How Donald Trump, Jamal Khashoggi, The Sultan of Brunei, Prince Al-Waleed And A Billionaire Saudi Arms Dealer Are All Connected By A Yacht

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump hosted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) at the White House. It was a mostly friendly gathering of two men who have long operated as both personal allies and geopolitical partners. However, the temperature in the Oval Office shifted sharply when an ABC News reporter decided to test the friendliness of the room.

Mary Bruce, one of the most seasoned correspondents on the White House beat, used her moment to ask a question almost no one in that room wanted spoken aloud. She brought up the CIA's conclusion that the crown prince had approved the 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. She asked why Americans should trust a leader implicated in such a brutal killing. She asked how this meeting squared with the United States' stated commitment to human rights. It was a bold, direct shot across the polished calm of an orchestrated photo op.

Reporter: Is it appropriate for your family to do business with Saudi Arabia while you're president? The us intelligence concluded you orchestrated the murder of a journalist…

Trump: Who are you with?

Reporter: ABC News

Trump: ABC Fake news. I have nothing to do with the… pic.twitter.com/qG9ktN7rtV

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 18, 2025

Trump interrupted before the crown prince could answer. His voice was sharp, almost vibrating with irritation. "Who are you with?" he snapped. Then he waved off the question entirely, calling Khashoggi "extremely controversial" and insisting, "Whether you liked him or didn't like him, things happen." He assured the room that MBS "knew nothing about it," and chastised the reporter for "embarrassing our guest."

Within hours, Jamal Khashoggi's widow, Hanan, responded publicly, saying her husband's character was no justification for murder, demanding an apology from the crown prince, and asking for compensation for the killing that tore her life apart. It was a striking reminder that the Khashoggi story, seven years on, remains unresolved, painful, and politically radioactive.

And somewhere within this extraordinary moment — a murdered journalist, a defensive president, a crown prince seeking legitimacy, and a reporter brave enough to disrupt the choreography — lies one of the strangest, most unexpected connective threads between them all: A yacht.

The Arms Dealer

Back in the 1980s, one of the richest people on the planet was a Saudi businessman named Adnan. Over a multi-decade career, Adnan built an enormous fortune as one of the world's most powerful and well-connected arms dealers, a man whose personal life and business dealings became the stuff of legend. At his peak, his net worth was estimated at $4 billion, placing him among the three richest individuals alive.

Born in Mecca in 1935, Adnan grew up in privilege and proximity to power. His father served as the personal physician to King Abdul Aziz Al Saud, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia. That royal access shaped Adnan's worldview early. He attended Victoria College in Alexandria, where he mingled with the sons of kings, diplomats, and Middle Eastern elites. He later completed short academic stints at Chico State, Ohio State, and Stanford, building relationships that would prove useful throughout his life.

By the early 1960s, as the oil-rich kingdom modernized and expanded its military capabilities, Adnan recognized that Saudi Arabia didn't just need oil partners — it needed weapons, technology, and strategic alliances. Thanks to his upbringing and charisma, he was perfectly positioned to become the bridge between American defense contractors and the Saudi royal family.

He began as a consultant for Lockheed Corporation, helping facilitate sales of planes, equipment, and missile systems. The commissions were staggering. Between 1970 and 1975 alone, Adnan earned $106 million from Lockheed, the equivalent of nearly half a billion dollars today. As Saudi Arabia's defense appetite grew following the 1967 Six-Day War, so did Adnan's influence. His client list ballooned to include Northrop, Raytheon, Rolls-Royce, British Aerospace, Westland Helicopters, and Grumman, and his commissions on major weapons deals climbed from 2% to as high as 15%.

Adnan Khashoggi (VALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty Images)

At the height of the spending spree, U.S. Senate inquiries revealed that Lockheed had paid him more than $200 million over the years, Northrop more than $80 million, and Raytheon approximately $23 million, with tens of millions more coming from French and British defense deals. He became the archetype of the globe-trotting "merchant statesman," a man who could move missiles, mediate political disputes, and arrange the financing for covert operations all in the same week.

By the late 1970s, he had amassed not just wealth but an empire. He owned 12 homes, including residences in Paris, London, New York, Rome, Beirut, and Monte Carlo. He traveled with a rotating entourage of models, actresses, and what he famously called his "pleasure wives." He owned multiple private jets — including a customized Douglas DC-8 described as a "flying Las Vegas discotheque" — and ran up daily living expenses estimated at $250,000 to $300,000 per day. His business group, Triad International, controlled luxury hotels, gold mines, oil refineries, cattle ranches, shopping centers, banks, and even the Utah Jazz NBA team.

Adnan's last name was… Khashoggi.

Adnan Khashoggi, who died in 2017 at the age of 81, was the paternal uncle of Jamal Khashoggi.

Jamal would grow up to become a journalist, a reform-minded Saudi insider, a critic of absolute power, and ultimately the victim at the center of a global political firestorm — the very name invoked in the Oval Office this week when a reporter dared to ask the crown prince about the CIA's conclusion that he approved Jamal's murder.

Here are some additional fun facts about Adnan Khashoggi:

• At his peak, his net worth was estimated at around $4 billion, which made him one of the three richest men on earth.
• He traveled with a reported harem of 11 "pleasure wives."
• Had 12 homes
• Owned three commercial planes
• His living expenses were said to run as high as $300,000 PER DAY.
• Threw multi-day parties that became the stuff of 1980s legend.
• Adnan paid his first wife an $875 million divorce settlement. It was the largest divorce settlement in history at the time.
• He commissioned one of the most extravagant superyachts ever built — the 282-foot Nabila:

JACQUES SOFFER/AFP/Getty Images

Nabila

At the time of its construction in 1980, Nabila was the largest and most expensive private vessel on earth. Named after Adnan's daughter, the yacht was commissioned from the famed Italian shipyard Benetti and cost roughly $100 million to build — the equivalent of about $400 million today. It was the ultimate floating symbol of Khashoggi's excess:

• Marble bathrooms
• Gold fixtures
• Private cinema
• Disco,
• Hair salon
• Onboard hospital with a full operating room
• Enough refrigeration space to feed a small resort
• It even had a giant, custom-built master suite styled like a presidential palace.

And in true 1980s fashion, the yacht wasn't just luxurious — it was cinematic. Hollywood turned it into a Bond villain's lair in the 1983 film "Never Say Never Again," where it served as the futuristic headquarters of villain Maximilian Largo.

But as spectacular as Nabila was, it arrived at the very moment Adnan's financial empire began to buckle. By the mid-1980s, his company, Triad International, was bleeding cash. Oil prices were falling. Commission payments were delayed. And Khashoggi was burning through money at an astonishing rate — $250,000 to $300,000 per day just to maintain his lifestyle. His third yacht had cost $70 million, his private Douglas DC-8 had been customized into what one writer described as "a flying Las Vegas discotheque," and he owned 12 homes across the globe.

Worse, many of his investments were collapsing. A $500 million glass-pyramid hotel scheme in Giza, a $1 billion real estate development in Salt Lake City, and a major oil venture in Sudan all failed. Creditors were circling. Lawsuits were mounting. And what had once been one of the world's most powerful arms-brokering empires was now a maze of debt and bad paper.

After losing his influence with the Saudi royal family and being dropped by the defense contractors who once paid him hundreds of millions in commissions, Adnan spent the rest of his life chased by creditors, regulators, and prosecutors across multiple countries.

In 1989, he was extradited from Switzerland to the United States on charges of helping conceal more than $300 million in Manhattan real estate and artworks tied to the Marcos family. Though he was acquitted in 1990, the trial exposed how dramatically his fortune had collapsed. His net worth had fallen to roughly $8 million, one of his bank accounts held just 47 cents, and he owed more than $88 million to creditors.

