How Qatar Bought America

It’s Wednesday, May 14. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large.

We have one story for you this morning. And it’s a very important one.

Today, President Trump is set to visit Qatar, a small Middle Eastern monarchy with 300,000 citizens on a peninsula in the Persian Gulf.

You’ve already seen the headlines: Qatar just offered Trump a 747 luxury jumbo jet to serve as the next Air Force One. But Qatar’s reach in America goes well beyond this over-the-top gift to the president.

For the last several months, Free Press reporters Frannie Block and Jay Solomon have investigated how Qatar leveraged its tremendous wealth into unparalleled influence over the country’s most powerful people and institutions. The Free Press reviewed thousands of lobbying, real estate, and corporate filings. We interviewed dozens of American, European, and Middle Eastern diplomats and defense officials. We analyzed secret intelligence briefings and previously undisclosed government documents.

And what we found was astounding: Qatar, long a refuge for and a financier of Islamist terrorists, has spent almost $100 billion over the past two decades to influence our schools, our universities, our media, our Congress, and even the White House itself. In return for all that cash, it has won the affection of leading lawmakers, Washington dealmakers, powerful journalists, and White House officials.

So what does Qatar want to do with all the goodwill it’s purchased? That’s just one of the questions Jay and Frannie’s reporting sets out to answer.

Like many great scandals, this one has been hiding in plain sight, with Qatar openly throwing cash around to buy allies in America while actively supporting groups that push Islamist radicalism in the Middle East.

It is the definition of a must-read investigation—a shocking window into how power works in America today. Read it here or click just below. And please share it with others.

—Bari

This isn’t our first time writing about Qatar’s influence in America. Read more here:

Donald Trump leaves the Saudi Royal Court with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Win McNamee via Getty Images)

• President Trump offered both a carrot and a stick to Middle Eastern nations in a speech in Riyadh on Tuesday. He announced plans to end sanctions on Syria, and he touted a ceasefire with Yemen’s Houthis. But he also issued a warning to Tehran: “If Iran’s leadership rejects this olive branch. . . we will have no choice but to inflict massive maximum pressure, drive Iranian oil exports to zero,” he said.

• The U.S. has agreed to sell $142 billion worth of military equipment to Saudi Arabia in what the White House called “the largest defense cooperation deal” in history. The agreement was signed yesterday in Riyadh, where Saudi Arabia also announced its intent to invest $600 billion in the U.S. via deals with tech and AI firms.

• Inflation hit an annual rate of 2.3 percent in April. The figure was lower than expected and comes as a boon for a U.S. economy braced for the impact of increased tariffs.

• Israel said it targeted Mohammed Sinwar—who has effectively been running Hamas since his brother, Yahya, was killed in October—in an air strike in Gaza on Tuesday. If the strike was successful, Israel will have eliminated all the major Hamas leaders behind the October 7, 2023 attack after an 18-month campaign.

• A DNC panel voted to recommend that a new election be held for vice chair, a post that David Hogg had previously been selected for in February. The panel cited a procedural flaw that allegedly made it harder for a woman to be elected. Hogg faced a backlash over plans to fund, via another organization, primary challenges to Democratic incumbents he described as “asleep at the wheel.” Hogg said it was “impossible to ignore the broader context of my work to reform the party which loomed large over this vote.”

• The Trump administration has announced an additional cut of $450 million in federal grants for Harvard University, on top of the $2.2 billion of public money already slashed.

• House Republicans have announced a plan to raise the debt limit by $4 trillion in advance of an effort to pass Trump’s tax plan. The move is set to prevent the federal government from defaulting on its $36 trillion of debt as Trump seeks to further limit government revenue via tax breaks.

• A new book about Biden’s physical and mental decline and its cover-up alleges that his aides were so alarmed at his deterioration that they had a plan to put him in a wheelchair, but “they couldn’t do so until after the election.”

• Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred posthumously removed legendary baseball player/manager Pete Rose, whose reputation was marred by a gambling scandal, from the league’s permanently ineligible list. The move opens the door for Rose, who died in September, to finally be elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame. “Obviously, a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game,” said Manfred, who also reinstated “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and other deceased players.