Thread by @VickyPJWard

New documents reveal that Tom Barrack and other business leaders sought to use their influence within the Trump administration to promote private corporate interests in the Saudi nuclear deal.

Per @ZcohenCNN and @kylieatwood: cnn.com/2019/07/29/pol…

@ZcohenCNN @kylieatwood The full report from the House Oversight Committee:

oversight.house.gov/sites/democrat…

@ZcohenCNN @kylieatwood "These new documents raise serious questions about whether the White House is willing to place the potential profits of the President's friends above the national security of the American people and the universal objective of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons."

@ZcohenCNN @kylieatwood Tom Barrack's goal: To purchase Westinghouse Electric Company—the only U.S. manufacturer of large-scale nuclear reactors—"using significant Saudi and Emirati capital, but with enough U.S. ownership to bypass scrutiny from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States."

@ZcohenCNN @kylieatwood Here, we see an interesting name pop up in the Barrack story: Brookfield Partners—a Canadian company whose second-largest investor is a state-run sovereign wealth fund controlled by the government of Qatar.

A Reuters headline from Jan 2018:

@ZcohenCNN @kylieatwood If the name Brookfield sounds familiar, it should: It’s the same company that bailed out Jared Kushner’s family’s troubled 666 Fifth Ave, a property that was bleeding money.

@ZcohenCNN @kylieatwood Documents show that the colossal amount the Kushners paid for 666 Fifth—$1.8 billion, then the most ever paid for an office building in the U.S.—was over 97% debt.

@ZcohenCNN @kylieatwood The loan for 666 Fifth—$1.4 billion—would come due in February 2019.

Jared Kushner entered the Trump administration with this financial albatross around his neck.

@ZcohenCNN @kylieatwood Brookfield swooped in and bailed out the Kushners. In a deal that made absolutely no economic sense, they did a 99-year lease—ALL of it paid up front.

You don’t have to be a math whiz or a real estate expert to understand how crazy that is.

@ZcohenCNN @kylieatwood I have yet to find a single person who thinks the deal for 666 Fifth was made for rational economic reasons.

@ZcohenCNN @kylieatwood Interesting to see the timing of the deal-making laid out in the House Oversight report: