Tag: Erik Prince

Watchdog group sues DOJ for records to determine if Erik Prince probe was ‘influenced’ by ‘officials seeking to accommodate’ Trump

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A government watchdog organization on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice alleging that the federal executive department violated the government’s public records law and failed to disclose non-exempt documents. 

According to Law & Crime, the documents focused on a probe into whether or not former President Donald Trump and his longtime ally Erik Prince provided false statements during the Russian investigation.

In the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) alleges that “the government had failed to follow the law by not providing responses to its requests for public information concerning the Prince probe and whether it may have been affected by the Blackwater founder’s close ties to the Trump administration.” Continue reading.

Erik Prince, Trump Ally, Denies Role in Libya Mercenary Operation

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In an interview, the contractor pushed back against a United Nations report accusing him of breaching a decade-old arms embargo on Libya.

NAIROBI, Kenya — Responding to accusations by United Nations investigators that he violated an international arms embargo, Erik Prince, the Blackwater Worldwide founder and prominent supporter of Donald J. Trump, denied playing any role in an $80 million mercenary operation in Libya in 2019. And he insisted that key findings of the U.N. investigation were entirely wrong.

“Erik Prince didn’t breach any arms embargo and had nothing to do with sending aircraft, drones, arms or people to Libya — period,” he said in an interview with The New York Times.

A confidential report submitted Thursday to the U.N. Security Council and obtained by The Times accused Mr. Prince of breaching the decade-old arms embargo on Libya by taking part in an ill-fated mercenary operation in 2019 that sought to support a powerful Libyan commander in his drive to overthrow Libya’s internationally backed government. Continue reading.

Ukrainian Giuliani ally hires ex-lawmaker to lobby Trump administration

The ex-lawmaker is a business partner of Erik Prince.

A Ukrainian associate of Rudy Giuliani has hired a business partner of Erik Prince to lobby Washington on his behalf regarding “corruption,” according to public records and interviews. The move became public on the Justice Department’s lobbying registry the same day that Joe Biden became the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee.

The business partner, former Ukrainian parliamentarian Andrii Artemenko, is registered to lobby using a different name. He’s also in the transportation and logistics business with Prince, and the two have been very busy because the coronavirus pandemic has snarled air travel around the world, Artemenko told POLITICO.

The Giuliani associate who hired Artemenko is Andriy Derkach, a member of Ukraine’s Rada who drew attention in U.S. media during President Donald Trump’s impeachment saga, and who was once a member of the Ukrainian political party that Paul Manafort worked for. Continue reading.

Erik Prince Recruits Ex-Spies to Help Infiltrate Liberal Groups

New York Times logoMr. Prince, a contractor close to the Trump administration, contacted veteran spies for operations by Project Veritas, the conservative group known for conducting stings on news organizations and other groups.

WASHINGTON — Erik Prince, the security contractor with close ties to the Trump administration, has in recent years helped recruit former American and British spies for secretive intelligence-gathering operations that included infiltrating Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda, according to interviews and documents.

One of the former spies, an ex-MI6 officer named Richard Seddon, helped run a 2017 operation to copy files and record conversations in a Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers’ unions in the nation. Mr. Seddon directed an undercover operative to secretly tape the union’s local leaders and try to gather information that could be made public to damage the organization, documents show.

Using a different alias the next year, the same undercover operative infiltrated the congressional campaign of Abigail Spanberger, then a former C.I.A. officer who went on to win an important House seat in Virginia as a Democrat. The campaign discovered the operative and fired her. Continue reading.

Report: Erik Prince May Face Indictment For Lying To Congress In Russia Probe

While Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office has long since closed up shop, a key mysterious figure in the Russia investigation may still face charges related to the probe.

Erik Prince, an ally of President Donald Trump and the founder of the military contracting company formerly called Blackwater, is under investigation by the Justice Department for potentially lying to congressional investigators who interviewed him as part of the House of Representative’s Russia investigation, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. That investigation is reportedly in its “late stages.”

In addition to investigating potential lies to Congress, the Justice Department is also probing whether Prince violated U.S. export laws, the report said. Continue reading.

