Team Coup is very eager to discuss Russian interference in our political affairs. But as I asked last week, where's the discussion of Qatari interference?
Qatar’s influence operations took an ominous turn when Elliott Broidy, a top Trump donor, had his emails hacked by individuals he alleges were Qatari agents. The leaked emails play into Qatar’s conflict with the UAE. The emails have predictably popped up on Al Jazeera and Broidy had previously been targeted by The Intercept for a panel at which Steve Bannon had criticized Qatar.
"We have reason to believe this hack was sponsored and carried out by registered and unregistered agents of Qatar seeking to punish Mr Broidy for his strong opposition to state-sponsored terrorism," Broidy's spokesman said.
These two incidents of alleged Qatari espionage against Americans in order to influence our foreign policy raise serious questions. Yet the same media that obsessively searches for Russian bots on Reddit and Facebook seems entirely disinterested in discussing the subject. Skeptics of Russian influence have been told to put country ahead of party, but when will the left finally put country ahead of Qatar?
Now NBC News is doing some more Qatari spinning.
Qatari officials gathered evidence of what they claim is illicit influence by the United Arab Emirates on Jared Kushner and other Trump associates, including details of secret meetings, but decided not to give the information to special counsel Robert Mueller for fear of harming relations with the Trump administration, say three sources familiar with the Qatari discussions.
It is unknown whether Qatari officials were the source of the recent news stories detailing activities by Nader and Broidy published by The New York Times and CNN.
Unknown. Right.
Reading between the lies, Qatar spied on Trump's people. Pondered passing the products of their spying to Team Coup, but instead decided to pipeline it through the media, who then passed it to Mueller.
This is quite similar to what the Clintons pulled with the Steele dossier. Except Qatar is an enemy state. Qatar passed damaging information produced by espionage to Mueller through the media.
Mueller needs to make it clear that he won't be colluding with Qatar. If he employs material produced by Qatari espionage on Americans as part of their plot to interfere in our domestic affairs, he's the one who needs to be investigated for collusion.