MASSAD BOULOS: THE MAN IN THE MIDDLE
Trump’s Africa Advisor Has a Conflict of Interest He Hasn’t Explained
By Mike Arnold
On October 14, at an international press conference in Abuja, I risked my life to declare a genocide on the record. Three days later, the most senior American official in Africa sat down privately with Nigeria’s president in Rome. Then he walked out and went on Nigerian state television to deliver Nigerian President Bola Tinubu’s talking points. Word for word.
That man is Massad Boulos. Trump’s Senior Advisor for Africa and the Middle East. The most powerful American diplomat on the African continent. No Senate confirmation. No public accountability. No disclosed ethics agreement.
And he runs a Nigerian company whose major client is the man getting Nigeria’s largest no-bid contracts from the government he just publicly defended.
This isn’t a shot at Trump. This is a warning to him. His man in Africa has a conflict of interest the size of the George Washington Bridge — and it’s pointed directly at the Christians he said he’d protect.
Who He Is
Massad Boulos is 54. Born in Lebanon. Holds four citizenships: Lebanese, American, French, and Nigerian. In 1996 he moved to Lagos, installed as CEO of SCOA Nigeria PLC — heavy trucks, machinery, industrial equipment — by his father-in-law, Lebanese business tycoon Michel Zouhair Fadoul. He has run that company for nearly thirty years.
His son Michael married Tiffany Trump in 2022. Trump appointed him Senior Advisor on Arab and Middle Eastern Affairs in December 2024. In April 2025, Africa was added to his portfolio — making him the State Department’s most senior official working the entire African continent.
He is not a career diplomat. He is not a regional scholar. He is a truck salesman with a son-in-law relationship to the president and thirty years of business relationships in the country he’s now advising on.
The Business That Doesn’t Get Said Out Loud
Here is the documented chain. Not inference. Not allegation. Public record sourced to Boulos’s own corporate defense statement — published by his own people after his Trump appointment.
SCOA Nigeria — Boulos’s company — lists the Chagoury Group as a major client. Hitech Construction — the Chagoury subsidiary that received a no-bid contract worth $11 to $13 billion from the Tinubu government — “depends significantly on SCOA” for construction machinery. Those are Boulos’s people’s own words.
Who is Gilbert Chagoury? He is the Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire who has received more than $13 billion in government contracts from Tinubu since 2023 — without competitive bidding. Tinubu’s son Seyi sits on the board of a Chagoury subsidiary. ICIJ-leaked documents show Seyi Tinubu and Ronald Chagoury Jr. were majority shareholders together in a British Virgin Islands offshore company. In 2000, a Swiss court convicted Chagoury of money laundering and aiding a criminal organization — moving more than $120 million for Sani Abacha, the military dictator who looted billions from the Nigerian people. In 2010, FBI agents pulled him off a private jet at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey — he had been placed on the US terrorism no-fly list over alleged fund transfers connected to Hezbollah. In 2018, he paid $1.8 million to the Justice Department to resolve a federal investigation into illegal campaign contributions to four American politicians.
Convicted money launderer. FBI terrorism watch list. DOJ campaign finance settlement. That is who benefits from the Nigerian government’s no-bid contracts. That is who SCOA — Boulos’s company — supplies.
Boulos’s major business clients need Tinubu in power. They need the contracts flowing. They need Washington looking the other way. And Boulos is the man in Washington most positioned to make that happen.
Rome. October 17, 2025.
October 14, 2025. I risked my life to flip the script of a Nigerian government PR “stooge tour” and declared genocide on the record. The Nigerian Senate convened that same day to address it. Within 72 hours, the story had reached more than three billion global impressions and flipped the global narrative from 80% to 70% affirmation of genocide in Nigeria.
In that same time frame, Boulos met privately with Tinubu at the Aqaba Process Counter-Terrorism Summit in Rome. The meeting was confirmed by the Nigerian State House’s own press release. He then walked out and gave an interview broadcast on Nigerian Television Authority — NTA, Nigeria’s state television — and said this:
“Those who know the terrain well know that terrorism has no colour, no religion and no tribe. We even know that Boko Haram and ISIS are killing more Muslims than Christians. People are suffering from all sorts of backgrounds. This is not specifically targeted at one group or the other.”
He called genocide claims “unfortunate and misleading.” He praised the Tinubu administration. He used the phrase “farmer-herder conflicts” — the exact language deployed by Nigeria’s $9 million Washington lobbying operation to reframe systematic religious targeting as agricultural dispute.
I had heard those talking points before. Sitting in a small hotel room in Abuja with terror-connected northern imams in a setup that turned out to be a photo-op propaganda operation. They are not the conclusions of an independent observer. They are a script, written by a Sharia propagandist hired by George Soros. And Boulos delivered them, on international television, moments after meeting Tinubu privately.
>> SEE BOULOS ON THE RECORD INCLUDING EXCLUSIVE UNDERCOVER VIDEO FROM MY OCTOBER “STOOGE TOUR”
The Disclosure Nobody Can See
Senior advisors are required to file financial disclosure forms before advising the president. Those forms are supposed to reveal financial relationships that could create conflicts of interest.
Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, the White House took its financial disclosures page offline. The public cannot see what Boulos filed. Cannot see whether the Chagoury relationship was disclosed. Cannot see whether any ethics agreement was required. Cannot see whether any waiver was granted.
The law requires disclosure. The administration made the disclosures invisible. And the man whose company supplies the machinery to Nigeria’s largest no-bid contractor is the man shaping US policy toward Nigeria.
This Isn’t the First Question
The ethics disclosure question isn’t paranoia. There’s a documented pattern.
