2020 - The bigger picture

Prosecutors have subpoenaed Richard Seddon, a former British intelligence official, and Susan Gore, a Republican donor and heiress to the Gore-Tex fortune.

[...]

The investigation appears to stem from a 2021 New York Times article that, citing interviews and documents, detailed “an undercover operation by conservatives to infiltrate progressive groups, political campaigns, and the offices of Democratic as well as moderate Republican elected officials during the 2020 election cycle.”

One of the subpoenas, which was sent in the past two weeks, seeks documents and communications from January 2018 through the present involving numerous limited liability companies and individuals, including Gore; Seddon; Erik Prince, the security contractor and brother to former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; and James O’Keefe, the former head of Project Veritas.

[...]

The investigation is being handled by the public corruption unit of the US attorney’s office in Washington, DC.

[...]

According to the Times, Seddon, working with Prince, secured funding from Gore by the end of 2018 to train activists to infiltrate political groups. Seddon, according to the Times, recruited former operatives from Project Veritas, where he previously worked.

  CNN

Paranoia

A network of conservative activists, aided by a British former spy, mounted a campaign during the Trump administration to discredit perceived enemies of President Trump inside the government, according to documents and people involved in the operations.

The campaign included a planned sting operation against Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster, and secret surveillance operations against F.B.I. employees, aimed at exposing anti-Trump sentiment in the bureau’s ranks.

The operations against the F.B.I., run by the conservative group Project Veritas, were conducted from a large home in the Georgetown section of Washington that rented for $10,000 per month. Female undercover operatives arranged dates with the F.B.I. employees with the aim of secretly recording them making disparaging comments about Mr. Trump.

[...]

Central to the effort, according to interviews, was Richard Seddon, a former undercover British spy who was recruited in 2016 by the security contractor Erik Prince to train Project Veritas operatives to infiltrate trade unions, Democratic congressional campaigns and other targets. He ran field operations for Project Veritas until mid-2018.

[...]

The efforts to target American officials show how a campaign once focused on exposing outside organizations slowly morphed into an operation to ferret out Mr. Trump’s perceived enemies in the government’s ranks.

[...]

[O]ne of the participants in the operation against Mr. McMaster, Barbara Ledeen, [...] was a staff member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, then led by Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa.

[...]

The operation against Mr. McMaster was hatched not long after an article appeared in BuzzFeed News about a private dinner in 2017. Exactly what happened during the dinner is in dispute, but the article said that Mr. McMaster had disparaged Mr. Trump by calling him an “idiot” with the intelligence of a “kindergartner.”

[...]

Soon after the BuzzFeed article [...] the scheme developed to try to entrap Mr. McMaster: Recruit a woman to stake out the same restaurant, Tosca, with a hidden camera. According to the plan, whenever Mr. McMaster returned by himself, the woman would strike up a conversation with him and, over drinks, try to get him to make comments that could be used to either force him to resign or get him fired.

[...]

The operation was ultimately abandoned in March 2018 when the conspirators ended up getting what they wanted, albeit by different means. The embattled Mr. McMaster resigned on March 22, a move that avoided a firing by the president who had soured on the three-star general.

[...]

Who initially ordered the operation is unclear. In an interview, Ms. Ledeen said “someone she trusted” contacted her to help with the plan. She said she could not remember who.

  NYT

Yeah, that's believable.

According to Ms. Ledeen, she passed the message to a man she believed to be a Project Veritas operative during a meeting at the University Club in Washington. Ms. Ledeen said she believed the man provided her with a fake name.

Does she remember that name?

Documents obtained by The Times show the extent that Mr. Seddon built espionage tactics into training for the group’s operatives — teaching them to use deception to secure information from potential targets.

One role-playing exercise involved a trainee being interrogated by a law enforcement officer and having to “defend their cover” and “avoid exciting” the officer.

Another exercise instructs trainees in how to target a person in an elevator. The students were encouraged to think of their “targets as a possible future access agent, potential donor, support/facilities agent.”

“The student must create and maintain a fictional cover,” one document read.

The early training for the operations took place at the Prince family ranch near Cody, Wyo., and Mr. Seddon and his colleagues conducted hiring interviews inside an airport hangar at the Cody airport known locally as the Prince hangar, according to interviews and documents. Mr. Prince is the brother of Betsy DeVos, who served as Mr. Trump’s education secretary.

