553

Overall Erik Prince is named well-he’s a spoiled prince just like his buddies Jared Kushner and MBS. He sure got peevish at having to deem to answer questions of the people’s Congress. Don’t these little people know he’s got more important things to do-like help Trump set up a private intelligence agency?

As Charles Pierce said, Prince did everything but defecate on the Congressional floor:

It has been a terrific week for what used to be called contempt of Congress, back when we had a Congress run by people less worthy of contempt. There was a time, and not so long ago, when, if someone had run the rap that Donald Trump, Jr. tried to run before the House Intelligence Committee the other day—that his conversation with his father were subject to attorney-client privilege, apparently because there was a lawyer somewhere within the 202 area code—that person would have left Capitol Hill in handcuffs. But this is the present Congress with the present Republican majorities running things, so Junior walked away to prevaricate another day.

The day before Junior’s appearance, a friendly member of Congress not unfamiliar with the shebeen gave me a heads-up. Wait until the transcript of Erik Prince’s testimony is released, this friendly person said. You won’t believe it. It was the considered opinion that Prince possibly was the most arrogant jackass ever to appear before a congressional committee. The transcript was released on Thursday and it will be hard to trust my pal again, considering how far he low-balled Prince’s attitude. The witness did everything except drop trou and moon the committee. There was a time, and not so long ago, when a person who treated a congressional committee like a group of not-very-competent valet parking attendants would have been introduced to institutional dining for a few months, But this is the present Congress with the present Republican majorities, so Prince looked up from the witness table and saw what he perceived to be a gathering of ambulatory doormats.

During the campaign, Trump (in)famously declared he could shoot someone in broad daylight on 5th Avenue and get away with it. That is certainly true for him or anyone from his world assuming the jury is made up of Republican Congressmen-they’ve already established that there is nothing Trump could do that would require any oversight whatsoever. They are making noises about the murder of Khashoggi but will they actually use their actual Congressional power to do anything about it? That I will believe when I see it.

FN: In retrospect it’s safe to say we never saw it.

Of interest to the House Intelligence Committee, of course, was Prince’s role as an alleged go-between, a bridge between the Trump campaign and Russian bankers, particularly a meeting with the chief executive of a state-run Russian investment bank over dinner in the Seychelles Islands, a meeting arranged by Prince’s influential friends in the United Arab Emirates. Prince met with Steve Bannon prior to this meeting, something that Democrats on the committee found piquant as well.”

UPDATE: Bannon was always Erik Prince’s point person within the Trump campaign-they’ve had a close relationship going back over 10 years. In the current Roger Stone trial Prince’s name has come up again-it turns out it was he who received the message from Stone in October, 2016 that the payload’s coming–Clinton’s emails.

For his part, Bannon may be testifying at Stone’s trial-against him on behalf of the government; I’ve wondered how Bannon escaped being charged as he clearly perjured himself too-the answer is that he’s cooperated with the government.

Of course, as we saw in Chapter A, Stone, Prince, and Bannon were all involved in the Comeygate side of Watergate 2.0 as well-see below for more.

End of UPDATE.

It’s well established that Prince perjured himself multiple times in his testimony that day. Again, the GOP won’t do anything about it so Vox discussed what Mueller could do about it. 

Soon, assuming a Democratic Congress, the Dems can and hopefully will do something about it.

FN: It took them awhile to do anything about it but they have now launched impeachment hearings.

Back to Pierce:

“The meeting, Prince insisted was no big deal. But he was far more concerned about how the world had heard about it. (The Washington Post broke the story last April, claiming that Prince had met with the Russian to develop a backchannel between the Trump people and Moscow.) Barack Obama, he told the committee, lifting himself and his dudgeon on high, was trying to destroy him.

Note Prince’s presumptuousness-he doesn’t seem to get it that he’s testifying before Congress not the other way around. Just like Nixon tried to make the real scandal that ‘LBJ spied on me’ so it is that Trump and the GOP has tried to make it that Obama spied on Trump and his co-conspirators-not true in any event.

