Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team has spoken with Blackwater founder Erik Prince, two sources familiar with the matter tell The Daily Beast. It was not immediately clear what questions Mueller’s team had or what information Prince shared with the special counsel.

Prince attended a now-controversial meeting with the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund in the Seychelles Islands on Jan. 11, 2017—just over a week before Inauguration Day. The Washington Post reported that Mueller is interested in potential efforts at the Seychelles meeting to set up a backchannel between the Trump administration and the Kremlin.

A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment.

Reached for comment, Prince spokesperson Marc Cohen did not dispute this reporting.

“Erik gave a full and frank public account of events as they concern him to the intelligence committee and he has nothing else to add on this topic,” Cohen said.

https://thebell.io/en/friend-of-putin-s-daughter-banker-with-10-billion-kirill-dmitriev-a-possible-link-between-the-kremlin-and-trump/

The Washington Post first reported in April 2017 that Erik Prince, as an unofficial representative of Trump’s team, met in January 2017 in the Seychelles with “a Russian bureaucrat close to Vladimir Putin”.

The meeting was arranged by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan.

The crown prince is a frequent visitor to the Kremlin, and Kirill Dmitriev was present during the

crown prince’s last meeting with Vladimir Putin. Al-Nahyan runs Abu Dhabi’s sovereign investment fund, Mubadala, with whom RDIF has a joint $2 billion fund. The partners invest in Russia in strategic companies, such as Russian Helicopters.

Prior to this, in December 2016, al-Nahyan had an informal meeting in New York City with Trump advisors. Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn and Jared Kushner were all present at the meeting. Just before this meeting, according to U.S. intelligence, Jared Kushner discussed the creation of an informal communications channel with Russia’s Ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak.

In November 2017, Erik Prince testified before U.S. Congress that he met with Dmitriev in the Seychelles (although Prince claimed that he didn’t remember Dmitriev’s last name). However, Prince said that the meeting was a chance encounter and that they only had “one beer” together.

However, special counsel Mueller now has a new witness – a Lebanese American businessman, George Nader, who was not only present at the meeting but also helped to organize it. According to Nader, the meeting was pre-arranged, and the aim of the meeting was to establish a communications channel between Trump’s team and Moscow, in order to discuss future relations between the two countries.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3972777&forum_id=2#36017702)

Well-connected Lebanese-American businessman George Nader, a key witness given limited immunity by Mueller, has been interviewed seven times by prosecutors on a wide range of subjects. He told investigators that he set up a meeting in the Seychelles between Prince and Russian sovereign wealth fund CEO Kirill Dmitriev, mere days before Trump was inaugurated, sources familiar with the investigation said this week.

Nader has submitted to three interviews with special counsel investigators and four appearances before a federal grand jury in Washington since agents stopped him at Dulles International Airport in January, served him with a grand jury subpoena and seized his electronic devices, including his cell phone. Documents obtained by Mueller suggest that before and after Prince met Nader in New York a week before the trip to the Seychelles, Nader shared information with Prince about Dmitriev, sources familiar with the investigation told ABC News, which appears to be inconsistent with Prince’s sworn testimony before a U.S. House of Representatives investigative panel.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3972777&forum_id=2#36018737)

The sources say the plans have been pitched to the White House as a means of countering “deep state” enemies in the intelligence community seeking to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency.

The creation of such a program raises the possibility that the effort would be used to create an intelligence apparatus to justify the Trump administration’s political agenda.

“Pompeo can’t trust the CIA bureaucracy, so we need to create this thing that reports just directly to him,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official with firsthand knowledge of the proposals, in describing White House discussions. “It is a direct-action arm, totally off the books,” this person said, meaning the intelligence collected would not be shared with the rest of the CIA or the larger intelligence community. “The whole point is this is supposed to report to the president and Pompeo directly.”

North, who appears frequently on Trump’s favorite TV network, Fox News, was enlisted to help sell the effort to the administration. He was the “ideological leader” brought in to lend credibility, said the former senior intelligence official.

Some of the individuals involved with the proposals secretly met with major Trump donors asking them to help finance operations before any official contracts were signed.

https://theintercept.com/2017/12/04/trump-white-house-weighing-plans-for-private-spies-to-counter-deep-state-enemies/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3972777&forum_id=2#36019752)

Redacted] stated that he and Dmitriev did not discuss sanctions, the Russian government’s “desire to have a relationship with the Trump administration,” or “any channel of communications between the United States and Russia.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3972777&forum_id=2#36026891)

George Nader? represented by Kathryn Ruemmler, who was White House Counsel for Obama and Associate Counsel for Bill Clinton

odd case, pure coincidence.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3972777&forum_id=2#36028598)