Trump Jr. met with Mueller witness during campaign
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump Jr. met during the 2016 campaign with a private military contractor and an adviser to Middle Eastern leaders, both of whom have since become a focus of investigators working for special counsel Robert Mueller, a lawyer for President Donald Trump’s eldest son said Saturday.
Erik Prince, an informal adviser to the Trump campaign and former head of Blackwater, and George Nader, a veteran operative who has advised the United Arab Emirates and helped American contractors secure business in the Middle East, met with Trump Jr. at Trump Tower to discuss a social media proposal, lawyer Alan Futerfas said in a statement.
“They pitched Mr. Trump Jr. on a social media platform or marketing strategy. He was not interested and that was the end of it,” Futerfas said.
The New York Times first reported on the meeting, which it said took place in August 2016 and was convened primarily to offer assistance to the Trump campaign.
Mueller’s investigators have been looking into a later meeting, in January 2017 in the Seychelles, that Nader and Prince held with Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian banker with close ties to the Kremlin. Nader is a witness in Mueller’s ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the election.
The Associated Press reported in March that Nader had been convicted on 10 counts of sexually assaulting a minor in the Czech Republic in 2003. Employees for Prince’s previous firm, Blackwater, were implicated in the deaths of 14 civilians in Iraq in 2007.
Neither a spokesman for Prince nor a spokeswoman for Nader’s lawyer immediately returned requests for comment Saturday.
Members of the House intelligence committee peppered Prince with questions about his interactions with the Trump campaign during a November 2017 interview, but Prince did not disclose the Trump Tower meeting with Trump Jr. and Nader.