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UPDATE: The Mueller Report reveals that both Bannon and Prince destroyed evidence regarding the Seychelles meeting. There are already so many questions for Mueller but here’s another: why not charge them for destroying evidence? Would a more aggressive prosecutor have so charged them?
Erik Prince is a person of interest for the Russia investigation on many different fronts as Seth Abramson recently noted:
1/ This is just a note to say Erik Prince a) is known to secretly lobby Trump, b) is a Trump "shadow advisor," c) had a secret Russia meeting on Trump's behalf, d) is a Russia-probe witness, e) said the following to Congress (apropos of Trump's sudden, bizarre aluminum tariff): pic.twitter.com/zLhNLPujJP
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 2, 2018
C refers to the Seychelles meeting with the UAE and the Ukrainian ‘peace plan’ that was basically a total giveaway to Russia. Beyond that Prince is also a person of interest in the FBI is Trumplandia conspiracy-regarding just who forced Comey’s hand on that unforgivable letter on October 28, 2016.
(THREAD) On November 4, 2016—96 hours before the presidential election—Trump advisor Erik Prince went on a radio network controlled by Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon to say that an anti-Clinton cabal at NYPD was conspiring to leak false information about Clinton pre-election. pic.twitter.com/DsAPGwcBxW
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) January 25, 2018
We know Prince’s longer history-Blackwater, etc. Now it emerges that before Christopher Wray was FBI Director he oversaw a case that uncovered criminal behavior on the part of Prince.
“AS A PRIVATE attorney in 2016, FBI Director Chris Wray supervised a team of lawyers that informed the Justice Department that Blackwater founder Erik Prince had likely violated U.S. law while trying to sell secretly modified paramilitary attack aircraft to Azerbaijan’s military.
“Wray and Robert Hur, now a senior Justice Department official, were both partners at the powerhouse law firm King & Spalding in 2015 when officials at Prince’s Hong Kong-based logistics company, Frontier Services Group, discovered suspicious activity by Prince over the proposed sale of the planes. Hur is currently the top lieutenant to Rod Rosenstein, the U.S. deputy attorney general. At King & Spalding, he was one of the lead lawyers on the Prince investigation.”
Of course, that was in 2016-before Prince had his good friend, so-called ‘President Trump’ in the WH.
“FSG retained King & Spalding to conduct a review of the company’s legal exposure to violations of U.S. law on weapons sales and the export of defense services to foreign governments and militaries. The attorneys concluded that Prince could potentially be charged with brokering defense articles without a license, according to a copy of the review obtained by The Intercept. The FSG-hired lawyers briefed the Obama Justice Department’s National Security Division in February 2016 on Prince’s activities and, a month later, FSG’s CEO notified the State Department that FSG intended to voluntarily report its possible violations of U.S. defense export laws.
“The potential violations stem principally from conduct of Mr. Prince, a U.S. person,” CEO Gregg Smith wrote to the director of the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, which regulates the export of defense articles and services, in a letter obtained by The Intercept.
In the letter, Smith promised to provide the State Department with a copy of the findings of FSG’s internal investigation. In April 2016, The Intercept published two reports detailing Prince’s attempts to modify small aircraft for sale to militaries in Africa and the Middle East, and a federal investigation into his alleged business ties to Chinese intelligence. According to a second letter dated April 13, 2016 and seen by The Intercept, Smith asked the State Department for an extension so FSG could review the report for more potential violations of U.S. defense export laws.”
There was a divide at FSG between CEO Smith and Erik Prince-whose real dream was to be a mercenary:
FSG’s apparently good-faith attempt to uncover potential wrongdoing by Prince represented the culmination of a power struggle between Smith and Prince for control of the company. “Erik was not cooperating or supportive” of the internal review, according to a former senior FSG official.
A close associate of Prince previously told The Intercept that, at the time of the Wray-led investigation, Prince was operating a “secret skunkworks program” using his role as FSG’s founder and chair to cover his shadowy activities. “Erik wants to be a real, no-shit mercenary,” said the associate. “Erik hides in the shadows … and uses [FSG] for legitimacy.”
In any case the charge was serious:
“The evidence strongly suggests that Mr. Prince was offering a foreign defense article (i.e., an attack aircraft) for sale to the Azerbaijan MOD,” according to the internal investigation.
As to where this investigation went ultimately:
What action, if any, the Justice Department took after Wray’s team shared their initial findings has not been made public. “We were perplexed by the lack of immediate action” by the State and Justice departments, the former senior FSG official told The Intercept, adding that he and others at the company got the impression that “nobody wanted to dig into this until after the [2016] election.”
After the election. Sound familiar? The Obama WH was always so fastidious in its concern that anything look political. Trump, of course, has no such compunction. He took over the WH after the-rigged-election and what are the chances that he decided to allow them to dig into it after the 2016 election?
Asked about the status of any investigations into Prince stemming from King & Spalding’s work, Justice Department spokesperson Sarah Isgur Flores told The Intercept: “We don’t comment, confirm, or deny the existence of investigations.” Grindler, who is still a partner at King & Spalding, said he is “unable to comment because all of the information I have is covered by the attorney client privilege.”
For his part, Erik Prince appears emboldened by the Donald Trump presidency. He gave heartily to a pro-Trump super PAC and his sister, Betsy DeVos, is the education secretary. Prince continues to very publicly push for the Trump administration to utilize his private spy and security services with no apparent concern that the FBI or Justice Department may be pursuing him. On Sunday, Prince and Oliver North, of Iran-Contra fame, hosted a fundraiser at Prince’s home in Virginia for his longtime friend California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher.
Erik Prince, Ollie North, and Dana Rohrbacher: a rogue’s gallery of those who conspired with our enemies in exchange for domestic political benefit.
But there’s no question the investigation into Prince has languished-the key question is why.
“WHILE MANY DETAILS about Prince’s effort to create a private air force have been previously reported by The Intercept, Wray and Hur’s involvement and their interaction with the Obama Justice Department have not. Their role raises new questions about why the government’s investigation into Prince appears to have languished and what role the two senior officials may play in any continuation of the probe.”
Regarding Wray we know from Schiff that once he took over as FBI Director House Intel stopped receiving counterintelligence briefings on Trump Russia. While Trump isn’t happy with him for stating the obvious-that if a foreign power offers election assistance you should call the FBI-Wray certainly covered him by not giving Congress updates on the CI-which it has a right to.
Was the failure to move on Prince more cover for Trump?