And I don't believe for a minute that we've seen the last of Erik Prince.

During the interview process, candidates fielded questions meant to figure out their political leanings, including which famous people they might invite to a dinner party and which publications they get their news from.

After finishing the exercises, the operatives were told to burn the training materials, according to a former Project Veritas employee.

[...]

Women living at the house had Project Veritas code names, including “Brazil” and “Tiger,” according to three former Project Veritas employees with knowledge of the operations. People living at the house were told not to receive mail using their real names. If they took an Uber home, the driver had to stop before they reached the house to ensure nobody saw where they actually lived, one of the former Project Veritas employees said.

[...]

Around the time Mr. McMaster resigned, Mr. Seddon pushed for Project Veritas to establish a base of operations in Washington and found a six-bedroom estate near the Georgetown University campus, according to former Project Veritas employees.

[...]

The plan was simple: Use undercover operatives to entrap F.B.I. employees and other government officials who could be publicly exposed as opposing Mr. Trump.

[...]

The group has previously assigned female operatives to secretly record and discredit male targets — sometimes making first contact with them on dating apps. In 2017, a Project Veritas operative also approached a Washington Post reporter with a false claim that a Senate candidate had impregnated her.

[...]

Project Veritas sued The Times for defamation last year over coverage of one of the group’s videos.

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

Fallout of the attempted coup in Venezuela

In a challenge to denials of government involvement, the ex-U.S. special operations sergeant whose security firm took part in a botched Venezuelan coup last May said two Trump administration officials met with and expressed support to planners of Operation Gideon, a Bay of Pigs-type operation that tried to oust Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro.

It’s a story of bungling, bravado and cloak-and-dagger plotting, with plans shared in clandestine meetings in the back of limousines while rolling through Miami, in restaurants and even at dusk on the 12th fairway of the Red Course of Trump Doral, the Miami Herald/McClatchy has learned.

  Miami Herald

Culminating in abject failure.

The allegations reported exclusively in this story are also contained in a $1.4 million breach-of-contract lawsuit filed Friday, Oct. 30, by Miami attorney Gustavo J. Garcia-Montes in Miami-Dade Circuit Court.

The suit is against Juan Jose Rendon, a political consultant closely aligned with Venezuelan legislator Juan Guaidó, who the Trump administration in January 2019 began calling the legitimate president of the oil-rich South American nation.

It was brought on behalf of retired Sgt. 1st Class Jordan Goudreau, who in roughly seven hours of detailed interviews insisted he had encouragement from the administration and even held meetings to plan the operation at the Trump Hotel in the nation’s capital and at the Trump Doral west of Miami.

Didn't get paid, eh?

The goal [...] was to replace Maduro by installing Guaidó, whose name appears on a contract purportedly signed with the coup plotters. The complete document — obtained by reporters from the Miami Herald and McClatchy, its parent company — contains a never-before-seen clause that allows Guaidó to disavow any involvement if the mission failed.

[...]

An addendum to the contract said Silvercorp “will advise and assist … in planning and executing an operation to capture/detain/remove Nicolás Maduro (heretoafter, “Primary Objective”), remove the current regime, and install the recognized Venezuelan President Juan Guaidó.”

[...]

The failed coup resulted in the May 3 capture of two former American soldiers and 47 Venezuelans and led to the death of six would-be freedom-fighters who appear to have been executed.

[...]

Goudreau’s assertions are strongly denied by the people he identifies, although few were willing to do so on the record.

They alternately called him a rogue operative facing possible federal indictment, a soldier disparaging the Venezuelan opposition in hopes of getting his two men freed or a con man seeking a Netflix deal.

[...]

Inconsistencies abound on all sides of this tale.

Imagine that.

A deal was cut to provide humanitarian aid through this border, or to launch an insurrection. Or, perhaps both.

Saying little in the months that followed the failed operation, Goudreau said he came to feel abandoned and scapegoated. He decided to break his silence and name the people he said had knowledge of his efforts to overthrow the Maduro regime.

He also said in his lawsuit he had seen a competing offer of assistance to the Guaidó administration purportedly from Erik Prince, brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and owner of the security firm Frontier Services Group. This is denied by Prince.

