Saudis Gave Obama Officials With Suitcases Full Of ‘Special Gift,’ Now We Know Sick Reason Why
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While on a tour to promote his new book, The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House Barak Huessin Obama’s former speechwriter and deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes confirmed Saudi officials lavished visiting Obama administration officials with suitcases full of jewels during a 2009 visit.
Here is the passage in question:
“After landing in Saudi Arabia in June 2009, Rhodes writes, US officials were taken by golf cart to “identical housing units amid the rolling desert”, in a compound owned by the monarchy.
“When I opened the door to my unit, I found a large suitcase,” he writes. “Inside were jewels.”
Rhodes initially thought it was a bribe aimed at him because he was writing the “Cairo speech”, intended as an address to the Muslim world, that Obama was due to deliver in Egypt on the next stop on the trip. But then he found that others in the White House delegation had received similar gifts.”
The UK Guardian followed up with an email from with Rhodes who said he and the other officials who received the bags full of jewels all turned them into the State Department’s protocol office since you have the option to buy them but considering each bag was worth tens of thousands of dollars no one ever ends up keeping the gifts. Rhodes recalled everyone turning the bags in.
The Guardian also went on to note that the late Saudi King Abdullah also presented First Lady Michelle Obama with $132,000 in ruby and diamond jewelry. A gift which the Obamas turned over to the U.S. National Archives, as required by law. The protocol mandates that gifts must generally be accepted to avoid giving offense but the gifts must be either purchased by the recipient or turned over to the U.S. government in a bid to avoid foreign entities buying favor with our politicians.
Here is more on this via U.S. News:
“For the president himself: a gold and silver watch, estimated to be worth $18,240; a gold-plated brass replica of the Makkah Clock Tower, estimated at $57,000; and another watch, this one white gold, estimated at $67,000.
In total, these items are worth about $142,240 – chump change compared to the money Abdullah dropped on First Lady Michelle Obama.
From the king, FLOTUS accepted a diamond and emerald jewelry set, an estimated $560,000 value, and a diamond and pearl jewelry set, worth about $570,000.
Obama daughters Sasha and Malia received a diamond and emerald jewelry set and a diamond and ruby jewelry set, totaling $80,000. To share – and from Saudi Prince Miteb bin Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud – the Obama family got a model palm tree, several bottles of perfume, eight robes, three capes, a couple of muumuus, a satin outfit, a velvet gown, and four ornate boxes.
Overall bling total: $1,352,240.”
More on this via the AP:
“After striking an elusive nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration found itself in a quandary in early 2016: Iran had been promised access to its long-frozen overseas reserves, including $5.7 billion stuck in an Omani bank.
To spend it, Iran wanted to convert the money into U.S. dollars and then euros, but top U.S. officials had repeatedly promised Congress that Iran would never gain access to America’s financial system.
Those assurances notwithstanding, the Obama administration secretly issued a license to let Iran sidestep U.S. sanctions for the brief moment required to convert the funds through an American bank, an investigation by Senate Republicans released Wednesday showed. The plan failed when two U.S. banks refused to participate.
Yet two years later, the revelation is re-igniting the bitter debate over the nuclear deal and whether former President Barack Obama was too eager to grant concessions to Tehran.
“The Obama administration misled the American people and Congress because they were desperate to get a deal with Iran,” said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who chairs the Senate panel that conducted the investigation.
And Republican Rep. Ed Royce, the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, accused Obama of trying to “hide a secret push to give the ayatollah access to the U.S. dollar.”
Not so, former Obama administration officials said, arguing the decision to grant the license adhered to the spirt of the deal, which included allowing Iran to regain access to foreign reserves that had been off-limits because of U.S. sanctions. They said the public assurances that Iran would be kept out were intended to dispel incorrect reports about nonexistent proposals that would have gone much farther by letting Iran actually buy or sell things in dollars.