Adviser with ties to Trump’s aides cooperating with probe
WASHINGTON — An adviser to the United Arab Emirates with ties to current and former aides to President Donald Trump is cooperating with the special counsel, Robert Mueller, and gave testimony last week to a grand jury, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Mueller appears to be examining the influence of foreign money on Trump’s political activities and has asked witnesses about the possibility that the adviser, George Nader, funneled money from the Emirates to the president’s political efforts. It is illegal for foreign entities to contribute to campaigns or for Americans to knowingly accept foreign money for political races.
Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who advises Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the effective ruler of the Emirates, also attended a January 2017 meeting in the Seychelles that Mueller’s investigators have examined. The meeting, convened by the crown prince, brought together a Russian investor close to President Vladimir Putin of Russia with Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and an informal adviser to Trump’s team during the presidential transition, according to three people familiar with the meeting.
Nader’s cooperation in the special counsel’s investigation could prompt new legal risks for the Trump administration, and Nader’s presence at the Seychelles meeting appears to connect him to the primary focus of Mueller’s investigation: examining Russian interference during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Nader represented the crown prince in the threeway conversation in the Seychelles, at a hotel overlooking in the Indian Ocean, in the days before Trump took office. At the meeting, Emirati officials believed Prince was speaking for the Trump transition team, and a Russian fund manager, Kirill Dmitriev, represented Putin, according to several people familiar with the meeting. Nader, who grew close later to several advisers in the Trump White House, had once worked as a consultant to Blackwater, a private security firm. Nader introduced his former employer to the Russian.
The significance of the meeting in the Seychelles has been a puzzle to U.S. officials ever since intelligence agencies first picked up on it in the final days of the Obama administration, and the purpose of the discussion is in dispute. During congressional testimony in November, Prince denied representing the Trump transition team during the meeting and dismissed his encounter with Dmitriev as nothing more than a friendly conversation over a drink.
A lawyer for Nader did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Dmitriev has repeatedly declined to comment about the Seychelles meeting, as has Yousef AlOtaiba, the Emirati ambassador in Washington.
Dmitriev, a former Goldman Sachs banker with an MBA from Harvard, was tapped by Putin in 2011 to manage an unusual state-run investment fund. Where other such funds seek to earn returns on sovereign wealth, Dmitriev’s Russian Direct Investment Fund seeks outside investments, often from foreign governments, for unglamorous infrastructure projects inside Russia.
The United Arab Emirates, which Washington considers one of its closest Arab allies, has invested heavily in Dmitriev’s fund as part of an effort to build close relations to Russia as well.
Nader was first served with search warrants and a grand jury subpoena on Jan. 17, shortly after landing at Washington Dulles International Airport, according to two people familiar with the episode. The FBI had other plans, questioning questioned him for more than two hours and seized his electronics.
Since then, Nader has been questioned numerous times about meetings in New York during the transition, the Seychelles meeting and meetings in the White House with two of Trump’s senior advisers, Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon, who has since left the administration.