Donald Trump had barely been elected president when reporters discovered an unusually creative lobbying campaign

that had been quietly launched by the government of Stadia Arabia.

The Saudis were upset about a law recently passed by Congress that would allow the families of the September 11th victims to sue them

for alleged complicity in the terror attacks that killed their loved ones.

But the Saudis began recruiting American military veterans from around the country, offering to fly them to Washington

and put them up in a plush new luxury hotel if they would agree to press Congress to get rid of the new law.

You can probably guess which hotels the Saudis had decided to patronize.

As I wrote for Yahoo News in March 2017, they were putting the veterans up at the brand new Trump International Hotel,

the very same hotel that happened to be owned by one Donald J. Trump and members of the Trump family.

Overall, the Saudi government spent $270,000 on rooms and meals for American veterans at the Trump Hotel,

a figure that was recently cited by a federal judge as a possible unconstitutional violation of the prohibition on presidents

and other federal office holders receiving emoluments from foreign governments.

The disclosure of how the Saudis tried to combine the political punch of veterans with lucrative revenues for the president's personal business

is only a small chapter in the larger story of Saudi influence buying in Washington.

It is a tale of big money and powerful lobbying clout that is about to be sorely tested by the shocking disappearance of Jamal Kashoggi,

a widely respected journalist and critic of the current Saudi regime who entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul

earlier this month and never came out.

Amid reports that they may have been brutally murdered,

will discuss the Saudi lobbying efforts and the big money behind it on today's buried treasure.

I'm Michael Isgov, Chief Investigative correspondent for Yahoo News.

And I'm Dan Clyde, Editor-in-Chief of Yahoo News.

You know, we've spent so much time on this show talking about Russian money and Russian connections to Donald Trump.

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