Erik Prince says he ‘cooperated’ with Mueller

Erik Prince, the founder of the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater, said in an interview published Tuesday that he cooperated with special counsel Robert Mueller in his probe into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

“I have spoken voluntarily to Congress and I also cooperated with the special counsel,” Prince told the Daily Beast. 

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“I have plenty of opinions about the various investigations but there’s no question some people are taking it seriously and I think it’s best to keep my opinion on that to myself for now. All I will add is that much of the reporting about me in the media is inaccurate, and I am confident that when the investigators have finished their work, we will be able to put these distractions to the side,” he continued. 

The New York Times reported last month that Prince, who is the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, arranged a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Gulf emissary in August 2016, a few months before the presidential election.

The Times reported that the meeting marked the first indication that a country other than Russia may have offered to help the Trump campaign before the election.

Mueller has also looked into New York-based hedge fund manager and close friend of Jared Kushner Richard Gerson and his connections to various meetings between foreign officials and Trump associates. 

Gerson was reportedly in Seychelles in January 2017, which was the same time Prince was in the country to secretly meet with United Arab Emirates (UAE) Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan and other UAE officials, according to NBC News.

Mueller is reportedly probing whether the Seychelles meeting between Prince and UAE officials was aimed at setting up a back channel between the Trump campaign and Russia. 

Prince told the New York Observer last year that the meeting was not related to the Trump campaign.

“We talked about the Russian business climate, where we thought oil was headed price-wise and how much he thought Russia would like to do business in America,” Prince said. 

“It had nothing to do with national security, the Trump campaign or anything else.”