of questions about exactly when,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: was it in exchange for the blockade? Was it coincidental?
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: That's something that we don't know. What I know is
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: that the money began then. So then you get a
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: sort of standoff that goes on inside the government, inside
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: the US government. Kushner and Trump Trump is saying publicly,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: we're with the Saudis and we're with the Emiratis. Qataris
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: are bad. They fund the Muslim Brotherhood. They fund terrorism.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Tillerson and Mattis are saying, hey, let's bring the temperature down.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: The solution is diplomatic. We don't need a war. We're
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: all allies here. They have 10,000 troops of ours and
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: a very important operating base for our wars in the
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Middle East and in Afghanistan. We need them. We have
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: to settle this, you know, sort of privately. and gentlemanly.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: And in that time, the Qatari government and royal family
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: discovers that MBS and MBZ have started, they have this
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: financial arrangement with Jared Kushner. And so now they have
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: a question of what do they do with this information?
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: And so they're mulling it and they're sifting when they're
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out what to do. And as one
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: source of mine who was quoted in the book, former
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: US intelligence officer said to me, You know, what the
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Qataris were doing is they kept on saying to the
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Trump administration, what do we have to do to resolve
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: this blockade? And the answer they got was never direct.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: There would be another conversation that would come separately, another
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: message that would come back from the Kushner family saying,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: we have this building that needs to be bailed out.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: We have this property that needs to be bought. And
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: the Qataris were sort of saying, no, thanks, the building
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: is not worth anything. We're not interested. And they would
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: go back to the White House a few weeks or
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: months later and say, what do we have to do
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: to resolve this blockade? And again, the message would come
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: back to Doha. The Kushner family has this building that
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: needs to be saved. And so then in March of 2018,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: Trump fires Secretary Tillerson. And that's the moment when the
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: royal family in Doha loses their mind. They're panicked. From
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: their perspective, the only person who is standing in the
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: way of a MBS or an MBZ-led incursion into Qatar
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: is Secretary Tillerson. And so now they have to make
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: a decision. And what the book lays out, according to
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: four people who were involved– or had some involvement or
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: knowledge about the deal, they decided that they were going
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: to secretly arrange for 666 to be purchased by essentially
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: a front. So they have plausible deniability and sort of,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: because from their perspective, the Trump administration and Jared Kushner
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: had extorted them from their view. And this was the
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: only way they were going to preserve themselves. And so
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: you have this extraordinary moment where, you know, officially, the
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: company that purchased the 666 and bails them out in
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: the spring and into the summer of 2018 is a
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: large Canadian real estate company of which the Qatari Sovereign
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Wealth Fund is a passive investor in one of their companies.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: It happens to be the company that purchased the building.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: And so it's hard not to look at the sequence
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: of events and the reporting I have and not see
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: this as some form of extortion. Now, I want to
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: point out, Kushner denies all of this. He says there
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: was no quid pro quo, that he had no financial
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: interest in the building. I think what the book lays out,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: I think what common sense tells us, of course, is
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: that his family was facing a potentially, you know, financially
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: fatal debt. And at a time when he found himself
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: negotiating between two sides of, you know, let's just call
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: it a Cold War and a standoff in which he
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: was receiving or had entered into these secret financial arrangements
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: with one half of that party. And so it's, you know,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: it's extraordinary, to be honest with you.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: And just to buttress a little bit of that particular
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: element of the reporting, the story I put up a
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: moment ago from June 2017, interviewed a Qatari source who,
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: and I'll read the last paragraph here, I wrote, we wrote,
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: had the Qataris known where things were heading diplomatically, said
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: a source in the region, they'd have happily ponied up
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: the money, even knowing that it was a losing investment. Quote,
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: it would have been much cheaper, he said. So in
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: other words, the Qataris told us at the time, we
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: thought this was a business pitch. We thought the Kushner
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: companies was coming to us because we are real estate
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: investors and they had a real estate property. We didn't
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: realize at the time How much was at stake geopolitically?
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: If we had, we would have made the investment because
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: it would have been much cheaper than getting blockaded and
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: nearly invaded. So that's June 2017. Kushner obviously read this story,
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: but they were sending public signals by that time that
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: they understood what was going on. So it puts into
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: context this 2018 deal that is finally made by the
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: Qatari-backed real estate company.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: I want to offer just a little bit of nuance.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: The book does not lay out, my reporting does not
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: say that the blockade was permitted or that Kushner's support
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: of the blockade was because of the building not being
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: sold previously to the Qatari rejection of it, nor that
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: it was because he had entered into the secret agreement
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: with bank accounts with MBS and MBZ at the time.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: I only note that that the bank accounts and the
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: first money that starts to flow into these pools start around,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, within weeks of the announcement of the blockade.
