George Nader, a Lebanese American businessman, is now cooperating with the Mueller investigation. Nader has ties to the Emiratis, and significantly, was at the ‘Seychelles Meeting’. Previous reports have shown that Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, had met with with Kirill Dmitriev, a man who runs an investment fund for Vladmir Putin. Prince has claimed that the meeting was pure coincidence and very casual. But Nader’s attendance casts the encounter in a new light.

Prince has close ties with the Trump Administration; ties which could be said to mirror those of Nader’s to the Emiratis and Dmitriev’s to the Kremlin. So what is one to make to make of such a meeting? The Washington Post claims that this development substantiates the idea that the meeting was intended to set up a “back-channel” between Trump and Russia. If that is so, the implications of the meeting for the emerging pattern of Trump-Russia connections are intriguing.

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