You Will Anyway: Add another name to the Russia-Trump mess: Erik Prince

Thursday, December 7, 2017

Add another name to the Russia-Trump mess: Erik Prince

You remember Erik. Head of Iraq mercenary force Blackwater, now called Xe (update: it's called Academi now, after a third name change, and he also has a company in Hong Kong working for China - Frontier Resource), I believe. It seems he's in the news again for proposing with Oliver North (of Iran-Contra infamy) and the Trump cabal to provide a secret spy service to get around the CIA (a la Dick Cheney's playbook), because Trump doesn't trust the CIA. (You may recall that Sarah Fuckabee Sanders gave a non-denial denial about it recently.)

Attorney Seth Abramson spent all day today posting a marathon 141-tweet thread on his Twitter account about Prince's involvement with the Trump cabal. Start here if you want to read it.

Erik Prince has gotten away with a whole lot of nefarious shit. I imagine he thinks he's bulletproof. And maybe he is.

After 141 tweets taking apart Prince's testimony, Abramson concludes with this:

Also, Abramson wrote an article for the Huffington Post on January 17 about an alleged conspiracy with Prince, Rudi Guilliani and Trump to force James Comey's hand in what became the Hillary Clinton - Anthony Weiner email scandal that many say cost her the election. That's here (and it's short). It begins:

Information presently public and available confirms that Erik Prince, Rudy Giuliani, and Donald Trump conspired to intimidate FBI Director James Comey into interfering in, and thus directly affecting, the 2016 presidential election.

HuffPo

It's interesting and backs up what Comey said about why he did what he did.

Jeremy Scahill discusses the Prince-North secret spy service deal on his most recent podcast, if you want to listen to that. (The whole podcast is a good listen; he also talks to Barret Brown.) That's here:

Things are getting crazier and crazier all the time.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: Here's a link to the story of the Seychelles meeting Abramson constantly refers to in the Erik Prince testimony transcript.

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Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.