Mueller investigated whether Trump attended a 2016 chess championship with Russians
But buried among the myriad of revelations contained in Mueller’s 448-page report, released on Thursday with limited redactions by Attorney General William Barr, was the fact that Trump disclosed to investigators that sanctioned Russian powerbroker Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, then the president of the World Chess Federation , invited the Trump Organization to host the 2016 World Chess Championship at Trump Tower.
In the days following Trump’s shocking electoral victory, Russia’s business and political elite, headlined by Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov, gathered in Manhattan’s South Street Seaport to watch Russian grandmaster Sergey Karjakin challenge Norwegian world champion Magnus Carlsen at the biennial World Chess Championship.
Mueller reported that Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian sovereign wealth fund, flew to New York for the event and invited George Nader, a mysterious Middle Eastern businessman who was later questioned by Mueller about his meetings with Trump allies, to join him for the opening of the tournament.
As described in a recent joint investigation undertaken by ABC News and FiveThirtyEight, Ilyumzhinov, the wealthy former governor of the Russian state of Kalmykia, has repeatedly been alleged to have acted as an informal envoy for the Russian government. Indeed, Ilyumzhinov’s son David confirmed that his father served a unique role. “It’s not a secret,” David said. “He can go like he is just there for chess, for the chess tournament, but he can deliver a message. And the message won’t get screwed up.”
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