Desperate to rebuild his wealth, Khashoggi drifted into increasingly dubious ventures. He was accused of bank fraud in Thailand, implicated in a series of international stock-manipulation schemes, and in 2010 was banned from serving as a company director in the United States after settling a civil case tied to a $130 million stock-ramping fraud. A U.S. court later awarded a creditor $40 million, but the money was never collected.

JACQUES SOFFER/AFP/Getty Images

Trump Princess

In 1987, Khashoggi's liquidity crisis hit a breaking point. He defaulted on a massive personal loan from the Sultan of Brunei, and Nabila was seized as collateral. The Sultan had no desire to keep a Bond-movie palace, so the yacht was discreetly put up for sale. It was quickly snapped up by a 41-year-old New York City businessman named… Donald Trump. Trump negotiated a deal reported at just under $30 million, a staggering discount from the yacht's original build cost. The transaction technically ran through the Sultan of Brunei, but Adnan Khashoggi himself still had enough of an emotional attachment to impose one unusual condition: he didn't want Trump sailing around the world on a boat named after his daughter, Nabila. So he demanded a name change. Trump agreed, shaved a million dollars off the price, and immediately rechristened the vessel the Trump Princess.

For a few years, the Trump Princess became one of Trump's defining symbols. He staged photo ops on its decks, used it as a backdrop for magazine spreads, and kept it docked near his Atlantic City properties, even securing special dredging work so the massive hull could squeeze into the harbor. The yacht was enormous, loud, gaudy — and unmistakably Trump.

But the good times didn't last. By 1991, Trump's empire was drowning in debt. Casinos were failing, lenders were circling, and everything that wasn't nailed down had to be sold. In that financial storm, the Trump Princess became expendable. He sold it for roughly $19–20 million to Saudi billionaire Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal. And remarkably, long after the yacht changed hands, Jamal himself would cross paths with its new owner.

(Photo by Barry Iverson/Getty Images)

Kingdom 5KR

Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, one of the most influential investors in Saudi Arabia, took possession of the yacht in 1991 and immediately renamed it Kingdom 5KR. The name was a nod to his company (Kingdom Holding), his favorite number (5), and the initials of his children. Under Al-Waleed's ownership, the yacht continued its life as a staple of billionaire glamour. She appeared in ports like Antibes, Monte Carlo, and Cannes, a gleaming reminder of an earlier era of excess.

The weird connections don't end there.

• In 1995, Donald was still feeling a financial pinch and was looking for a buyer for New York's Plaza Hotel. The eventual buyer? Prince Al-Waleed, for $325 million.
• In 2001, Donald sold the entire 45th floor of Trump World Tower for $12 million. The buyer? The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
• Prince Al-Waleed and Crown Prince Mohammad are cousins. They are both grandsons of Ibn Saud, the founder of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

In 2010, Prince Al-Waleed launched a news channel called al-Arab. The goal was for al-Arab to be an independent, privately owned broadcaster offering objective and agenda-free news for the Arab world. Who did Prince Al-Waleed hire to run al-Arab? Jamal Khashoggi.

Unfortunately, al-Arab did not stay on the air for very long. On the first day of broadcasting, al-Arab aired an interview with a Bahraini political dissident who denounced the government of Bahrain. Oh, I forgot to mention that al-Arab was based out of Bahrain. After years of planning, the network was shut down after just one day. Whose decision was it to interview the Bahraini dissident? And who conducted the actual interview? Jamal Khashoggi.

The decision was embarrassing, costly, and politically sensitive. The incident foreshadowed the tensions that would define his life in the years ahead. Jamal remained closely connected to Saudi elites but grew increasingly critical of the kingdom's direction, especially after Mohammed bin Salman consolidated power.

By 2017, those tensions erupted. When MBS initiated a sweeping crackdown on journalists, activists, and political rivals, Jamal fled the country, fearing arrest. Just two months later, Prince Al-Waleed sent him an email encouraging him to return home and "contribute" to the crown prince's vision. Jamal politely declined, expressing deep mistrust of the new political climate.

