President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement are constantly pushing boundaries and transgressing norms of behavior and discourse. That’s not to say, however, that they find such rules useless: Trump’s media propagandists aggressively call out infractions by his opponents even when he and his allies break those same strictures on a far more expansive scale.
To wit, The New York Times on Monday published an investigation providing new details into “two multibillion-dollar deals” which revolve around Steve Witkoff, simultaneously Trump’s Middle East envoy and his business partner, and Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the royal family of the United Arab Emirates. The paper reported of the deals: “One involved a crypto company founded by the Witkoff and the Trump families that benefited both financially. The other involved a sale of valuable computer chips that benefited the Emirates economically.”
According to the Times, “while there is no evidence that one deal was explicitly offered in return for the other, the confluence of the two agreements is itself extraordinary.” The Times further reported:
In May, Mr. Witkoff’s son Zach announced the first of the deals at a conference in Dubai. One of Sheikh Tahnoon’s investment firms would deposit $2 billion into World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency start-up founded by the Witkoffs and Trumps.
Two weeks later, the White House agreed to allow the U.A.E. access to hundreds of thousands of the world’s most advanced and scarce computer chips, a crucial tool in the high-stakes race to dominate artificial intelligence. Many of the chips would go to G42, a sprawling technology firm controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon, despite national security concerns that the chips could be shared with China.
…
The first instantly propelled World Liberty into one of the world’s most prominent crypto companies, giving it a revenue stream that could be worth tens of millions of dollars annually.
The second is still pending, with final details under discussion in the White House. But it is poised to be a monumental victory for the Emirates. The Trump administration agreed to exponentially increase the U.A.E.’s access to one of the most important inventions in modern history.
For a sense of the scale of this alleged corruption, it’s worth comparing it to the various allegations that Fox News propagandists like Sean Hannity and Republican politicians like House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) made during former President Joe Biden’s term as part of their effort to manufacture an impeachable offense from the business dealings of his family members, primarily his son, Hunter.
The $2 billion deposit from the UAE sheikh's investment firm into the crypto company controlled by Trump, his family, and the family of his Middle East envoy, is:
- 100 times the size of the $20 million Trumpists typically claimed that “the Bidens” or “the Biden family” received from foreign sources. Even that $20 million figure is a fabrication — according to a Washington Post review, two-thirds of the money actually went to Hunter Biden business partners who were not members of the family; only $7.5 million was collected by Biden family members, most of it by Hunter Biden, and none by Joe Biden.
- 400 times the size of the $5 million “bribe” they claimed President Biden received from a Ukrainian oligarch whose company employed Hunter. The Justice Department subsequently alleged that the FBI informant behind that charge had fabricated his story; the informant pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and a judge sentenced him to six years in prison.
- 8,333 times the size of the $240,000 President Biden received from his brother Jim, which was cited as evidence of the president receiving laundered money. In fact, this appeared to be Jim Biden repaying a loan Joe Biden had made to him.
- 483,092 times the size of the $4,140 President Biden received from one of his son’s companies, cited by Comer as evidence that “Joe Biden knew & benefitted from his family's business schemes.” In reality, Joe Biden bought a truck for his son’s use at a time when Hunter was battling drug addiction, and Owasco PC, Hunter Biden’s law firm, subsequently made three monthly payments of $1,380 to repay Joe Biden’s initial payments on the vehicle.
It goes without saying that the volume of coverage right-wing media outlets give to these shady deals won’t be proportionate — or even inversely proportionate — to what they provided for those Biden stories. Indeed, when House Democrats issued a report last year showing that China directed millions of dollars straight to Donald Trump’s businesses during Trump’s first term, Hannity promptly excused him and moved on.
Perhaps they’d all care if there were an email in which Witkoff referred to the president as the “big guy.” But probably not.
