9/11 Justice, a grassroots movement made up of survivors, first responders, and family members of the victims of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, has launched an initiative to highlight the ties between Saudi Arabia’s government and the World Trade Center attacks, hoping to increase pressure on both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
The group is running a national ad campaign titled “Follow the Money” through the weekend on ESPN, Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, and in local South Florida markets coinciding with the LIV Golf Tour’s season pro-am close at Trump National Doral in Miami, a country club owned by Trump, who will also be playing in the tournament.
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While the group is focused on forcing Trump to cut ties with the Saudi-funded golf league, it wants Biden to keep the kingdom’s ties to the 9/11 hijackers at the front of his mind while conducting his administration’s ongoing review of the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia.
“What country can afford to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for exhibition golf? Let’s follow the money,” the ad proclaims. “LIV golf is funded by Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund. Saudi Arabia gets its money from oil — oil they sell to Americans, and now, they’re driving gas prices even higher.”
“The Saudis are using oil profits to fund exhibition golf, hoping to distract you from their policies of oppressing women, murdering journalists, and supporting the 9/11 terrorists,” the ad concludes.
9/11 Justice CEO Brett Eagleson, whose father was one of the thousands killed in the World Trade Centers in 2001, spoke with the Washington Examiner about the campaign and its efforts to pressure Trump to cut ties with the LIV Tour.
“It’s been our goal to educate America at large, and the best way to do that is to insert ourselves into this controversy between PGA and LIV, because that’s where we get the most attention,” he said in an interview. “It raises the profile of our issue, and it gives us a platform, so anytime an LIV event like this happens, you’ll notice we went out to Portland, Oregon, we went to Bedminster, we did an ad campaign in Boston. We’re physically going to go now down to Florida, because it’s just — it’s just all about opportunity. It’s about leverage.”
After entering office, Biden signed an executive order declassifying a government report detailing ties between Saudi officials and the 9/11 hijackers, and Eagleson said it is “maddening” that Trump, despite meeting with 9/11 families on the 2016 campaign trail and while in office, did not do the same, considering he knew “what the documents say” and publicly questioned why former Presidents George W. Bush or Barack Obama never made the information available to the public.
Eagleson specifically recounted two meetings with Trump, one on the campaign trail and one at the White House in 2019, in which Trump “pledged to help” the group by “declassifying the document.”
“Less than 24 hours after that meeting, Bill Barr invoked what’s known as the State Secrets Principle against us keeping those documents secret,” he continued. “So clearly, they knew what was in those documents then.”
Biden, on the other hand, made holding Saudi Arabia “accountable” for various human rights abuses, including the murder of former Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a core part of his campaign. Still, Biden himself had eased his posture regarding Saudi Arabia over the past several months in efforts to get the key OPEC+ country on board with the West’s coordinated economic pressure campaign against Russia in retaliation for the war in Ukraine.
Following the recent production cuts announced by OPEC+, the Biden administration announced that it would carry out a fundamental review of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, including potentially ending the sale of arms to the kingdom.
Eagleson says “part of the review should 100%” address “the accountability for 911” and highlighted several members of Biden’s own party already publicly driving toward that goal.
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“I spoke to Sen. [Richard] Blumenthal (D-CT) a few days ago. He has a bill that he just announced, I believe two weeks ago, where he’s calling for a ban, a one-year ban on U.S. weapons sales to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I spoke to Sen. [Bob] Menendez (D-NJ). His office also had strong words. Sen. [Dick] Durbin (D-IL), Sen. [Chuck] Schumer (D-NY),” Eagleson continued.”They’re all speaking very, very hard rhetoric right now against the kingdom, and I said to all those offices, ‘Do not forget about the 9/11 case. Do not forget about the families.'”
