Blackwater founder Erik Prince helped fund effort tied to obtaining Clinton’s emails

Blackwater founder Erik Prince was involved in funding an effort to verify if a cache of stolen emails purporting to be from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server were legitimate, according to special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

Prince in 2016 was approached by Barbara Ledeen, an aide to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and agreed to fund the hiring of a tech expert to verify if the emails were from Clinton’s server, which was the subject of a 2016 FBI investigation.

{mosads}”Ledeen claimed to have obtained a trove of emails (from what she described as the ‘dark web’) that purported to be the deleted Clinton emails. Ledeen wanted to authenticate the emails and solicited contributions to fund that effort. Erik Prince provided funding to hire a tech advisor to ascertain the authenticity of the emails,” reads a section of the Mueller report, which was released Thursday.

“According to Prince, the tech advisor determined that the emails were not authentic,” the report continues.

Prince, who advised the Trump campaign throughout 2016, admitted last month to have also been involved in a key meeting at Trump Tower during the campaign. At that meeting, businessman George Nader told top members of the campaign that the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia were interested in supporting President Trump’s bid for the White House.

Prince, the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, previously testified before Congress that he only had an “unofficial” role with the Trump campaign, limited to placing yard signs and attending fundraisers. But in March he told Al Jazeera he had discussed Iran policy with top members of the campaign.

Prince and Nader have both been asked to cooperate in the House Judiciary Committee’s ongoing investigation into the president and his advisers.