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: And so talk a little bit about then these slush
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: funds that you identify. How did, you know, how do
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: we learn about these?
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Well, my first indication and tip came from a source who,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: was reporting and had questions about a Dutch government hack
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: into Jared Kushner's phone in or the discovery of a
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: hack of Jared Kushner's phone in late 2017. And I
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: first was told about it in mid 2020. And at
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: that point, source was was inquiring whether or not I
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: could help fill in some gaps or understanding about what
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: it could mean. And What it stemmed from was the
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Dutch had run an operation against the Russians. Eventually, they
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: ended up inside a Russian server controlled by the GRU.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: They see that Jared Kushner's phone's been hacked by the Russians.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: They ultimately decide that they're also going to hack Jared's
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: phone and look inside, see if they can recreate it.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: They're successful. They don't control the phone. They can see
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: his phone.
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: And there's a Russian GRU agent who gets flipped who's
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: involved in this.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: What happened there? Yeah, there was a GRU operative who
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: was traveling to the UK. The Dutch ran an operation
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: to stop them and give them an opportunity to work
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: for them or to end up in a UK prison.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: He agreed to cooperate. He provided them access to a
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: server in Rostov, Russia. evidence that Kushner's phone was being
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: monitored by the Russian service. And so they then decide,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: they make a decision that they're going to try to recreate,
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: figure out how the Russians got in. They do. They
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: eventually decide that they're going to maintain their ability to
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: look inside the phone. In the course of that, they
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: see Kushner's access to one of the bank accounts. In
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: the book, I describe this as a alpha account that's
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: held in the UAE. I want to stop here for
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: one second and just say that initially, as I report
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: in the book, initially this story seemed, was initially hard
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: to believe. Over a long period of time, I was
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: able to independently corroborate and verify from sources in other
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: parts of the world who actually initially didn't know anything
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: about the hack. They only knew about the bank accounts
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: and the financial arrangements. And so there was independent verification
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: on my end that had me going again from what to, whoa,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: maybe there's something here. And the reason why it took
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: five years is because it took a long time to
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: pull all the threads and stack up enough sourcing and
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: information to be very confident and details, verifiable details on
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: my end. And so they see this bank account. The
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Dutch are very perplexed. You have hundreds of millions of
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: dollars flowing into what I'll call the alpha account into
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: a bank, the first Abu Dhabi bank in a branch
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: in Dubai. And that money is coming in from Azerbaijan,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: which is very strange as far as the Dutch are concerned.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: And I want to just point out at this moment,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: the Dutch service focuses almost exclusively on on the GRU
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: and the Russians, right? They're a NATO ally. That's their
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: big enemy. That's where they pay attention. At the same time,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: you had the Trump-Russia hysteria in the U.S. And so
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: NATO was very concerned about Trump's policies, period, and view
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: towards NATO. He was very aggressive and not particularly friendly
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: when he came into office. And so one of the
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: questions that was arising for the Dutch was, you know,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: is this Russian money going to Jared Kushner or what,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: what is this about? Um, and so, and part of
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: it was because money was coming in from Azerbaijan. So
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: what I was able to uncover about that account was
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Azerbaijan was just a laundering point. And this first alpha
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: pool was a pool of money that was effectively, um,
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: paid for by MBS in Saudi Arabia, but managed in
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: the UAE by MBZ. And the account that, uh, Kushner
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: had access to. The Alpha account was actually a bank
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: account held and owned by a Emirati charity called Watani al-Emirat.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: That charity served as a front for secret UAE military
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: and intelligence covert operations. And so now the money is
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: sitting in this account. And what the Dutch see and
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: what I separately confirmed later is that Money from that
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: account goes out to people like Eric Prince, the founder
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: of Blackwater, to the Libyan renegade general, Khalifa Haftar. And
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: so Alpha looks like, and visually, if you will, but
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: also in the reporting, like a foreign policy fund, sort
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: of like Iran-Contra, where Kushner is working with the Emiratis
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: and the Saudis on their plan to effect change in
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: the Middle East and North Africa, to remake the Middle East,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: overthrow the government in Tripoli, for instance, in Libya, potentially,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: you know, bring in mercenaries to solve and fight the
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: war in Yemen against the Houthis, right? These are examples
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: of things that are going on and things that they
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: were trying to do. Now, let's pause here. Then there's
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: a separate account, the beta account. The beta account was
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: funded by MBZ for Jared. The words I use in
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: the in the book based on my sourcing is for
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: his personal benefit. Now, what the book does not have,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: what I am not reporting is whether Kushner took money
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: for his personal benefit from that account. And if so,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: how much? What I know is that the– and what
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: the book lays out is that the money was put in–
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: held in the Central Bank of Israel at Netanyahu's suggestion,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: serving essentially as a custodian for this secret account for Kushner.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: And it's open for interpretation as to what was done
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: with that money. The book lays out a mechanism in
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: which money was moving out of that account to other accounts.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: But that's where I lost its trail. And so combined– Sorry,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: go ahead.