Within days of sending that message, Al-Waleed himself was arrested during the infamous Ritz-Carlton purge, where dozens of powerful Saudi figures were detained under what the government called an anti-corruption initiative. Reports later suggested the billionaire was pressured into surrendering billions in assets before being released. Even afterward, he lived under restrictions, closely monitored and unable to travel freely.

The Murder

A year later, on October 2, 2018, Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to pick up marriage paperwork and never came out. What happened inside those walls is now one of the most chilling and thoroughly documented political assassinations of the century. According to Turkish intelligence, a 15-man Saudi team had flown into Istanbul that morning on two private jets. The group included intelligence officers, members of the crown prince's personal security detail, and — in a detail that still shocks investigators — a forensic doctor specializing in rapid dismemberment.

The moment Jamal entered the consulate, he was confronted and overpowered. Turkish audio recordings captured his final pleas. He was reportedly told to "cooperate," to which he answered, "I can't breathe," moments before he was killed. Investigators believe he was suffocated or strangled within minutes of entering the building.

What happened next was gruesome. The forensic specialist, Dr. Salah Mohammed Tubaigy, allegedly began dismembering Khashoggi's body almost immediately, using equipment he had brought expressly for that purpose. His remains were never recovered. Turkish officials believe they were either dissolved in acid or destroyed in a furnace; Saudi operatives were later caught repainting rooms, removing hard drives, and attempting to cover up the crime.

The 15 operatives did not linger. After the killing, one member of the team put on Jamal's clothes and walked out a back entrance in an attempt to create the illusion that he had left alive. The real team checked out of their hotel, returned to the airport, and flew back to Riyadh that same day.

The operation — its precision, its planning, the travel logistics, the presence of a forensic expert — made clear this was not a rogue act. It was ordered. Deliberate. State-directed.

Worldwide outrage followed. Human rights groups demanded accountability. Journalists around the globe published investigations. And U.S. intelligence agencies conducted their own assessment, eventually concluding that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the operation. He denies this, but the evidence was overwhelming enough that the CIA, NSA, and other agencies reached the same determination.

Saudi Arabia later put a handful of the operatives on trial, sentencing several to prison, though the proceedings were widely criticized as opaque and toothless. The key members of the 15-man team — including intelligence officer Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb and Dr. Tubaigy — remain inside Saudi Arabia, shielded from independent review. Many of the men sanctioned by the United States have never faced meaningful public accountability.

Meanwhile, the yacht at the center of this strange constellation of relationships kept sailing — a silent witness to the lives of the men whose stories it had intersected. In October 2024, the Kingdom 5KR made news again when it crashed into a dock in Tunisia, suffering significant hull damage. Images of the once-iconic vessel scraping along a concrete pier circulated worldwide.

Two Final Fun Anecdotes

Here are two final fun facts to leave you with:

#1: Check Cashing Experiment

In July 1990, Spy magazine conducted a quirky economic experiment to measure how willing rich and famous people were to perform a small administrative task — cashing a tiny refund check. In the first experiment, refund checks in the amount of $1.11 were sent to a variety of celebrities and businesspeople. Twenty-six people cashed this check. Spy sent smaller and smaller checks to see what would happen. The smallest check was for $0.13. Only two recipients cashed this check:  Donald Trump and Adnan Khashoggi 🙂

#2: Adnan's Daughter

In 2004, Nabila Khashoggi, Adnan Khashoggi's daughter and yacht namesake, married James Cox Chambers. James is the grandson of James M. Cox, the founder of what today is known as Cox Enterprises. His mother, Anne Cox Chambers, inherited 49% of Cox Enterprises. When she died, she split her 49% stake in three equal parts to her three children. So James Cox Chambers owns around 16% of Cox Enterprises, which gives him a net worth of around $6 billion.