[...]

Goudreau’s lawsuit identified two Trump administration officials he said had prior knowledge of his plans. They are Andrew “Drew” Horn, at the time an aide to Vice President Mike Pence, and Jason Beardsley, a former soldier who is an advisor at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

[...]

A spokesperson for Pence said the vice president does not know Horn, although Horn’s LinkedIn page identifies him as a former associate director of policy for Pence and now an advisor to the Director of National Intelligence.

“Vice President Pence had absolutely no knowledge of the rogue plot in Venezuela and does not know Mr. Horn,” said the spokesperson, Devin O’Malley.

Never met the man. Maybe there are pictures; he might have been a coffee boy.

“Drew Horn was a Department of Energy employee who was detailed to the vice president’s office as a detailee on the domestic policy team,” one senior administration official told McClatchy. “He was not assigned any responsibilities in the national security portfolio, and he was not assigned any issues related to Venezuela.”

Perfect for the job then.

The effort was codenamed Operation Gideon (or Operación Gedeón in Spanish) after the military leader from the Hebrew Bible who led a vastly outnumbered Israelite army to decisive victory.

Was that Erik Prince's idea? Or Mike Pence's?

The failed operation led to the capture of Airan Berry and Luke Denman, both former special forces associates hired by Goudreau. Their images were broadcast widely on Venezuelan television, face-down with their arms tied behind their backs. They were each hastily sentenced in Venezuela to 20 years in prison in August under questionable due process.

[...]

A few weeks after the failed incursion, the FBI on May 21, 2020, raided a Boca Raton apartment where Goudreau was visiting and seized $56,800 in cash.

[...]

Goudreau, who was awarded three Bronze Stars for combat valor during his military career, alleges the FBI sought to lure him into a “death-by-cop” confrontation in the raid. Another participant in the coup effort confirmed Goudreau is the subject of an ongoing federal investigation.

[...]

Goudreau sat for online video interviews with Herald and McClatchy reporters from an undisclosed location. His lawyer provided what he said were the entire contents of Goudreau’s phone with contacts, social media chats, emails, text messages and photos and videos taken at training camps in Colombia. The FBI has the same contents, said Garcia-Montes, his attorney.

[...]

The special ops veteran insists his support of an attempted coup was encouraged by some in the Trump administration, including Horn and Beardsley, the Department of Veterans Affairs adviser who is also a former special forces veteran and an early and prominent African-American supporter of Trump.

[...]

According to the lawsuit against Rendon, Goudreau was introduced to Horn and Beardsley by Washington D.C. lobbyist Travis Lucas.

[...]

Lucas was one of the lawyers representing President Trump’s former bodyguard Keith Schiller in 2017 when Schiller was interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee as part of its inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Lucas in turn introduced him to Horn and Beardsley and they met multiple times, Goudreau said. The lawsuit alleges that “Horn assured Goudreau that licenses from the United States Government regarding the procurement of weapons and armaments for the project were forthcoming.”

“Drew Horn originally wanted to set up a meeting between myself and Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago … a direct face-to-face but that never happened,” Goudreau alleged in the interview.

SOMEbody had some sense.

Invoices and emails from Lucas and shared with the Herald and McClatchy by Goudreau, show that Lucas charged him a total of $30,000 in December, 2019, for navigating laws related to foreign lobbying and federal regulations governing the export of weapons.

[...]

“I played no role whatsoever in the failed coup attempt in Venezuela, had no knowledge about the coup attempt before it transpired, and never discussed or communicated with any U.S. government official regarding a coup or uprising in Venezuela. Any suggestions to the contrary are completely false[," said Lucas through his lawyer.]

Continue reading.

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

GOP: the party of grifters

So THAT's what Berman was so exercised about.  Kudos to Berman and Strauss.

Steve Bannon.  Who would have imagined?

2/ The crowdraising campaign raised more than $25 million, and pledged that the founder would "not take a penny in salary or compensation" and that "100% of the fund raised ... will be used in the execution of our mission and purpose." Lying to get someone's money is fraud.

3/ The indictment alleges that Bannon received over $1 million from the campaign, which he used to secretly pay the founder and to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in his own expenses.

