HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029507 we now know, there was an entirely parallel effort to influence American foreign policy, and George Nader was at the center of it. According to the New York Times, Nader and Elliott Broidy pitched a scheme to the governments of the UAE and Saudi Arabia in which Broidy would use his extensive contacts in Washington, especially in the White House, to shape U.S. policy toward Qatar, which the Saudis and Emiratis accuse of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, funding extremism, and cozying up to Iran. Apparently, the Emiratis agreed to the arrangement. Clearly, putting the screws to Qatar's Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani is a high priority for the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, who undoubtedly would not apologize for using every method and resource at their disposal to advance their countries' interests. What is the Trump administration's excuse, though? The kind of influence-peddling in which Nader and Broidy were involved can be traced back to Jared Kushner. On Nov. 8, 2016, if not before, he was handing out his cellphone number to all kinds of people in Washington with little regard for the potential consequences and apparently little idea about who was genuinely powerful and who were just posers. No doubt that important people in certain countries had the mobile numbers of senior members of the Obama administration, plus their Gmail addresses, but there was something qualitatively different about the way Kushner was operating. He was essentially opening the door to a Trumpian culture in which there is no process, there is no vetting, everyone and anyone could be an asset, loyalty is the greatest quality second only to money, and there are always ways to get something done no matter what. Trump's world does not operate the same way as Washington's major Middle Eastern allies, but there are some parallels that make stories like the George Nader affair possible. Trump's tendency to eschew the formal processes an