short take: with dubai port world rejection by congress, it seems UAE started to try to learn to lobby congress. one place they looked
pro Israel groups. and could see arrangement where UAE paying and merging agendas with pro israel groups as shared/useful
such as versus qatar and iran. and getting kind of respectability in washington with congress and think tanks
people like broidy seem to have traveled from pro israel to uae funded. & he is a us citizen.
useful passthru for countries that want to buy influence in washington
and perhaps people like broidy as passthru useful for the groups that want to take uae and other money, but look independent and respectable
for those that want to take the (uae) money, broidy has nice, US citizen, RNC, RJC credentials. why would you suspect money from abroad?
more broadly, seems mueller probe may bring more scrutiny to cutouts and vehicles for foreign money to buy influence with dc policymakers
without reporting it to DOJ, etc.
not sure when it happened, but dc influence world become full of gulf money past say decade. declared and undeclared.
think tanks, specific think tank analysts, lobbying, etc. it seems they are just buying influence however they can.
what’s different from the pro israel groups is the gulfies don’t seem to have obvious significant US domestic constituencies, like say aipac
influence bought or borrowed or aligned, but not grassroots. but maybe i am missing it
would be curious for someone to compute foreign powers’ influence spending in dc, declared and not. suspect the gulf countries near top
but as nader/ broidy stories suggest, got to count what is not declared. apparently, a lot