House Committee Refers Erik Prince For Lying In Russia Probe

Trump ally and billionaire military contractor Erik Prince could be the latest member of Trump’s circle to be swallowed up by the Russia investigation.

That’s because House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) said his committee plans to make a criminal referral to the Department of Justice to investigate Prince’s possible lies to Congress.

The lies revolve around a meeting in the secluded Seychelles islands that Prince had with a Russian businessman with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

View the complete April 30 article by Emily Singer on the National Memo website here.

Schiff: House panel to recommend DOJ open investigation into Erik Prince testimony

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that his committee would make a criminal referral to the Department of Justice recommending President Trump ally Erik Prince be investigated for lying to Congress.

Schiff said at a Washington Post Live event that the evidence is “very strong” that Prince lied to his committee about his meeting in Seychelles with a Russian financier with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I do believe that there was very strong evidence that he willingly lied to the committee,” Schiff said. “Later today, we are going to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department.”

View the complete April 30 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Demolishing Erik Prince: One TV interview shows exactly how to deal with Trump’s allies

Mehdi Hasan of Al Jazeera English took Trump pal Erik Prince apart in two minutes. American media: Watch and learn.

“He can’t keep getting away with it!” was one of the lines from “Breaking Bad” in which Aaron Paul’s award-winning acting talents were on full soul-crushing display. In the climactic scene from season five, episode 12, Paul’s Jesse Pinkman cries out in mid-nervous breakdown over the fact that Bryan Cranston’s Walter White indeed keeps getting away with one murderously bad decision after another.

Somehow, Donald Trump and his crew of mostly incompetent co-conspirators seemingly keep getting away with it — flooding the zone with one trespass after another, against the rule of law or against democratic norms or against common decency. To varying extents, we’re all Jesse Pinkman these days, raging for justice and fighting against the slowly metastasizing normalization of Trumpism.

With the exception of a few fearless White House reporters, the press has mostly been hectored into submission when directly challenging the Trump team. Credit where credit is due: Playboy’s Brian Karem and CNN’s Jim Acosta have each risked their posts by refusing to be silenced mid-question by Trump’s stumpy-fingered bullying. Likewise, Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell have been particularly relentless in their coverage of the Trump crisis. The print press has provided volumes of reporting along these lines too, but too many White House journalists continue to lose their nerve when battered by Trump’s cowardly aggression against what he calls “the enemies of the people.” (Everything he says and does telegraphs his guilt.)

Blackwater founder Erik Price hid information about 2016 Trump Tower meeting while under oath: House Intel chair

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Erik Prince hid information about his attendance at a 2016 Trump Tower meeting to discuss Iran while under oath.

In an interview with on Al Jazeera’s “Head to Head,” Price stated that he was present at an Aug. 3, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower to “talk about Iran policy,” and that he disclosed information about that meeting even though it does not appear in a transcript of his testimony.

According to Schiff, Prince, the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, is dead wrong.

View the complete March 10 article by Tom Boggioni of Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Blackwater security guard convicted in 2007 Iraqi civilian massacre at third U.S. trial

Former Blackwater Worldwide guard Nicholas Slatten leaves federal court in Washington in June 2014. Credit: Cliff Owen, AP

A former Blackwater security guard was convicted of first-degree murder Wednesday for killing the first of 14 unarmed civilians in a barrage of gunfire in a crowded Baghdad traffic circle in 2007, an episode that drew international condemnation during the Iraq War.

It was the second time a federal jury in Washington convicted Nicholas A. Slatten, 35, of murder in the death of 19-year-old Ahmed Haithem Ahmed Al Rubia’y. His 2014 conviction was overturned on appeal, and a second trial last summer ended in a hung jury. Slatten now faces a mandatory life sentence without parole.

The jury foreperson told The Washington Post that jurors rejected Slatten’s claim that his convoy of guards fired on Al Rubia’y in self-defense. “In our determination, there were no justifiable deaths,” the foreperson said. “No justifiable shooting.”

View the complete December 19 article by Tom Jackman and Spencer S. Hsu on The Washington Post website here.