WASHINGTON -- Special counsel Robert Mueller has gathered evidence that a secret meeting in the Seychelles just before the inauguration of Donald Trump was an effort to establish a back channel between the incoming administration and the Kremlin, according to people familiar with the matter.
The new evidence apparently contradicts statements made to lawmakers by one of its participants, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
In January 2017, Erik Prince, the founder of the private security company Blackwater, met with a Russian official close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and later described the meeting to congressional investigators as a chance encounter that was not a planned discussion of U.S.-Russia relations.
A witness cooperating with Mueller has told investigators the meeting was set up in advance so that a representative of the Trump transition could meet with an emissary from Moscow to discuss future relations between the countries, according to the people familiar with the matter.
George Nader, a Lebanese American businessman who helped organize and attended the Seychelles meeting, has testified on the matter before a grand jury gathering evidence about discussions between the Trump transition team and emissaries of the Kremlin, as part of Mueller's investigation into Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 election.
Nader began cooperating with Mueller after he arrived at Dulles Airport in mid-January and was stopped, served with a subpoena and questioned by the FBI, these people said. He has met numerous times with investigators.
Last year, Prince told lawmakers -- and the news media -- that his Seychelles meeting with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of a Russian government-controlled wealth fund, was an unplanned, unimportant encounter that came about by chance because he happened to be at a luxury hotel in the Indian Ocean island nation with officials from the United Arab Emirates.
In his statements, Prince has specifically denied reporting by The Washington Post that said the Seychelles meeting, which took place about a week before Trump's inauguration, was described by U.S., European and Arab officials as part of an effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and the incoming administration.
Prince told lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee that he did not plan to meet Dmitriev in the Seychelles but that once he was there discussing possible business deals with United Arab Emirates officials, they unexpectedly suggested that he visit the hotel bar and meet Dmitriev.
The two men, Prince said, spoke for no more than 30 minutes, or about the time it took him to drink a beer. He also said he went to the Seychelles as a private businessman, not as an official or unofficial emissary of the Trump transition team.
Asked to comment on assertions that new evidence appears to contradict Prince's description of the Seychelles meeting, a spokesman for Prince referred to his previous statements to the committee and declined further comment.
A spokesman for the special counsel also declined to comment.
While Mueller is probing the circumstances of the Seychelles meeting, he is also more broadly examining apparent efforts by the Trump transition team to create a back channel for secret talks between the new administration and the Kremlin.
Mueller was appointed special counsel to investigate possible Russian interference in the 2016 election, whether any Americans assisted in such efforts, and any other matters that arise in the course of his probe. And he is looking into whether the president tried to obstruct the inquiry.
In a separate development, The New York Times reported Wednesday that Mueller has learned of two conversations in recent months in which Trump asked key witnesses about matters they discussed with investigators, according to three people familiar with the encounters.
In one episode, the president told an aide that the White House counsel, Don McGahn, should issue a statement denying a Times article in January that said McGahn told investigators that the president once asked him to fire Mueller.
McGahn never released a statement, and he later had to remind the president that he had indeed asked McGahn to see that Mueller was dismissed, the people told the Times.
In the other episode, Trump asked his former chief of staff, Reince Priebus, how his interview had gone with the special counsel's investigators and whether they had been "nice," according to two people familiar with the discussion.
The episodes demonstrate that the president has ignored his lawyers' advice to avoid doing anything publicly or privately that could create the appearance of interfering with it.
The White House did not respond to several requests for comment. Priebus and McGahn declined to comment through their lawyer, William Burck.
Legal experts said Trump's contact with the men most likely did not rise to the level of witness tampering. But witnesses and lawyers who learned about the conversations viewed them as potentially a problem and shared them with Mueller.
Information for this article was contributed by Devlin Barrett, Sari Horwitz, Rosalind S. Helderman, Carol D. Leonnig, Josh Dawsey and Spencer S. Hsu of The Washington Post and by Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times.
Business on 03/08/2018