In August 2025, the New York Times published an investigation finding that Michael Boulos — Massad’s son, Tiffany Trump’s husband — used his proximity to the Trump family for financial benefit almost immediately after the engagement. His cousin’s yacht brokerage overcharged Jared Kushner by an estimated $2.5 million on a superyacht deal while concealing the real price from him. Michael received roughly $300,000 in commission. The yacht sits unfinished in Greece.
A second investigation in September 2025 found Tiffany and Michael Boulos spent the summer on a luxury yacht owned by a Turkish billionaire with Libyan oil interests — while Massad Boulos was working Libya as part of his Africa portfolio. Diplomats in the region told Middle East Eye the family’s interlocking interests could be a conflict of interest for the administration.
The New York Times filed eight FOIA requests targeting Massad Boulos’s ethics records at the State Department on September 26, 2025 — one month after publishing that investigation. As of February 2026, State had not answered a single one.
On April 14, 2026, I filed three of own — targeting specifically the ethics waivers, financial disclosures, and Nigeria meeting records. The question isn’t whether there’s a conflict of interest. The question is whether anyone in the government asked.
The Ted Cruz Moment Nobody Remembers
September 2014. Washington. The inaugural summit of In Defense of Christians — a new organization bankrolled by Gilbert Chagoury.
Ted Cruz took the stage as keynote speaker. He said Christians have no greater ally than Israel. He said ISIS, Hezbollah, and Hamas are engaged in a genocidal campaign against religious minorities. He named Hezbollah directly as an enemy of Christians.
The room erupted in boos. Cruz left the stage. He said anti-Semitism had “reared its ugly head.”
The master of ceremonies that evening was Ray LaHood — the former Secretary of Transportation who later paid a $40,000 fine connected to Chagoury money. The organization was funded by the man now receiving $13 billion in contracts from Tinubu. And Boulos comes from Batroun, Lebanon — the same northern Lebanese district, the same Maronite Christian political world, where these networks were forged.
Wikipedia documents that Boulos is personally acquainted with Suleiman Frangieh — the Lebanese political leader US diplomatic cables identify as a Chagoury associate and a pillar of Lebanon’s Hezbollah-aligned political coalition.
Ted Cruz got booed off a Chagoury-funded stage in 2014 for naming Hezbollah as the enemy of Christians. Today Cruz calls for sanctions on Nigeria over Christian genocide. And Boulos — whose company serves Chagoury’s construction empire — publicly contradicted Cruz after meeting Tinubu in Rome.
Same network. Eleven years apart. Same function.
London. March 2026. Still Going.
If you thought this was ancient history, consider what happened five months after Rome.
On March 18-19, 2026, Tinubu made a state visit to the United Kingdom — the first Nigerian state visit to Britain in 37 years. King Charles hosted him at Windsor Castle. Prime Minister Starmer received him at Downing Street. Ceremonies. Carriage rides. A state banquet.
The headline deal announced during the visit: a £746 million UK government loan to refurbish two major Lagos ports. And the contractor receiving British Steel’s largest-ever export order — £70 million, 120,000 tonnes of steel — to build it?
Hitech Construction Africa Ltd. Gilbert Chagoury’s company.
The same Hitech Construction that “depends significantly on SCOA” — Boulos’s company — for construction machinery. The same Chagoury who was convicted of money laundering in Switzerland, placed on the US terrorism watch list, and paid $1.8 million to the DOJ for illegal campaign contributions. The UK government just guaranteed a nearly billion-dollar loan that flows directly through his companies. The British prime minister stood at Downing Street and announced it.
Nigeria’s lobbying machine is working. The contracts are flowing. The narrative is being managed. And the man whose company supplies Chagoury’s construction arm is still America’s top Africa official.
What We’re Asking
This is not a call to condemn Massad Boulos as a man. This is a call to ask three simple questions — in public, under oath, on the record:
One. Did your ethics disclosure name the Chagoury Group as a business relationship of SCOA Nigeria? Yes or no.
Two. Were you advised, before your October 17 Rome interview, of any restriction on commenting publicly about Nigeria’s Christian persecution situation? Yes or no.
Three. Has SCOA Nigeria conducted any business with Chagoury Group entities since your appointment as Senior Advisor? Yes or no.
If he can answer all three cleanly, the story is over.
If he can’t — or won’t — then the president deserves to know that the man shaping his Africa policy has thirty years of business relationships with the contractors, the power brokers, and the network actively working to keep Nigerian Christians dying in the dark.
The Bottom Line
President Trump said he would protect Nigeria’s Christians. He designated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern. He bombed jihadis in Sokoto. He has done more for Nigerian Christians in six months than the previous three administrations did in thirty years.
But the man he put in charge of Africa policy privately met with Tinubu, then publicly contradicted the president’s own genocide designation — using the exact talking points Nigeria’s $9 million lobbying machine was paying to distribute.
Meanwhile, the same network keeps winning. Chagoury just landed British Steel’s largest-ever export contract — announced by the British prime minister at Downing Street — while Nigeria’s genocide denial lobby runs at full speed in Washington on a $9 million budget.
That is not a man whose judgment you can trust on Nigeria. That is a man with skin in the game telling the president there’s nothing to see.
Mr. President — with respect — you deserve better intelligence on Nigeria than the man who supplies machinery to its biggest no-bid contractor.
The Christians dying in the Middle Belt deserve better too.
Rise. #EarthShaker
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Mike Arnold is the author of EPICENTER: Nigeria, Radical Islam, and the War for Global Order — #1 Amazon bestseller — congressional advisor, and founder of Africa Arise International. He has made 16 documented trips to Nigeria including under State Department Level 4 travel warnings. On October 14, 2025, he risked his life to declare Christian genocide on the record at a Nigerian government sponsored press conference in Abuja.