Democratic Party News: Gulf Allies Face Trump Probe
The democratic party news coming out of Washington this week carries a warning for three of America’s closest partners in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar are bracing for a new era of congressional scrutiny, as Democrats prepare to use the majorities they won in the November 3 midterm elections to investigate the business dealings of President Donald Trump, his family and the most influential members of his administration. The inquiries, expected to begin once the new Congress convenes on January 3, will examine allegations that Trump and those around him used their positions to enrich themselves in return for political favours — and the Gulf monarchies, whose money and deals run through so many of the arrangements in question, are likely to find themselves at the centre of the story.
The plan is not a secret. Democrats have “made it clear” that their inquiries will “focus on business arrangements as a way of following up on voter concerns about corruption”, according to Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Middle East fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. Polls taken around the midterm elections showed corruption was an overriding concern for voters, and senior Democrats moved quickly after the results to say they would investigate. The investigations are expected to seek information about the workings of Trump administration officials and others close to the White House since January 2025. Gulf officials, Ulrichsen said, “will be watching closely” to see whether they are linked to any of the inquiries once the new Congress is seated.
The reason the Gulf features so prominently is the scale of the money involved, and the timing of the deals. Financial disclosures filed by Trump earlier this year showed his businesses received about $300 million in payments from Gulf entities in 2025, and made about $2 billion in income during the year. Gulf projects accounted for nearly two-thirds of the $59.5 million in foreign real estate licensing income Trump reported for 2025, ten times the amount he reported in 2023, according to CNBC. Those numbers are now the starting point for the questions Democrats say they want answered: who paid whom, when decisions were made, and whether commercial interests influenced policy.
Midterm elections 2026: how Democrats won the power to investigate
The 2026 midterms changed the balance of power in Washington in a single night. Republicans lost control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and Democrats flipped multiple seats in both chambers, according to Associated Press projections. The result ended two years in which the president’s party controlled Congress, and with it the power to set committee agendas, call hearings and decide which questions got asked. What Democrats gained on November 3 was not just a majority. As Andreas Krieg, an associate professor of defence studies at King’s College London, put it, they “now have something they previously lacked”: subpoena power in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. That power lets a committee compel the production of documents and the testimony of witnesses.
Krieg expects Democrats to use that power aggressively. He predicted an “aggressive investigation into the intersection of Gulf money, Trump family business interests and American foreign policy”, and said the central question would be whether private commercial relationships created privileged access to decisions involving national security. “Democrats will want to establish who paid whom, when decisions were made and whether commercial interests influenced policy,” he said. With Trump scheduled to leave office in January 2029, observers say Democrats are also expected to use the hearings to position themselves ahead of the November 2028 presidential election.
Trump administration envoys at the centre of the inquiries
At the centre of the expected investigations are two men who have served as Trump’s special envoys while maintaining deep business ties to the region: his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his longtime business associate Steve Witkoff. Kenneth Katzman, a former senior analyst with the Congressional Research Service who is now a senior Middle East fellow at the Soufan Centre think tank in New York, said the Gulf monarchies’ ties to the two envoys were “certainly going to be front and centre in certain investigations” into whether they profited from their roles as political brokers and diplomatic mediators. Both men have been central to the administration’s diplomacy in the Middle East, including its mediation in the Gaza, Iran and Ukraine conflicts.
The questions around Kushner and Witkoff are not new, but the Democrats’ new subpoena power gives them a sharper edge. The Trump family and the Witkoff family founded World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency venture, in 2024. Shortly before Trump returned to office, investors linked to Emirati national security adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan — the brother of the UAE’s president — reportedly acquired a 49 per cent stake in the venture for $500 million. In a CBS News interview that aired on Sunday, Trump said he knew nothing about his Emirati partners in the venture. “My sons run the company. It’s hard to say to them, ‘Don’t do anything any more for four years because I’m president,'” he said. The deal, and the timing of it, is expected to be one of the first lines of inquiry.
Katzman, however, sounded a note of caution. He doubted that inquiries into alleged corruption among Trump’s associates would “move the needle” on US policy, and he did not expect Trump to remove Kushner and Witkoff as mediators in the Gaza, Iran and Ukraine conflicts. Congressional investigations, in other words, can shape the politics of a presidency without necessarily changing its personnel or its policies.
