Robert Mueller Is Very Interested in Erik Prince’s Secret Beer Meeting with a Kremlin Official
In January of 2017, a billionaire donor to Donald Trump's presidential campaign allegedly tried to set up a secret meeting between the incoming administration and the Russian government. Multiple news outlets confirmed that the donor, Erik Prince, met with a representative of Vladimir Putin in Seychelles, hoping to set up an intelligence-agency-free back-channel between the two governments.
Before Congress, Prince denied that the meeting was nefarious or even planned, and only lasted as long as it took the two men to drink a beer together. According to Prince, that's roughly 30 minutes, which is a weirdly long time to nurse a beer. But on Wednesday, The Washington Post confirmed that the meeting has become a point of interest in Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and that they have a witness to the meeting on record:
A witness cooperating with Mueller has told investigators the meeting was set up in advance so that a representative of the Trump transition could meet with an emissary from Moscow to discuss future relations between the countries, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
George Nader, a Lebanese American businessman who helped organize and attended the Seychelles meeting, has testified on the matter before a grand jury gathering evidence about discussions between the Trump transition team and emissaries of the Kremlin, as part of Mueller’s investigation into Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 election.
In his testimony before Congress, Prince reportedly omitted Nader's presence at the meeting, which added to the cloud gathering over him. But on top of the reportedly illicit nature of the meeting, Prince's role as a representative for the Trump administration is disconcerting, given his reputation as a war profiteer and anti-Muslim crusader. Prince is the founder of the mercenary firm Blackwater (famous for massacring unarmed civilians in Baghdad), a supporter of a privatized and for-profit military, and the brother of Trump's secretary of education, Betsy DeVos.
Later this month, Prince is scheduled to host a fundraiser for Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, one of the most eager supporters of Putin in Congress who has dismissed accusations of Russian human-rights violations as "baloney." But Trump is still setting the standard for suspicious activity this week: The president has been meeting with witnesses who spoke to Mueller to learn what exactly they told the special counsel, against his own lawyers' advice. That may be the rare time that Trump's bumbling lawyers actually know what they're doing.