If this sounds like a very simple case to get your head around, that's because it is. 

4/ There are some twists and turns in this story. The crowdfunding website suspended the "We The People Build The Wall" campaign, which pledged to give all of the money to the federal government to build the wall, early on. 

5/ The website said they would return the funds unless the founder identified a non-profit to which the funds could be transferred. Bannon used a separate 501(c)(4) non-profit group that he already controlled to receive the funds, with the new purpose of funding a private wall. 

6/ The indictment alleges that Bannon and his associates continued to lie, claiming that the founder would "take no salary" and would receive not "a penny of compensation from these donations." These alleged lies were repeated many times, according to the indictment. 

7/ Yet Bannon paid the founder hundreds of thousands of dollars in "salary" and did so in a manner meant to conceal the payments, by making payments to the founder's spouse. Bannon falsely reported on the 1099 tax form that the payments were for "media." 

8/ In sum, the indictment alleges that Bannon, the founder, and their other co-conspirators each received hundreds of thousands in donor funds from the effort.

If this case didn't involve Steve Bannon, or an effort to ripoff Trump's base, it would be a garden variety fraud. 

9/ Federal prosecutors routinely investigate and prosecute cases like this one.

It can be complicated to prove that otherwise legitimate companies or individuals engaged in fraudulent activity. This isn't one of those cases. The whole organization looks like a scam. 

Everything connected to Donald Trump is a scam.

10/ If the prosecutors can prove what is alleged in the indictment, it's hard to imagine a jury hesitating to convict the defendants. This case raises questions about Barr's recent attempt to fire and replace the SDNY U.S. Attorney, or whether Trump will pardon Bannon. /end

What will his current one be busted for?  (Reminder that the current one is recently replacing one that was siphoning hundreds of thousands to buy luxury automobiles and boats and in general have a fabulous lifestyle.)

Countdown to Trump saying he hardly knew Steve Bannon and never met the others.*

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

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

Also, Bill Barr's "right-hand man" appointed to the DC justice office is going to probably have some extra headaches now, because his name happens to the same as one of the indicted crooks: Timothy Shea.

UPDATE:

*UPDATE:  And there it is...

He didn't know "those three people."

Hey! This won't surprise you...

Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee reportedly told federal prosecutors last year that they believed President Trump’s family and associates may have presented misleading testimony during the panel’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

  The Hill

You think??? We might even call it lying.

The Senate Intelligence Committee engaged in an investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election for more than three years. Like former special counsel Robert Mueller, the panel concluded that the Kremlin mounted a sophisticated effort to boost President Trump and harm Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s candidacy during the lead-up to the 2016 election.

[...]

Among those suspected of presenting misleading information are the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner, unidentified sources familiar with the matter told The Washington Post. Trump Jr.'s and Kushner's accounts of a meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign reportedly conflicted with the testimony of former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates.

The committee also reportedly accused the president’s former chief strategist Stephen Bannon, former campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis and private security contractor Erik Prince of lying to Congress, which potentially carries a felony charge.

Get on it, Congress.

The concerns were detailed in a letter sent by the committee in June 2019 to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., according to a copy obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

[...]

Three officials told the Post that the committee referred several individuals to the Justice Department amid its investigation because of inconsistencies in their answers. Former Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and ranking member Mark Warner (D-Va.) reportedly signed off on all of the referrals, some of which were directed to Mueller’s team.

[...]

It’s unclear if the Department of Justice (DOJ) took any action on the referrals, which are generally tips from Congress about potential criminal activity.

I'm gonna say, no.

“We are fully confident in the testimony and information provided by Donald J. Trump, Jr.,” Alan Futerfas, Trump Jr.’s lawyer, told the newspaper. “In our view, this is a non-story.”

[...]

Members of the committee said in early August that in the coming days, they will work to “formalize a properly redacted, declassified, publicly releasable version of the Volume 5 report.”

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

If they're mercenaries, they're Erik Prince's army

Prince has been making deals behind the scenes with Trump ever since Trump was nominated by the GOP convention. 

The reason these unnamed "security" personnel are in DC and not elsewhere is because the president has authority to police only in DC, which has no statehood.

