Qatar begs federal judge to hide lawsuit exposing spy ring’s links to Michael Cohen
A federal judge in Los Angeles is being asked to seal the libel lawsuit that exposed the Qatari government’s national spy ring in America with direct connections to the Al Thani royal family.
But Judge Dolly Maizie Gee denied their request to seal the records quickly without pleadings, and today Qatar’s lawyers released a plan to seal much of the plaintiff’s filings that allege — factually — that the plaintiff is a secret agent of their government who pretended to be a private citizen to entice their American plaintiffs into a contract, which was really a front for a spy ring.
There are three reasons Qatar is probably so desperate to suppress this information about their government agent.
Firstly, the Qataris are probably worried that SDNY prosecutors may implicate Al-Rumaihi in one of Michael Cohen’s crimes now that he’s a cooperating witness. Second, Qatar’s initial false claims in open court — the deposition is not a fully open proceeding — were tailored to protect their spy, Al-Rumaihi, from being deposed in court. Lastly, Al-Rumaihi’s secret spying operation potentially exposes him to federal criminal charges for spying, unregistered foreign agency, and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Also, the Qatari government probably wants to maintain plausible deniability of the entire spying operation, though that ship has sailed one story at a time this year.
However, four months into the federal libel trial, things aren’t looking good for Ahmed Al-Rumaihi and Qatar, now that their lawyers at DLA Piper have admitted that he wasn’t a private citizen, but rather a government official. Qatar’s lawyers wrote:
In March 2017, Mr. Al-Rumaihi was appointed member of the Supreme Council for Economic Affairs and Investments (“SCEAI”), to which QIA reports, and he maintains that position today.
The SCEIA is the highest decision making body concerning energy, investment and economic affairs in Qatar.
The court record that Qatar is so desperate to suppress from their own lawyers, that I quoted above, is also still publicly available on the Court Listener because of their their RECAP browser plugin and service, which saves federal court dockets to a public website.
However, that’s not stopping attorneys at a second law firm hired by Qatar to defend the libel lawsuit from demanding to suppress that very same information, provided to plaintiffs lawyers at Geragos, and even trying to censor their recent brief which is still available online from Court Listener, that saves federal court dockets for public use.
Because Qatar’s attorneys didn’t file their request for redactions under seal, they’ve actually provided a highlighted document confirming their fears about the most damaging information about their client, Ahmed Al-Rumaihi.
Qatar’s lawyers want to suppress the highlighted areas of this document, scroll down to view the yellow annotated facts that they want to hide:
Ironically, the Constitution’s First Amendment generally prohibits courts from sealing records that have already been made public, so the effort by attorneys at Jones Day to censor these documents is a legally deficient dry hole since the court cannot stop me from publishing records that I already have, even if they are later placed under seal.
Why does Qatar want to hide their government’s hand in American operations?
Former Qatari general consul Ahmed Al-Rumaihi first made headlines for trying to buy a $100 million townhouse in New York. But his real moment of fame arrived this summer when he was spotted ushering the Qatari Foreign Minister into a December 2016 clandestine meeting at Trump Tower during the presidential transition.
Al-Rumaihi admitted to agreeing to a $1 million bribe to Cohen, but nobody knows if that money was really paid or not, but prosecutors are certainly in position to find out now.
Furthermore, Ahmed Al-Rumaihi’s role in the Trump-Russia dossier oil deal is the very thing they are trying to distance themselves from, even though he was caught on video escorting the Qatari Foreign Minister into Trump Tower with Michael Cohen.
Nobody knows if Michael Cohen made tapes of his interactions with the Qataris, but we do know that he met with a Qatari royal family delegation this April in Miami, and Buzzfeed even found notes about that meeting which were reconstructed from his shredder.
At the time, Qatari spokesmen told ABC News that Al-Rumaihi was a private citizen:
“Ahmed Al-Rumaihi, who was head of Qatar investments at Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) from May 2016 to March 2017, was present at Trump Tower but did not participate in any meetings, “said Jassim Al-Thani in a statement.
“Since March 2017, Mr. Al-Rumaihi has not represented the State of Qatar in official matters. Nor is Qatar involved in any of his private business matters.”
Earlier this year, Ahmed Al-Rumaihi told the Central California federal court something similar under oath in a written statement, that he entered the US on a business visa, arriving as a private citizen in early 2017 after purportedly leaving his nation’s foreign ministry, and presumably to sign a sports deal.
If Al-Rumaihi wasn’t carrying a diplomatic passport, hadn’t bought a house and didn’t have a pathway to permanent residency, as his lawyers claimed earlier, then he wouldn’t have to worry about being deposed in court.
Ahmed Al-Rumaihi’s front company Sports Trinity defaulted on the business arrangements with rapper Ice Cube’s Big 3 Basketball League leading to an arbitration case over the contract, and a libel lawsuit against the Qatari and his associates when they began a sustained negative public relations campaign in an effort to get out of their financial obligations.
The Qatari’s contract to invest into the Big 3 Basketball league is still being litigated, having been revealed in the libel lawsuit to be a clandestine operation to seeking more political influence inside the Trump Administration through Al-Rumaihi’s attempts to reach Steve Bannon through one of the league’s owners.
Even though court filings in federal lawsuits that have spread to both coasts implicate Qatar’s royal family and their World Cup efforts in a national spy ring, they still wish to hide their tracks. Diplomatically speaking, Qatar could face retaliation if it becomes a political issue when Americans find out that one of the top decision makers behind the Trump Russia oil dossier deal who works closely with the Emir is also a spy operating in the USA.
In fact, the QIA — which Ahmed Al-Rumaihi oversees from his board position — applied for permission from Vladimir Putin in just this May to take direct ownership of a substantial block of shares in the sanctioned Russian-state owned oil company Rosneft. The fact that nobody applied to the Russian government previously to own those oil company shares provides indirect evidence that the Rosneft partnership was controlled by Russian government interests.
The Singapore holding company created to end-run American sanctions and sell the shares in December 2016 just released that it earned $775 million in the first 15 months owning the shares, and valued the stake being sold to the QIA at $8.4 billion dollars.
According to Qatar, many of the most important decisions affecting the Persian Gulf nation, and international affairs between the Trump Administration and Russia were handled by none other than Ahmed Al-Rumaihi from his mansion in Beverly Hills, California, who was reporting directly to the Emir.
Because Al-Rumaihi didn’t register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, nor under the Foreign Agents act, there’s a strong chance that these admissions against interest could lead federal prosecutors to charge him with a crime, especially, if his dealings with Michael Cohen are revealed to go up to the top, to Donald Trump. His dealings with an American citizen from Miami, Ayman Sabi, could expose the Qatari to criminal conspiracy charges for constructing a front that enabled him to evade foreign agent registration requirements that required him to report to the Attorney General.
Michael Cohen wasn’t so much a lawyer, but a fixer and bagman, and his job seemed to be to bring business matters directly to Donald Trump while maintaining the sham of attorney-client privilege in order to try and shield illegal acts from being exposed; just like a real mafia consigliere.
Now, Qatar is finding out that friends and foes of Donald Trump all meet the same fate when they dare to do business with the President and all of his “best people.”
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