Sunday, March 10, 2019

Blackwater's Erik Prince: Iraq, privatising wars, and Trump | Head to Head



Washington (CNN)House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said President Donald Trump's associate Erik Prince was not truthful in a recent interview about his testimony before Congress.
The assertion from Schiff raised further questions about Prince's testimony and the potential that he misled House investigators.
Prince, the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, is best known for founding the security firm Blackwater, and in recent years, he has engendered further controversy over his ties to Trump. He appeared before the House Intelligence Committee in November 2017 and came under fire by Democrats following his testimony for possibly misleading Congress about a meeting he had with a Russian banker in the Seychelles islands.
The New York Times later reported about a meeting Prince organized with Donald Trump Jr. and others in Trump Tower ahead of the 2016 election, and Prince acknowledged the meeting in a recent interview with Mehdi Hasan on Al Jazeera.
    But when asked in that interview why he did not disclose the meeting before Congress, Prince claimed he did tell investigators about it. Pressed on the issue, Prince said, "I don't know if they got the transcript wrong," referring to the publicly available transcript from the committee of his testimony.
    Schiff, however, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that Prince was "certainly not telling the truth in that interview."
    "There's nothing wrong with our transcript," Schiff said. "There was nothing wrong with the reporter who transcribed his testimony. He did not disclose that meeting to our committee."
    Schiff said Prince's comments in the interview looked "inconsistent" with his testimony before the House panel and noted that special counsel Robert Mueller could review Prince's testimony as well.
    "Bob Mueller will have to make the decision about whether that rises to the level of deliberate falsehood," Schiff said. Mueller has been aggressive about prosecuting Trump associates who lied to the FBI or Congress.
    For his part, Prince has denied wrongdoing and said last year he had "cooperated" with Mueller.
      CNN has reached out to Frontier Services Group, a company that lists Prince as its executive director, for comment.
      Prince never officially worked for the Trump campaign, transition or administration. But he is a prominent Trump supporter and donated $250,000 to pro-Trump efforts during the 2016 campaign, according to federal election commission records. Prince spent time around senior Trump officials during the transition and continued informally advising the Trump White House on some major foreign policy decisions.

















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