New York Daily News

Junior jumble

Trump son had another shady meeting: report

- BY DENIS SLATTERY

IT’S THE OTHER Trump Tower meeting.

Donald Trump Jr. met with a Persian Gulf emissary promising foreign help for his father’s campaign and an Israeli specialist in social media manipulati­on months before the 2016 presidenti­al election, according to a report Saturday.

President Trump’s eldest son sat down with George Nader — a Middle East analyst and an adviser to the de facto leader of the United Arab Emirates — and an Israeli political strategist named Joel Zamel, whose company chalked out a plan to manipulate social media users to vote for Trump, The New York Times reported.

Nader (left inset), a convicted pedophile who grew close to several Trump associates and has visited the White House repeatedly, is a cooperatin­g witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.

During the Aug. 3 meeting with Trump Jr. (right inset), Nader said that the crown princes of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia wanted to help his father win the White House, according to The Times.

Erik Prince, the founder of the scandal-plagued security firm Blackwater, was also present.

The Trump Tower gathering, just three months prior to the election, was held in the same location as a controvers­ial confab between campaign aides and a Russian attorney with connection­s to the Kremlin in June of that year.

Two people familiar with the meetings told The Times that Trump campaign officials did not appear bothered by the idea of cooperatin­g with foreigners .

Alan Futerfas, an attorney repping Trump Jr., told the Times that “prior to the 2016 election, Donald Trump Jr. recalls a meeting with Erik Prince, George Nader and another individual who may be Joel Zamel. They pitched Mr. Trump Jr. on a social media platform or marketing strategy. He was not interested and that was the end of it.” The Times reported in March that Nader is cooperatin­g with Mueller’s team. He has reportedly testified before a grand jury.

Mueller is investigat­ing Russian election

interferen­ce and the possibilit­y that Trump associates coordinate­d with the Kremlin and to sway the election in the President’s favor.

Nader also reportedly helped organize, and attended, a suspicious Seychelles meeting between Prince and a Russian oligarch with ties to the Kremlin weeks before Trump’s inaugurati­on.

The clandestin­e meeting came weeks after Trump’s sonin-law Jared Kushner reportedly told the Russians that he wanted to set up backchanne­l communicat­ions.

Prince, a deep-pocketed Trump donor and the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, arranged the earlier sitdown with Trump Jr., The Times reports.

The President has dismissed the investigat­ions of Russia’s role in the election as “fake news” and a “witch hunt.”

 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States