President Trump’s top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, “recommended appointing Stefan Halper, an academic and suspected FBI informant on the Trump campaign, to a senior role in the Trump administration,” Axios has learned.

“During the transition everyone involved in Trump’s presidential campaign were asked to submit resumes for administration positions. Halper, who already knew Navarro in the context of being a China scholar and interviewing for his anti-China book and film, pitched himself for an ambassadorship in Asia… Navarro says he submitted Halper’s name for the Asian ambassadorship — we have not been able to confirm the country — along with around a dozen other people for roles in the region.”

“A Russian plane linked to the country’s government flew into the Seychelles the day prior to a 2017 meeting now under review by special counsel Robert Mueller,” according to NJ Advance Media.

“Much speculation has centered on one particular meeting that took place between Erik Prince, founder of the security company Blackwater, Kirill Dmitriev, the director of one of Russia’s sovereign wealth funds, and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the effective ruler of the United Arab Emirates.”

“But new details about a Russian aircraft that landed in the Seychelles the day before Prince has raised questions about the scope of the meetings that week and whether sanctions were a topic of conversation among participants.”

“A direct line of communication between the Kremlin-connected Agalarov family and the Trump family was open during the transition after President Trump’s presidential election,” BuzzFeed News reports.

“The ‘first of a series’ of text messages was sent between Emin Agalarov and Donald Trump Jr. two days after the 2016 election… The communications continued through at least mid-December 2016.”

“President Trump’s inaugural committee paid nearly $26 million to an event planning firm started by an adviser to First Lady Melania Trump, while donating $5 million — less than expected — to charity,” the New York Times reports.

“Nearly a year after President Trump’s inauguration, the committee that raised a record $106.7 million for the event has not disclosed how much surplus money it still has or provided a final accounting of its finances,” USA Today reports.

“While the committee must report names of donors who give at least $200, election law does not require an accounting of the spending. And there are few restrictions on how leftover funds are used.”

“Officials of President Trump’s transition team plan to ask Special Counsel Robert Mueller to return ‘many tens of thousands‘ of transition emails they contend were unlawfully provided to him,” Axios reports.

“But the prosecutor’s office says emails being used in the investigation were properly obtained.”

“The transition emails are said to include sensitive exchanges on matters such as potential appointments, gossip about the views of particular senators involved in the confirmation process, speculation about vulnerabilities of Trump nominees, strategizing about press statements, and policy planning on everything from war to taxes.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller has obtained “many tens of thousands” of Trump transition emails, including emails of Jared Kushner, transition team sources tell Axios.

“Trump officials discovered Mueller had the emails when his prosecutors used them as the basis for questions to witnesses, the sources said. The emails include 12 accounts, one of which contains about 7,000 emails, the sources said.”

”The accounts include the team’s political leadership and the foreign-policy team, the sources said.”