NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 11: (L-R) Jeff Kwatinetz, Rashard Lewis, Allen Iverson, Ice Cube, Kenyon Martin, and Roger Mason Jr. attend a press conference announcing the launch of the BIG3, a new, professional 3-on-3 basketball league, on January 11, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for BIG3)
Rapper Ice Cube asserted this week that a Qatari man invested in his BIG3 basketball league as a way to target President Donald Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon.
The 48-year-old actor and former NWA member and Jeff Kwatinetz, the co-CEO of BIG3, claim the Qatari man — reportedly named Ahmed al Rumaihi — tried to gain access to Bannon while he served as Trump’s chief strategist in 2017. The pair say the man was working with Qatar’s government.
Kwatinetz added that after Trump had fired Bannon in August 2017 and that the latter had resigned as executive chairman of far-right news website Breitbart, Qataris wanted to schedule a meeting with Bannon to offer to “underwrite all of his political efforts in return for his support.”
A $1.2 billion lawsuit filed by Ice Cube — whose real name is O’Shea Jackson — and his business partner last month against Qatari investors alleges that Al-Rumaihi bragged about bribing and striking deals with other American politicians including Michael Flynn, Trump’s first National Security Adviser who pleaded guilty in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian collusion.
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Jackson and Kwatinetz claim the Qatari reneged on promises to invest large sums of money in their basketball league. The suit says Al-Rumaihi and another Qatari investor paid only $7.5 million of the $20.5 million they had vowed to invest in the league.
Rumaihi also reportedly asked about the Trump administration’s position on a blockade of Qatar, which was instituted by other Arab nations in June 2017 following allegations that the country’s government supported terrorism.
The basketball businessmen also accuse the Qataris of spending large sums of money on gambling and other inappropriate activities, including on foreign trips for BIG3 employees as a way to assert their influence in the league.
Porn star Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti questioned in a tweet on Sunday why Al-Rumaihi allegedly met with Flynn and Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen — who paid Daniels $130,000 in hush money — in Trump Tower in December 2016.
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