A member of the Qatari royal family invested roughly $50 million in conservative news site Newsmax while Donald Trump was in office, The Washington Post reported Tuesday, citing documents and representatives for the media company and the royal family.
At the time, Qatar — a key US ally in the Middle East — was targeted with a diplomatic and economic blockade led by Saudi Arabia and the Unied Arab Emirates, which accused the tiny country of supporting terrorist groups across the Middle East, the Post said.
The Post reported that Qatar, relying on its relationship with the United States for protection, faced initial opposition from President Donald Trump, and Newsmax was instructed to soften its coverage of Qatar before and after the investment.
One Newsmax staffer confirmed that criticisms of Qatar were not allowed, as it was made clear from the top down to avoid the topic.
Newsmax did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
The report relied on documents from a set of about 100,000 leaked files from Genesis Trust, a Cayman Islands-based financial services provider, which were obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and reviewed by The Post.
The investment in Christopher Ruddy’s Newsmax, which was founded in 2014, came in 2019 and 2020 from Sheikh Sultan bin Jassim Al Thani, a former Qatari government official and the owner of a London-based investment fund, Heritage Advisors, the Post reported, stating that the investment was seen as a potentially profitable move and was not government-motivated.
A spokesperson for Ruddy denied instructing any staffers not to criticize Qatar and stated that the outlet has published numerous critical items about the country.
However, the Genesis Trust documents include forms indicating that the corporate structure was intended to benefit the State of Qatar, with Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad Al Thani, the younger brother of the ruler of Qatar and vice chairman of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, designated as the “option beneficiary” in certain circumstances, according to The Post.
Sultan and Mohammed are both members of Qatar’s vast royal family.
A Heritage representative told The Post that the corporate structure did not include the option beneficiary and was not designed to benefit Qatar. They claimed to have never seen the documents and explained that the error in the forms was made without Sultan’s knowledge during estate planning discussions about investment decision-making in case of Sultan’s death.
A Heritage representative told The Post that the organization operates independently of any government, makes investment decisions based on creating value, and has no editorial or management control when investing in media. They stated that any insinuation of ulterior motives behind their investments is false.
Newsmax, which strongly supported Trump during his time in office, is dealing with a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems for spreading the former president’s false claims about the 2020 election results. The case is scheduled to be heard in late September.
