Russia/Qatar/Trump Timeline

I have produced a Google Doc timeline, based on publicly available reports and documents, of the alleged bribery scheme between Russia and Trump associates, possibly through Qatar’s purchase of Rosneft.

Summary: 

Russia’s sale of Rosneft Gas is the key event in the Steele Dossier’s quid pro quo allegation. On June 2016, Russians allegedly offer Trump associates a massive payout derived from the commissions on Russia’s sale of 19.5% of state energy giant Rosneft ($11 billion), in return for lifting sanctions. Weeks after the election, Flynn and Kushner are in contact with Russian officials. Then Russia sells a 19.5% stake in Rosneft in a concealed deal, eventually revealed to be with Qatar. Immediately after the deal, a Qatari diplomat allegedly met with Cohen and Flynn at Trump Tower.

In January 2017, the Dossier is published. In the next few months, Kushner sought money directly from Qatar to bail out his real estate problem, but Qatar declines. It is possible that Qatar was backing off of the deal, wary of its exposure from the Dossier. In April 2017, Kushner reportedly escalated a Gulf state crisis against Qatar with a blockade and a risk of regional war. A few months later, the Qatar-backed Apollo Group delivered $184 million to Kushner, and a real estate fund linked to Qatar is in negotiations to bail out Kushner’s $1.8 billion disaster at 666 5th Ave.

The link to the full Google Doc timeline, which I will continually update, is here.

I welcome suggestions and feedback at jshugerman@law.fordham.edu and @jedshug on Twitter. (If I sometimes rely on speculation or inside sourcing, I indicate accordingly by posing speculations as questions and appropriate notations).

Here is a link to my first blogpost on the Qatar connection on June 3, 2017, when I read that Qatar was revealed to be the secret Rosneft buyer. Here is a link to my March 2018 Slate piece connecting the news of a massive Qatar-backed loan to Kushner, after Kushner’s escalation of the Saudi-Qatar conflict in 2017, back to the Steele/Rosneft timeline.

Here’s my segment on Chris Hayes on May 14 and my segment on Rachel Maddow on May 15 outlining this Qatar/Rosneft hypothesis. On Maddow, it is a 10 minutes intro on Qatar. I start at 11 minutes.

Author: Jed Shugerman

Jed Handelsman Shugerman is a Professor and Joseph Lipsitt Scholar at Boston University School of Law. He was at Fordham Law School 2013-2022. He received his B.A., J.D., and Ph.D. (History) from Yale. His book, The People’s Courts (Harvard 2012), traces the rise of judicial elections, judicial review, and the influence of money and parties in American courts. It is based on his dissertation that won the 2009 ASLH’s Cromwell Prize. He is co-author of amicus briefs on the history of presidential power, the Emoluments Clauses, the Appointments Clause, the First Amendment rights of elected judges, and the due process problems of elected judges in death penalty cases. He is currently working on two books on the history of executive power and prosecution in America. The first is tentatively titled “A Faithful President: The Founders v. the Unitary Executive,” questioning the textual and historical evidence for the theory of unchecked and unbalanced presidential power. This book draws on his articles “Vesting” (Stanford Law Review forthcoming 2022), “Removal of Context” (Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 2022), a co-authored “Faithful Execution and Article II” (Harvard Law Review 2019 with Andrew Kent and Ethan Leib), “The Indecisions of 1789” (forthcoming Penn. Law Review), and “The Creation of the Department of Justice,” (Stanford Law Review 2014). The second book project is “The Rise of the Prosecutor Politicians: Race, War, and Mass Incarceration,” focusing on California Governor Earl Warren, his presidential running mate Thomas Dewey, the Kennedys, World War II and the Cold War, the war on crime, the growth of prosecutorial power, and its emergence as a stepping stone to electoral power for ambitious politicians in the mid-twentieth century.

10 thoughts on “Russia/Qatar/Trump Timeline”

  2. A Yeoman’s effort…and quite the smoking gun.
    Thank you for the effort (and direction to this link).
    Kushner & Cohen more and more seem like Uday and Qusay Hussein and just as reckless in their lust and arrogance for unearned power and wealth.
    I very much look forward to following this string as it develops further. Again, thank you!

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  4. Professor Shugerman, you are a true American Patriot. I thoroughly enjoyed your visit with Rachel tonight. Now, I need to get to work reading Shugerblog. Masterful investigative reporting. These are scary times that require us all to stay informed, and a Red Sox fan too..I’m sold…

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  5. I just read your blog and it is amazing. I am a follower of yours now and appreciate the hard work you put into this. I watch Rachel Maddow overnight and enjoyed learning about your research tonight. Thank you for putting this all together.

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  6. Just wondered if the purpose of running the Russian money thru Qatar would have been for the purpose of laundering it? How would Trump and Kushner have accounted for all that money if the deal had been done? Real estate loans? Or kept in off shore accounts? Whats the value of 19% of Rosnoft?

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    1. 19% of Rosneft is $11B. They weren’t giving that to Trump. They were using the sale to create cash commissions that could be moved around under the radar of regulators, while Qatar could keep the 19% asset or sell pieces of it – and maybe some of it was sold back to Russia, maybe because this was a phony deal just to generate cash commissions.

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  7. A dizzying amount of material. I cannot begin to imagine how much more Mueller has. We have an administration that is singularly focused on self-enrichment and most policy decisions are based on their personal economic interests. When he is not lining his pockets Trump is pandering to evangelical Christians that comprise his “base.”

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  9. Pingback: More Questions about Kushner, Qatar, and Quid pro Quo (Brookfield + Apollo) – SHUGERBLOG

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