PGA Tour officials pushed to oust Greg Norman as the CEO and commissioner of the LIV Golf League during the tour’s negotiations with the DP World Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which proposed that Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy own LIV teams, according to documents released by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

The documents released by the subcommittee, which began a hearing Tuesday regarding the planned alliance, also suggested that McIlroy met with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in November.

McIlroy, who as a member of the PGA Tour’s policy board has a vote on whether the proposed partnership will ultimately go through, had not publicly disclosed his meeting with Al-Rumayyan.

A May 25 side letter to the framework agreement proposed by the PGA Tour called for Norman and Performance54, a London-based marketing and consultant group that took control of the LIV Golf League’s management this season, to step down once the proposed partnership is finalized. According to the subcommittee, its inquiry “has not yet revealed whether this side agreement was ever executed” by PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, DP World Tour CEO Keith Pelley and Al-Rumayyan.

Monahan’s draft of talking points for the policy board while announcing the deal noted that “Norman will be assigned to an advisory role determined by the PIF when the PGA Tour becomes the manager of the LIV Tour.”

Norman, a two-time Open winner, has told his staff and players that the LIV Golf League is a standalone entity and that he is planning to play in 2024 and beyond.

As part of its investigation, the subcommittee uncovered a series of emails sent between PGA Tour policy board chairman Ed Herlihy and board member Jimmy Dunne on May 15, with Herlihy telling Dunne, “Jimmy, I raised the idea with Jay [Monahan] of you overseeing LIV going forward. He really liked it.” Dunne replied, “You and me,” to which Herlihy responded, “Definitely.”

A LIV Golf official told ESPN that it was the league’s understanding that the side letter wasn’t signed and that PIF officials rejected the idea of removing Norman and Performance54.

The announced merger is being heavily scrutinized by the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division, which was already examining the PGA Tour’s alleged monopolistic business practices. Human rights groups and survivors and families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks also have criticized the PGA Tour for doing business with the Saudi Arabian monarchy.

“Today’s hearing is about much more than the game of golf,” subcommittee chairman Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in his opening remarks during Tuesday’s hearing. “It’s about how a brutal, repressive regime can buy influence — indeed even take over — a cherished American institution simply to cleanse its public image.”

“Today we are watching a truly bizarre spectacle, as the PGA Tour is effectively turning over the game of golf to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” Terry Strada, the national chair of 9/11 Families United, said in a statement entered on the record at Tuesday’s hearing. “We know why the PGA Tour is doing it — it’s for the money. But that isn’t why the Saudis are doing it. They’re doing it as a public relations strategy to distract from their authoritarian past and present, and especially their unacknowledged culpability for supporting al Qaeda and the hijackers of September 11.

“We are here to watch representatives from the PGA Tour, who have signed on to help the Kingdom try once again to fix its reputation, this time through sportswashing. Those same PGAT representatives expect those of us who experienced our losses to ‘move on’ without so much as an acknowledgment of wrongdoing. They will stick to their Saudi talking points just like the LIV golfers did, claiming simply that golf is ‘a force for good.'”

During Tuesday’s hearing, Blumenthal introduced a 10-page summary produced by the subcommittee’s investigators that reveals new, detailed information about how the PGA Tour-LIV Golf agreement came together.

Before the agreement between the PGA Tour and PIF went public June 6, the two had been ensnared in an “acrimonious relationship.” Eleven players who were suspended by the PGA Tour for joining LIV Golf filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against the tour in August, and the PGA Tour countersued LIV, and eventually PIF and Al-Rumayyan, in September.

The subcommittee memo says the first communications regarding the possibility of an agreement between the PGA Tour and the PIF occurred Dec. 8, when British businessman Roger Devlin wrote Dunne.

Devlin revealed to Dunne that Al-Rumayyan and Amanda Staveley, a “valued advisor” to Al-Rumayyan and chief executive of international private equity firm PCP Capital Partners, had invited him to “help find a solution to the issues that divide LIV and the PGA [Tour].” Devlin wrote that he had helped Staveley facilitate the PIF’s takeover of English Premier League soccer team Newcastle United.

In the email, Devlin said Al-Rumayyan was prepared to “establish a substantial equalization fund” for players who remained loyal to the PGA Tour, while “[an equal] arrangement would have to be made for LIV players to be admitted to PGA [Tour] tournaments and recover World Ranking points.”

In the same email to Dunne, Devlin said he had helped arrange for McIlroy to meet with Al-Rumayyan in Dubai the previous month. McIlroy has been one of the PGA Tour’s most outspoken supporters during its battle with LIV Golf.

“It was a very cordial and constructive meeting,” Devlin wrote. “His Excellency has great ambitions to support, grow and [modernize] the sport and is clearly well equipped to fund these goals. He has been frustrated by his inability to engage constructively with the PGA [Tour]. Rory made it clear that in accepting the meeting he was speaking only for himself, although he believes his views are broadly shared by Tiger and the other top players — he also [emphasized] he was seeking no personal financial gain, he was simply trying to unify the game.”

Dunne initially declined to meet, and Devlin warned him Jan. 3 that “the Saudi position is hardening, as they are confident LIV will prevail over the long term if only because of almost limitless financial resources.” PGA Tour officials said in documents that the Saudis were prepared to spend another $5 billion on LIV Golf.