Robert Mueller’s Russia Probe Just Got a Lot Weirder

Last night, as the White House was dealing with the resignation of Gary Cohn and new allegations in the Stormy Daniels saga, The New York Times published a labyrinthine story centered on a man named George Nader, an adviser to the United Arab Emirates whose involvement with the Trump campaign appears to cast new light on what has been a dark frontier of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Last year, The Washington Post reported on a secret meeting between representatives for the United Arab Emirates, Blackwater founder Erik Prince, and a Russian investor with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which took place on a remote Seychelles island just days before Donald Trump’s inauguration. It was unknown at the time what Prince and the Russian envoy discussed. Sources told the Post that the goal was to open a dialogue with the Russian government outside of traditional diplomatic channels. The U.A.E. reportedly agreed to broker the meeting in hopes of convincing Russia to scale back its relationship with Iran.

As we now know, the meeting was also arranged with the help of Nader, who the F.B.I. picked up at Dulles International Airport in January. According to the Times, he was immediately served with search warrants and recently testified before a grand jury. Here’s what we know about Nader, why Mueller is interested in the Trump campaign’s contacts with the U.A.E., and what the Seychelles meeting could mean for the Russia investigation.

Who is George Nader?

A Lebanese-American businessman, Nader currently serves as an adviser to Emirati Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, who has developed a close relationship with Jared Kushner. For years, Nader has been a well-known, if somewhat off-the-radar, figure in certain political circles. According to the Times, Nader worked with the Bill Clinton administration in its attempt to broker a peace deal between Syria and Israel, convincing the White House that he could leverage his influential contacts with the Syrian government. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Nader worked with Prince’s private security company, Blackwater—which is now known as Academi—as a “business-development consultant,” according to a 2010 deposition. At the time of the 2016 election, he was serving as an adviser to Prince Mohammed, and was a frequent visitor to the White House during the early months of the Trump administration, where he met with Kushner and former chief strategist Steve Bannon.

How is Prince connected to Trump?

Prince, the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, never held a formal role in the Trump campaign, the transition team, or the administration, but has been a vocal supporter of Trump nonetheless. According to the Post, Prince donated $250,000 to the Trump campaign after the Republican National Convention and developed a close relationship with Bannon. The Intercept has reported that Prince later lobbied contacts inside the Trump administration to set up a private network of intelligence contractors for the C.I.A., an idea that U.S. officials and the White House appeared to reject.

When he was first asked about the Seychelles meeting, on CNN, Prince told anchor Erin Burnett that he had been there “on business” to meet with Emirati officials and that he only had a brief meeting with “some fund manager—I can’t even remember his name” over a beer. (“The meeting had nothing to do with President Trump,” a spokesman for Prince said at the time. “Why is the so-called under-resourced intelligence community messing around with surveillance of American citizens when they should be hunting terrorists?”)

Why is Mueller interested in Nader?

Nader appears to have been a key player in the Seychelles meeting, whose attendees included Nader, Prince, and Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian investor with ties to Putin. Nader reportedly arranged the meeting on behalf of Prince Mohammed, while Prince allegedly served as a Trump transition envoy, and Dmitriev was there representing the Kremlin. According to the Times, Mueller has also asked witnesses about any attempts by the Emirates, through Nader, to buy political influence by supporting the Trump campaign, suggesting that the special prosecutor is examining the influence of foreign money on the president and his policies. The investigation could shed light on the Trump administration’s decision to back the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia in the blockade of Qatar—a critical U.S. military ally in the Middle East—which broke with decades of American foreign policy and put the president at odds with his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson.

According to CNN, Mueller is also interested in a Nader’s presence at a December 2016 meeting in New York, between the crown prince and members of the Trump campaign, including Bannon and Kushner. The Obama administration was not made aware of the meeting—an unusual breach of diplomatic protocol for travel involving a high-level foreign official.

What’s the deal with Dmitriev?

Dmitriev is the C.E.O. of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, one of several official sovereign wealth funds tied to the Russian government. R.D.I.F., which invests public money in private projects, was targeted by the Obama administration in 2014 when the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russia. Until recently, R.D.I.F. was a subsidiary of Vnesheconombank, the Russian bank whose C.E.O., Sergey Gorkov, met with Kushner during the transition.

According to the Times, Abu Dhabi committed to invest $6 billion in Dmitriev’s fund after Prince Mohammed met with Putin 2013. Dmitriev subsequently became a “frequent visitor” to Abu Dhabi, and was seen by Emirati officials as a direct conduit to Putin.

What has Prince said about the Seychelles meeting?

During his congressional testimony before the House Intelligence Committee last December, Prince came under fire from Democrats over the meeting. While Prince dismissed the narrative that he acted as a Trump envoy, he did concede that Bannon had informed him of Prince Mohammed’s 2016 New York meeting before the Seychelles encounter. When pressed by Rep. Adam Schiff, the committee’s ranking Democrat, Prince denied that either meeting had anything to do with the Russians. “The Emiratis I’d just met with previously said, ‘There’s an interesting guy from Russia you should meet, if you have any business in the commodity space,’ which I do,” Prince said. “I look at minerals and oil and gas. He said, ‘You should meet him. So I met him in the bar and had a drink.’” Schiff was reportedly unpersuaded.

So what does this mean for Trump?

The revelation that Nader is cooperating with Mueller suggests that the special prosecutor is continuing to dig into the foreign and financial ties of the Trump family. Last week, CNN reported that Mueller had opened lines of inquiry into Trump’s Russian business ties, including the timing of his decision to run for office, the funding of the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, and the failed Trump Tower Moscow deal. Kushner has come under similar scrutiny, according to NBC News. Federal investigators have reportedly questioned witnesses about Kushner’s efforts to secure financing for his family’s real-estate properties from representatives of Qatar, Turkey, Russia, China, and the United Arab Emirates. The Post reported that at least four countries have discussed leveraging his political inexperience and the financial troubles of Kushner Cos., which recently received two loans totaling more than $500 million after Kushner met with the lenders’ executives in the White House. (Kushner and Kushner Cos. have denied any wrongdoing.)