Prince also had the princely way of constantly telling the questioners which questions were germane and which were ‘just a fishing expedition.’ As opposed to  what-maybe Whitewater?

He certainly didn’t think it was germane to answer Eric Swalwell’s questions on what he did in Italy during 2016 and 2017. 

See pg. 85 of the House Intelligence Committee testimony.

Adam Schiff called out his imperious  and Princely manner:

Schiff and Prince got into a testy back-and-forth exchange, with Schiff threatening Prince with a subpoena if he refused to continue with the hearing.

When Prince objected to extending questioning for another 30 minutes, Schiff replied, “It’s not up to you to decide how long the hearing goes on.”

“It is, because I’m here voluntarily,” Prince shot back.

Maybe he should have been subpoenaed then. The GOP won’t do it but Schiff did raise the specter

“You may be used to operating this way in your business, Mr. Prince,” Schiff responded.

But as Charles Pierce says, Prince got the most peevish when Joaquin Castro asked him about Comeygate.

But it was as the day ground on that Prince’s true contempt for civilian authority and the rule of law came to full flower. When Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro asked Prince about whether or not he had any moles in the New York Police Department who might have leaked to him what the New York FBI office was doing regarding Hillary Rodham Clinton’s emails, Prince reacted as though Castro had asked him for the nuclear launch codes.

Castro: So I guess why were you quoted in that story as saying someone in the NYPD was telling you stuff.

Prince: How is this germane to this fishing expedition?

But it was when he was being questioned for the second time by Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the committee, Prince emptied both barrels.

Prince: Now, listen, it’s 5:30. I haven’t been home in a week. I flew in this morning from Africa and I’ve had about enough of this. So, thank you.

Schiff: Are you refusing to testify any further, Mr. Prince?

Prince: I’d say the extent of your questions is so far outside the scope of what you’re actually looking for that I’m not here to indulge your fishing expedition any longer…Look, it’s not even the nature of the questioning. The fact is that I have been here for…three hours, actually. And I haven’t been home in a week. I came back from Africa, arrived this morning to indulge you here and I think I have indulged you enough. You have the document production you have asked for and there is nothing else to see or hear.

Schiff: Are you refusing to finish the hearing, Mr. Prince?

Prince: I’m refusing to waste anyone else’s time.

So the hearing left it that Prince flew halfway around the world to meet some people from the UAE and, lo and behold, there was this influential Russian banker there, too. Erik Prince lives a life of great convenience, and you have no right to know what he’s up to, you groveling insect, with your Congress and everything.

No doubt that is Prince’s attitude towards Congress.

In any case it was good to see Castro pursue that line of questioning and perhaps the fact that it made Prince even more peevish is a hint that he hit a nerve-ie, there’s something there. Castro asks him directly about what he told Breibart about receiving leaks from the NYPD about Clinton’s emails.

Regarding Prince’s-by his own words-receiving leaked info, DailyKos:

Late last night, HuffPo columnist Seth Abramson discovered that Prince gave a rather interesting interview to Breitbart News Daily on November 4—less than 24 hours before Comey announced there was no there there in the new emails. Prince claimed that the FBI’s hand was forced by hopping mad NYPD detectives investigating Anthony Weiner. Supposedly, they found “State Department emails” and evidence of a trove of criminal activity involving the Clintons and other prominent Democrats. Click over to my piece at Liberal America to hear it—but be sure you’re sitting down. After all, this is Breitbart—or rather, Trumpbart—we’re talking about.

According to this narrative the NYPD gave the FBI an ultimatum—reopen the investigation, or we will hold a press conference to announce a ton of arrests. Supposedly, this “pushed the FBI off their chairs,” prompting Comey’s now-infamous letter.

Two big problems. First, we know that the warrant contained no such thing. Rather, its sole “probable cause” was a possible email exchange between Hillary and Huma Abedin. On that basis, a number of legal experts have condemned it as hackery at best and a Fourth Amendment violation at worst.

More seriously, Prince openly admitted that he knew about the emails before Comey did. For those of you keeping score, that makes THREE close confidants to Trump who knew about the emails in the three weeks between when they were found and when Comey was finally notified. The other two? Rudy Giuliani and Jim Kallstrom, both of whom were in contact with active agents during the investigation.