The UAE and the $500 million World Liberty stake
Krieg described the UAE as “particularly exposed” among the three monarchies, because the World Liberty deal “creates an obvious line of inquiry, especially alongside subsequent American decisions” on advanced technology and defence cooperation with Abu Dhabi. In May 2025, Washington and Abu Dhabi agreed a landmark framework for expanded collaboration on artificial intelligence, semiconductors and digital infrastructure, and formalised a major defence partnership in the same month. The sequence — a large investment in a Trump family venture, followed by sensitive technology and defence agreements — is precisely the pattern investigators say they want to examine: whether the commercial relationship bought privileged access to decisions affecting American national security, and whether the normal safeguards were applied.
Saudi Arabia: nuclear technology, F-35s and $10 billion in Trump towers
Saudi Arabia’s exposure comes from a different set of decisions. Analysts said Trump’s July agreement to grant the kingdom access to American nuclear power technology, without safeguards against uranium enrichment, was likely to come under the congressional microscope. Krieg predicted a “sustained campaign” of hearings, restrictions, demands for additional safeguards and attempts to delay sensitive transfers. The agreement is sensitive because the technology can, in principle, be used to develop weapons.
Trump’s September decision to sell 48 F-35 stealth fighters to Riyadh presented “another obvious target”, Krieg said, raising concerns over military technology, Israel’s qualitative military edge, Saudi Arabia’s human rights record and Trump’s relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He expected both agreements to face “serious political resistance” on Capitol Hill, though he said delaying them or attaching strict conditions would be “easier than cancelling them outright”. The resistance, notably, is not confined to one party. Democratic senators Ed Markey and Jeff Merkley introduced a resolution opposing the nuclear deal in October, and Republican senator Rand Paul has separately introduced a resolution opposing the F-35 sale, a sign that congressional unease about the agreements crosses party lines.
As with the UAE, both agreements with Saudi Arabia followed a major business deal involving the Trump family. In January, Saudi developer Dar Global unveiled plans to build two Trump-branded luxury projects in Riyadh and Jeddah valued at $10 billion. Alongside the sensitive defence and nuclear pacts, the Trump-branded developments “create an uncomfortable appearance of overlapping commercial and strategic interests”, Krieg said. Ulrichsen suggested the civilian nuclear agreement might draw greater Democratic scrutiny than the F-35 sale, because Democrats “may not want to be seen as wavering on commitments to strengthen regional security partnerships” at a time of uncertainty triggered by the administration’s Iran war.
Qatar and the $400 million jet
Qatar is the third monarchy in the frame, and its exposure comes from two directions. Krieg said the country was expected to face congressional scrutiny over its investments in Trump’s real estate business and over its donation of a $400 million Boeing 747, retrofitted as an Air Force One, which the Qatari royal family gifted in May 2025. The gift raised questions about propriety from politicians and ethics experts at the time, and those questions are now likely to be revisited by committees with the power to demand documents about how it was handled. Krieg added, however, that Qatar’s diplomatic usefulness “provides a degree of political protection”, suggesting it may face less intense scrutiny than its neighbours.
The pattern across all three countries is the same: money or valuable gifts flowing from Gulf monarchies to the president’s businesses, followed by consequential decisions in Washington that benefited those same monarchies. Krieg was careful to stress that none of the arrangements with the three wealthy Gulf monarchies “establishes a corrupt exchange by itself”. But he added that congressional investigations “can be politically devastating without producing criminal convictions”, a warning that the damage from the inquiries may be measured in headlines and hearings rather than in indictments.
What happens next when Congress convenes on January 3
The timetable is now set by the calendar. The new Congress convenes on January 3, and Gulf officials will be watching to see whether they are named in any of the inquiries that follow. The first steps are likely to be letters demanding documents, followed by hearings at which administration officials and business figures are called to testify about the workings of the Trump administration since January 2025, the roles played by Kushner and Witkoff, and the sequence of decisions on technology transfers, defence sales and nuclear cooperation.
The investigations will unfold against a presidency already weakened by the midterm results and a region already adjusting. Ulrichsen said the prospect of a deeply divided Washington, and uncertainty about what follows Trump, would accelerate hedging across the Middle East, with regional states diversifying their political and defence ties to complement rather than replace the United States. Krieg agreed that Washington remained “militarily indispensable” to the Gulf states. “What is changing,” he said, “is the ability of regional governments to assume that a personal relationship with the president will protect them from the rest of Washington.” For the monarchies that built their strategies around that relationship, the next two years are likely to be spent learning how much protection it still offers.
Source: South China Morning Post