© AFPTom Barrack speaks at the Republican National Convention in July 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio
Donald Trump's closest confidants were willing to exchange inside information about US government appointments with Yousef al-Otaiba, the Emirati ambassador to Washington, a new set of leaked emails has revealed.
The president-elect's advisers also pledged to Otaiba that they would keep his government's interests at the heart of the new administration's Middle East policy.
The emails reveal that the relationship between the Emiratis and the president's inner circle was cemented earlier than previously thought.
The correspondence is between Otaiba and Tom Barrack, a longstanding friend of Trump and billionaire fundraiser. It reveals how Barrack offered to bring Trump, then a candidate, to meet the Emirati ambassador for coffee in April 2016;
how the Republican platform for 2016 was altered to remove a call for the publication of 28 pages of allegedly incriminating documents from the 9/11 inquiry; and how Otaiba sought information about top appointments from Barrack while Trump was president-elect.
The key emails were written when Trump was still a presidential candidate and at least six months before the key meeting at Trump Tower in December 2016 between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ) and Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser, Jared Kushner, his Middle East adviser, and Steve Bannon, his chief strategist, which was reported by the
Washington Post.
At the time, Barack Obama, the outgoing president, was vexed by MbZ's previously unannounced arrival in New York that the names of the people who attended the meeting were released.
Comment: Mad Maxine Waters