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

There's no consequence for lying to House Committees

This makes the testimony of those people who are calling out Trump's crimes and corruption regarding Ukraine and the 2020 election all the more meaningful.  Because it's obvious they wouldn't suffer any consequences if they simply lied for him.

Another enlightening podcast from Jeremy Scahill

Check out this week's podcast.

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

UPDATE:

If you're interested in more on Erik Prince:

https://theintercept.com/2019/05/03/erik-prince-trump-uae-project-veritas/

What has Erik Prince really been up to?

Check out this informative podcast with guests Jeremy Scahill and Joaquin Castro.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Erik Prince, Iran, and the Trump Tower meeting

Check out this Jeremy Scahill video.

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

And then there's the lies of Junior

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

Mehdi Hasan talks about his interview of Erik Prince

Sitting across from the 49-year-old Prince, a former Navy Seal who hails from a hard-right, billionaire family, can be unnerving. He tends not to smile. He has a cold, unbending stare that rarely betrays any emotion. And he likes to speak in short, sharp sentences.

For much of the hourlong interview, in front of a 300-strong audience in Oxford, I pressed Prince on Blackwater’s murderous record in Iraq, his own racist remarks about Iraqi “barbarians,” and his latest “garbage” proposal to privatize the NATO-led war in Afghanistan. (The Pentagon isn’t keen on the latter, though national security adviser John Bolton might be interested.)

Prince, I discovered, seems to have a Trumpian relationship with the truth. He tried to suggest that a car bomb exploded at Baghdad’s Nisour Square “five minutes” before Blackwater guards shot and killed 14 innocent Iraqis on September 16, 2007. I reminded him that there was no such explosion at Nisour Square. He denied that his current company, Frontier Services Group, is planning to build a “training facility” in Xinjiang, China, where more than a million Uighur Muslims are being held in Chinese detention camps, dismissing a press release confirming the news as a mistranslation from Mandarin. I had to inform him that the press release was issued by his own company, FSG, in English.

[...]

Prince was grilled by the House Intelligence Committee over a secret meeting he had in the Seychelles with Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian oligarch described as a “messenger” to Putin by Prince’s friends in the UAE; the meeting was on January 11, 2017, nine days before Trump’s inauguration. “It lasted one beer,” he told me flippantly, in reference to the Dmitriev meeting, which has been described by U.S., European, and Arab officials as “an apparent effort to establish a backchannel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump.”

[...]

I couldn’t help but ask the defensive Prince: Did he not worry that Mueller might send him to prison for not telling the truth, as he did with Gen. Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, and others?

“Nope,” he replied, giving me that dead-eyed stare once again, “not at all.”

  Mehdi Hasan @ The Intercept

There's always a pardon.

Rep. Jerry Nadler, sent out requests for documents to “81 agencies, individuals, and other entities tied to the president” — including Prince — as part of its sweeping investigation into alleged corruption and abuse of power by the president and his associates.

[...]

Will Prince have better answers for them than he had for me?

You can watch Hasan's entire interview here:



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

UPDATE 3/10:

More Mehdi interview of Erick Prince

I have to assume Erik Prince didn't know who Mehdi Hasan was or he'd never have agreed to the interview.  If you know Mehdi, you know he does his homework and he doesn't let anyone get away with non-answers or shit answers.  

UPDATE:



You can watch Hasan's entire interview here:



UPDATE 3/10:

Erik Prince admits meeting with Trump campaign

When asked by Mehdi Hasan on Al Jazeera's Head to Head programme about the August 3, 2016, Trump Tower meeting that reportedly took place between Prince, Donald Trump campaign officials, an Israeli social media specialist and an emissary for two Gulf princes, [Erik Prince, the founder of the private American security company Blackwater] did not deny the meeting took place.

"We were there … to talk about Iran policy," Prince said when pressed by Hasan.

Prince, however, apparently did not disclose information about the meeting when testifying before the House Intelligence Committee on November 30, 2017, according to a public transcript.

Prince testified under oath that he had "no official, or, really unofficial role" in the Trump campaign. He also told the House panel that he did not have any formal communications or contact with the campaign other than policy papers given to Steve Bannon, attending some fundraisers and a "yard sign".

[...]

When pressed further by Hasan, Prince said, "I don't believe I was asked that question."

