WASHINGTON — Last spring, President Donald Trump introduced a potential Qatari investor to a friend and inauguration donor seeking a few billion dollars in investment to buy an unfinished nuclear power plant in northeastern Alabama, according to interviews the donor gave to a Tennessee media outlet published this week.
Tennessee businessman Franklin Haney, 78, told the University of Memphis’ Institute for Public Service Reporting that Trump introduced him to the Qatari at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, of which Haney is a longtime member. He said the introduction to the Qatari, whose name he said he did not recall, came a couple weeks after he was introduced in March to Trump’s then-personal lawyer Michael Cohen, whom Haney briefly hired as a consultant.