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: One of the criticisms from Kushner and others has been,
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: that's just not how the Central Bank of Israel operates.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: What's the response to that? I'm really glad you asked.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: The claims that it's not true, it doesn't work that way,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: is an entire and I think intentional mischaracterization of what
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: I reported. What's in the book and what book lays
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: out is it makes it very clear that the central,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: the account, beta account was held in the central bank
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: specifically and for the intent of hiding its true purpose,
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: which was it was a UAE government-funded money that goes
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: into the Israeli Central Bank, which only serves for a
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: government purpose. It does not hold personal accounts. The book
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: does not describe the beta account as a personal account
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: in Jared's name. It had a whole mechanism that was
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: set up that Netanyahu was involved with in helping to
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: move the money out. And so it's about putting the
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: pool of money in a place that was deniable. And
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: it's about how the money flows out, some of the
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: details I have, some of which I don't, and where
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: it ends up in. So the notion that it can't
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: be is just false.
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: Second criticism is that you haven't personally seen the financial ledgers,
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: the documents yourself.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't know where that comes from. I'm not
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: going to say what I have seen or what I've
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: not seen. Oh, sorry.
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: Kushner's criticism was you have not published, to be more precise.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: Financial ledgers. And that's absolutely right. One of the costs
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: of being an investigative reporter, and you know this well, Ryan,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: is that we rely on anonymous sources. It's the bread
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: and butter of American investigative journalism since Watergate. And in
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: this particular case, and I think readers should get the
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: book and read the book. And it'll be abundantly clear
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: that this is a story that has sexual blackmail, murder, assassins,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: and mercenaries. This is real stuff. And the sources who
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: are willing to talk and share what they know, share
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: what they have or may not have, put their lives
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: on the line. And so one of the things that
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: I had to, one of the calculations that I had
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: to make, and I think every journalist in this situation
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: has to make, is how much to reveal based on
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: what you have without jeopardizing the safety and the identity
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: of the people who are sharing the information. So where
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: it may not feel like there's enough there to feel
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: like someone has seen something or I've seen something, that's
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: a calculation that I've had to make, but I absolutely
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: stand behind everything that's in this book. I'm not concerned
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: at all about his truthfulness. In fact, my biggest concern
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: was that I didn't publish enough of the truth that
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: there is more that I wasn't able to get to
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: in time.
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: Well, I think one thing people need to understand is
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: that this is the beginning and not the end of
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: any investigation. As the New York Times says, this is
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: something that lawmakers ought to look closer into, and I
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: expect that they will. The book is called Princes and Thieves.
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: The subhead, Jared Kushner and Mohammed bin Zayed's secret plot
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: to remake the Middle East. Everyone should read it for themselves.
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: Matthew Cole, thank you so much for joining us. Really
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: appreciate it. Ryan, thank you so much for having me on.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: Yep, you got it.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: Ryan, you think I can get you to root for
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: the Brewers?
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, why not? That's exciting, right?
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you like to see a small market thrive.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: In this economy.
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: Jeremy's from there, so that's close enough.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: Do it for Jeremy.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: Both of my colleagues.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: Big, big show today. And this is going to get
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: out late to people. We had a total tech meltdown
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: in the studio today, which is why you're seeing all
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: kinds of different things happening. But we just appreciate your patience.
• 45:03
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• 45:08
  Speaker 2: floating the fish opportunity that is very much on the
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• 45:16
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• 45:27
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• 45:50
  Speaker 1: That's fair.
• 45:51
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  Speaker 3: that'll be fun.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you for your patience. Crystal and Sagar will be
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  Speaker 2: back tomorrow with more breaking points.