Prince later contradicted himself, saying he did tell the panel about the meeting. When asked to explain why it was not in the transcript, Prince said, "I don't know if they got the transcript wrong."

He later also said that "not all of the discussion that day was transcribed".

He added that he "certainly" remembers discussing the meeting with "investigators".

  

He may be getting a call-back.

A staff member of the House Intelligence Committee told Al Jazeera that Prince was not asked about the August 3, 2016 meeting in Trump Tower during his testimony and any redactions that were made to that testimony were done to protect personally identifiable information.

The Blackwater founder's comments to Hasan is the first time that Prince or anyone else who reportedly attended the meeting has publicly acknowledged it and the first indication that it could have been about Iran policy. At the time, Nader was reportedly seeking to advance a clandestine plan to destabilise Iran through the use of private military contractors.

Other countries interviewers are often much better than our own media stars.

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

UPDATE:

My understanding — based on a conversation between one of my Al Jazeera English colleagues and a staffer connected to the Intelligence Committee, and also based on public comments made by Rep. Eric Swalwell about Prince being “not truthful” with Congress — is that the off-the-record sections of the transcript contain zero references to the Trump Tower meeting, which was later revealed by the New York Times and (reluctantly) confirmed to me by Prince on “Head to Head.”

  Mehdi Hasan @ The Intercept

You can watch Hasan's entire interview here:



UPDATE 3/10:

GoFundMe border wall update

A decorated veteran who raised more than $20 million to finance construction of a wall along the southern U.S. border has announced that he will instead use the money to finance a new nonprofit group that will build the wall itself—or at least a couple miles of it.

[...]

Now Kolfage, a prolific operator of conspiracy theory Facebook pages, has recruited a team of prominent figures in President Donald Trump’s orbit to run a new 501(c)(4) nonprofit, named We Fund The Wall, to do some wall construction of its own. The new group’s board, Kolfage announced on Friday, includes Erik Prince, the founder of infamous military contract Blackwater; David Clarke, the former scandal-plagued sheriff of Milwaukee County; Fox News contributor Sara Carter; Tom Tancredo, an immigration hardliner and former Colorado congressman; and former Kansas Secretary of State and voter fraud crusader Kris Kobach

  Daily Beast

And their salaries will eat up how much of the money?

Kolfage’s fundraising campaign was initially designed to help finance that construction with private contributions. He insisted that he had been in contact with a number of federal officials and members of Congress devising ways to funnel the massive amounts of money raised on GoFundMe to the federal treasury.

It appears that that plan went awry.

It didn't go awry. It wasn't well researched in the first place, and it turns out you can't give money to the government for a specific project. If you give money to the government, it goes into the general fund and is spent according to Congressional budget appropriations.

“The federal government won’t be able to accept our donations anytime soon,” Kolfage said in an update on the GoFundMe page on Friday.

"Any time soon." Like, ever.

GoFundMe is emailing donors with an option to proactively agree to send their money to We Fund the Wall, but if donors decline or never respond to that option, they’ll receive a refund.

[...]

Dustin Stockton, a conservative activist and We Fund The Wall spokesman, said he expects that enough people will agree to redirect their GoFundMe contributions for the group to retain a sizable portion of the funds.

I, on the other hand, have a feeling that $20 million is going to drop dramatically.

“When the campaign was created, the campaign organizer specifically stated on the campaign page, ‘If we don’t reach our goal or come significantly close we will refund every single penny,’” GoFundMe’s statement reads. “He also stated on the campaign page, ‘100% of your donations will go to the Trump Wall. If for ANY reason we don't reach our goal we will refund your donation.’ However, that did not happen.”

[...]

Rather than financing federal efforts to build the wall, We Build The Wall plans to go the route that its name suggests and finance construction on its own, according Stockton. He said the group to secure enough funding from its initial GoFundMe supporters to build “at least two miles” along the southern border, which is nearly 2,000 miles long.

LOL.

The group has already been in touch with landowners in Texas about buying or leasing their land for wall construction, Stockton said. It’s also retained two law firms to deal with regulatory issues that are sure to dog the project, including Barnes & Thornburg and Foley & Lardner. Cleta Mitchell, an attorney with the latter, who Stockton said is working with the new nonprofit, is a prominent conservative lawyer representing a host of political and nonprofit groups aligned with President Trump’s agenda.