And all three of them knew damn well what they were doing when they made those leaks. Remember, Giuliani is a former U. S. Attorney, and before then headed the DOJ’s criminal division. Kallstrom is the former head of the FBI in New York City. Prince was a major government contractor during his tenure at Blackwater. If this isn’t evidence that this election was tainted by criminal misconduct, what is?

Kallstrom is NYPD sex crimes investigator who gave Trump thousands of dollars of donations just after the Hollywood Access video came out. (Find link Mike)-chapter A.

Abramson muses that Giuliani revealed his contacts with FBI agents on orders from Trump, while Prince did so on orders from either Steve Bannon or Trump. I haven’t seen anything to suggest–yet—that Trump was directly involved. After all, you’re talking about a couple of guys who are known to be cowboys. The fact that Prince went on Breitbart, though, makes you wonder if Bannon was in some way involved.”

The only thing I’d take issue with is assuming this is the work of cowboys. Again-coincidences take a lot of planning. Bannon by this time was Trump’s campaign manager so if he was involved, the Trump campaign was involved. As I argued in a previous chapter (X) the case of Trump directing the GSA to change plans on a new FBI building, Trump is a micromanager-but they have procedures to give him plausible deniability.

Roger Stone knew all about it as did Rudy Giuliani, indeed, Trump’s daughter in law, Lara Trump knew. I wouldn’t extrapolate from all this Trump didn’t know or likely didn’t know. Rather that he likely did know.

FN: The Mueller Report demonstrated conclusively that he did know about Russian collusion-that he was constantly asking for the emails himself-he directed Michael Flynn to find Clinton’s emails the same day of his infamous words Russia, if you’re listening while Roger Stone kept him updated-Stone gave Trump prior knowledge of both the DNC email and Podesta email dumps. Then we see his conduct on Ukraine-the pattern clearly suggests he did know not that he didn’t.

It’s not surprising that Prince got testy when the subject of him receiving NYPD leaks came up.

When Castro asked him about this Prince sung a very different tune. 

Seth Abramson:

“Here again is my article in The Huffington Post—from a year ago—about how Prince’s lies about NYPD leaks helped convince Jim Comey to intercede in the 2016 presidential election. Prince suddenly gets very defensive when this comes up (see last tweet).”

“What Erik Prince *doesn’t say* is that everything his NYPD “source” told him—and let’s be super clear here, there *was no source*—turned out to be a disgusting libel, 100% false, and a despicable attempt to swing the 2016 campaign to Donald Trump.”

Oh, and it worked.

Yes, in 2016 crime paid. Thanks in part to the media, whose coverage before the current 2018 election next month has also sudden again deteriorated markedly in the last few weeks starting with its botching the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.

“I told you guys a year ago what Prince did 96 hours before the election was a smoking gun—the (successful) use of Russian “deza” to blackmail the FBI into speaking publicly on the Weiner case and raise Clinton’s emails right before the vote—so this looks like metaphor to me:

 
me:

138/ Oh, man—it went *down*.

(And by the way, Prince is lying here: he clearly indicated to Breitbart, just 96 hours before the 2016 presidential election, that he was discussing—among other emails—emails from a State Department address, i.e. Clinton’s, and *not* just Wiener’s.)

39/ …and there he is, admitting it. He lied about Hillary’s emails.

And he was using Russian “deza” just 96 hours before a presidential election, at a time he was a top advisor to the Trump campaign.

Like I said in The Huffington Post, it was a domestic criminal conspiracy.”

Indeed, and this is what I’ve tried to emphasize in this book-that Watergate 2.0 is about not just Russiagate but Comeygate that what the FBI did was in its own way just as outrageous as what Russia did. As we know Russia wanted to hurt Clinton and help Trump. And this is exactly what a large fraction in the FBI-aka the rogue agents-wanted to do too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

License

October 28, 2016: a Day That Will Live in Infamy Copyright © by . All Rights Reserved.

Share This Book