here's a little quiz
can you identify these three gentlemen
if your idea of a fun party is
identifying recent lesser-known
government officials then this is a fun
party right
you got it know who these guys are
yes they are all former u.s treasury
secretaries one treasury secretary from
the george w bush years and the other
two are from the obama years
if you got that congratulations you're
going to kill it at your next
pub quiz trivia night right
of course one of the things that
treasury secretaries do is they have to
travel around the world to discuss
financial stuff occasionally for example
they have to travel to the middle east
to the persian gulf countries to talk
oil prices or to encourage investment in
the united states or whatever
these are all photos of those three
treasury secretaries visiting the
persian gulf states but there aren't all
that many photos of them because there
weren't all that many of those trips
those three guys over the space of a
decade over two different
administrations all three of them
together visited the persian gulf states
eight times
eight times in total between all of them
now how about this guy you recognize him
a little more recent
guy who held the same job donald trump's
treasury secretary steven mnuchin during
trump's one term during the four years
he was treasury secretary you know how
many times he went to the gulf states
at least 18.
the last three guys went eight times in
total between them
mnuchin went 18 times just himself
that's a 12-hour transatlantic flight to
visit his friends in the gulf probably
more often than you visited your friends
who live across town
i mean his three predecessors eight
times combined over a decade
mnuchin 18 times in four years
why is that
well new reporting from the new york
times suggests one answer to that
question treasury secretary stephen
mnuchin was visiting saudi arabia and
united arab emirates and qatar and
kuwait to scare up new investments
for himself
not for the united states which is a
thing that's called self-dealing and
it's a thing that we're not supposed to
do
last month the new york times reported
on truly remarkable sums of cash that
the various gulf monarchies had invested
in private projects being run by steven
mnuchin as well as projects for trump's
son-in-law white house advisor jared
kushner
and the monarchy started paying out this
fund these funds almost as soon as those
guys left the trump administration last
year after trump was out of office the
saudis gave steven mnuchin a billion
dollars for his new investment fund they
gave jared kushner 2 billion
and they did this even though saudi
arabia's own investment advisors
explicitly recommended against it in
writing because they determined that
kushner had no experience he had no
other investors their due diligence on
kushner's operations showed that they
are quote
unsatisfactory in all aspects
but still the saudis gave two billion
dollars to jared
why is that
well
his father-in-law's administration had
bent over backwards for four years to
try to protect saudi interests starting
with making saudi arabia trump's very
first foreign trip as president
something no president had ever done and
no other president ever will
trump and and kushner and steven mnuchin
defended the saudis autocratic de facto
ruler after he rounded up and imprisoned
hundreds of royal family members after
he started a blockade of the u.s ally in
qatar after he signed off on an
operation to kidnap kidnap and
ultimately murder and dismember a
washington post journalist
all that favor and protection over the
course of four years has got to be worth
something right couple billion dollars
at least especially if donald trump
might be president again one day
so there's this sort of implicit quid
pro quo in that situation hey remember
how good you were when you were in
office well how about
remember how good our administration was
to you when i was in office well now how
about you put some money in my pocket
how about you invest in my new project
that quid pro quo
with with kushner in particular is icky
enough but this new reporting from the
time suggests that kushner and mnuchin
may have actively been using their
government positions to tee up these
money-making enterprises for themselves
once they left office right before the
2020 election kushner and mnuchin
unveiled a new u.s government-backed
investment fund that would ostensibly
raise billions of dollars for projects
in the middle east
all through the end of the trump
presidency kushner and mnuchin kept
flying all over the middle east on the
taxpayer's dime trying to raise money
for the supposed government fund jared
made three trips to the middle east just
in the weeks between the election and
the inauguration of joe biden and when
the january 6 attack happened he was on
his way back from saudi arabia and
steven mnuchin was on his way to saudi
arabia
mnuchin ultimately cut his trip short
because of the capital attack but he did
stretch it out still just a couple more
days to try to squeeze in one more
meeting with the leader of saudi arabia
here's the thing though all those
meetings were supposedly about this u.s
government-backed investment fund
the times describes it as quote little
more than talk with no accounts no
employees no income and no projects the
fund vanished when mr trump left office
except
kushner and mnuchin did later raise
billions from all those countries they
were scrambling to visit in their last
months in government they just didn't
raise it for any u.s government fund
which appears to have never really
existed
they raised it for themselves
just three weeks after leaving office
mnuchin was talking about a plan he had
a few weeks later he had detailed
investment plans and a half billion
dollars from the emiratis the kuwaitis
and the qatar and the qataris
a half billion dollars from each of them
all these folks he had just been
fundraising from as treasury secretary
then came the billions from saudi arabia
mnuchin and kushner both took the
government officials who had ostensibly
been working with them on this
government project and installed them at
their new private ventures where they
would get the money
in april of last year when mnuchin sent
the saudis a roster of the top
executives at his new private venture
for them to invest in one of the
managing directors was still at that
moment employed by the u.s treasury
department
i mean this isn't even like speeding up
the revolving door between government
and the private sector this is like
there's no door it means you go to work
for the us government and in the name of
the u.s government you raise money for
yourself
on the one hand it feels like you know
another bit of corrupt detritus from the
trump administration that is stuck to
our collective national shoe on the
under on the other hand this feels like
something so blatant it cannot possibly
stand
can it
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