Despite billions of dollars pledged to Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace,” not a single dollar has been deposited in the official fund administered by the World Bank and endorsed by the United Nations.
But millions, at least some of which is reportedly frozen, have been deposited into a JP Morgan account that has no independent transparency requirements, Financial Times has reported. Instead, the board will “report its financials to its executive board—which includes classic Trump cronies such as Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff—'at a time deemed appropriate,'” The New Republic dryly noted.
“Ten countries pledged billions of dollars to carry out Kushner’s master plan to turn Gaza into a strip of luxury hotels, but so far, barely any of that money has materialized,” TNR said.
Meanwhile, Marco Rubio’s State Department plans to allocate about $1.2 billion “for projects related to the board’s agenda” but “which would not go directly to the board,"Financial Times said. A “senior congressional aide” told FT “there’s no intent to have any of that money managed by the Board of Peace.”
In other words, Trump is poised to grab another billion dollars of taxpayer money to be spent in secrecy.
“Sources also said that ‘not one U.S. dollar’ has gone toward rebuilding Gaza, four months after Trump’s board was established,” The Daily Beast pointed out. It further reported, “’Nobody with money and resources wants to work with the Board of Peace,’ a source told The Guardian. ‘Lump on the conflict with Iran, and the people with deep pockets now have an excuse not to pay.’”
But people with money and resources looking to curry favor with the corrupt Trump family may be perfectly willing to give money and resources to a fund “overseen” only by Trump cronies. Sadly, that may well include those willing to hand out our taxpayer dollars for their own private gains.