Oh, Hell, there won't be ANY money left for construction.

We Build The Wall is also staffing up administratively, a hiring spree that Stockton said is being financed by private donors, not GoFundMe contributions. He declined to name any of the donors.

Imagine that.

We Build The Wall is convinced that private funding for wall construction, to the extent it can be marshalled, is preferable, given Washington’s inability to agree on a funding package. “We expect we’re going to be able to construct the wall so much more efficiently than the government,” Stockton said.

Well, two miles of it, anyway. And, hey, come to think of it, that IS more than the government is going to get done.

Keep up the good work, gang.

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

Hoo boy, this is not good

The "he" Jeremy  is talking about here is Erik Prince.

That could mean a couple of things:  1) Prince is negotiating a deal with Trump to replace soldiers with mercenaries; 2) Prince is negotiating the deal that was supposedly nixed at the beginning of Trump's reign of horror to provide Trump with his own personal intel (or maybe it wasn't really nixed).

Or, maybe Trump's offering Prince the position of Secretary of Defense.  I'd be willing to bet on that.

At any rate, nothing good can come of dealing with Erik Prince.

The Seychelles meeting

Joint U.S.-Russian raids to kill top terrorists. Teamwork between an American government agency and a sanctioned Russian fund. Moscow pouring money into the Midwest.

These are just a few of the ideas the head of a Russian sovereign wealth fund touched on during his meeting with former Blackwater head Erik Prince in the Seychelles, just weeks before President Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to a memo exclusively reviewed by The Daily Beast.

The meeting between Prince, an influential Trump ally, and Kirill Dmitriev, the CEO of the sanctioned fund, took place on Jan. 11, 2017, at the Four Seasons Hotel in a bar overlooking the Indian Ocean. George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who advises the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates, was also present.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has looked into the meeting as part of his larger investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

[...]

Mueller’s team has received information that the meeting was a pre-organized effort to set up a backchannel between the Trump administration and the Kremlin.

[...]

“Why Erik Prince? Why Dmitriev?” said Rep. Jim Himes, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee who questioned Prince. “Why did that meeting happen? Conversations like that happen at the Aspen Institute every single day, but this is obviously something different—this is a hush-hush meeting in the Seychelles that at least one of the participants has been a little bit fuzzy about.”

  The Daily Beast

I'm guessing that has something to do with the fact that Prince was talking with Trump about setting up a secret, private intel company for Trump to get around government intel agencies and to conduct the Afghanistan war.

I really want a Grand Jury indictment of Roger Stone tomorrow, but I'll settle for one of Erik Prince.

I don't see anything in the memos that indicates something objectionable about partnering with Russia, but why did they need to do it on the sly, and with Erick Prince, before Trump was elected?
In fact, aren't citizens prohibited from entering into political agreements with foreign governments?

Evelyn Farkas, an Obama administration Pentagon official who focused on Eastern Europe and Russia, said the proposals in the memo aren’t unusual; in fact, they mirror proposals that Moscow makes regularly.

“It’s nothing new,” she told The Daily Beast. “What is new is that they’re trying to do this through this weird backchannel.”

But the proposal of the task force—the memo’s fifth point—caught the eye of Mieke Eoyang, vice president of the think tank Third Way’s national-security program and a former House Intelligence Committee staffer.

“Number five, that there’s a task force where the Russians are going to participate in figuring out what the policy should be on numbers one through four, that’s really not normal,” she told The Daily Beast. “They call it shuttle diplomacy for a reason: There’s a back and forth on it. But you’re not letting them inside your decision-making loop.”

OK, I didn't catch that little gem.

After publication of this story, representatives of RDIF reached out to The Daily Beast and said Mr. Dmitriev categorically denies the existence of a memo or read out related to conversations that took place in the Seychelles.

That memo that was "exclusively reviewed" by The Daily Beast? That memo doesn't exist? Whatever.

Shoes are not dropping, they're raining down

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is digging deeper into Trump ally and Blackwater founder Erik Prince, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter.

Prince, America’s most famous private military contractor, acknowledged last week that he “cooperated” with Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election after falling under scrutiny amid questions about an alleged effort to establish a backchannel between the Trump administration and the Kremlin, something Prince has vehemently denied.

  ABC

"Cooperated." Read into it what you will.

ABC News has since learned that Mueller is also reviewing Prince’s communications, a sign that Mueller could try to squeeze Prince, as he has others, probing potential inconsistencies in his sworn testimony in an attempt to pressure him to turn into a witness against other targets of the investigation.

I can imagine that for Michael Cohen, an eventual flip on Trump will be a difficult choice, but for Erik Prince? He doesn't even possess the minimal ethics of loyalty.

“As Mr. Prince told the Daily Beast he has spoken voluntarily with Congress and also cooperated completely with the Special Counsel’s investigation, including by providing them total access to his phones and computer,” the spokesperson said. “Mr. Prince has a lot of opinions about the various investigations, but there is no question that they are important and serious, and so Mr. Prince will keep his opinions to himself for now and to let the investigators do their work."

Good choice. He can spout all he wants behind bars or from an undisclosed location after he's turned state's witness. Prince lied to Congress. And even though that, in itself, is a federal crime, he probably felt comfortable that the Republicans wouldn't pursue the matter.  He may have thought better of it when facing the Special Prosecutor's team.

Two of Prince’s former business associates, both of whom asked to remain anonymous, told ABC News they have been contacted by investigators probing a pair of proposed business deals between the Hong Kong-based security firm Frontier Services Group, of which Prince is the founder and chairman, and Russian nationals.

One former business associate, who has worked with Prince since the 1990s, recounted a recent conversation with FBI agents from Mueller's office.

"Are you aware of any falsehoods in the testimony that Erik Prince gave to the House Intelligence Committee?" the associate said agents asked him.

The associate said he told the agents about Prince's previously undisclosed [in an effort to secure a possibly illegal private security contract with Azerbaijan].

Having images of orange in his future.

The internal investigation, first reported by The Intercept earlier this year, was turned over to U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors at the end of President Barack Obama’s second term, multiple sources said. The findings prompted two senior company officials to resign in protest over Prince’s activities, the sources said.

  ABC News

Having images of orange in their futures.

“Frontier Services Group was trying to build a relationship with [state-owned Russian energy firm] Rostec to be the logistics guys,” the associate said, “and Rostec met with Erik.”

Work began, the associate said, but the deal fell through when the United States imposed sanctions on the Kremlin-run firm in 2014 because of Russian military operations in Ukraine, and the firm was never paid by the Russians.

In response to questions from ABC News, a spokesperson for Prince said that neither deal came to fruition.

"Any discussions between FSG and those individuals predated the existence of the Trump campaign, and never resulted in any business being done,” the spokesperson said.

Which is why they needed to get Trump elected president.

Prince was reported to be talking privately with Trump and Oliver North about creating a private intelligence service for Trump to circumvent US intel agencies. From the report, it appears the genesis of this plan was formed at least as early as spring of 2016. Eric Prince seems to be standing right in the heart of the Russian conspiracy/collusion scandal. Perhaps how he got his sister Betsy DeVos her job.

Closing in, Yer Lardship.

Special Prosecutor Mueller smells feces.

The OTHER Junior meeting in Trump Tower

Three months before the 2016 election, a small group gathered at Trump Tower to meet with Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. One [Joel Zamel] was an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation. Another [George Nader] was an emissary for two wealthy Arab princes. The third was a Republican donor with a controversial past in the Middle East as a private security contractor.

[...]

[Nader] told Donald Trump Jr. that the princes who led Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were eager to help his father win election as president.

[...]

Erik Prince, the private security contractor and the former head of Blackwater, arranged the meeting, which took place on Aug. 3, 2016.

  NYT

The Erik Prince who got all huffy during his Congressional testimony and wouldn't answer anything?

Mr. Zamel and Mr. Nader were together at a Midtown Manhattan hotel at about 4 p.m. on the afternoon of Aug. 3 when Mr. Nader received a call from Mr. Prince summoning them to Trump Tower. When they arrived, Stephen Miller, a top campaign aide who is now a White House adviser, was in Donald Trump Jr.’s office as well, according to the people familiar with the meeting.

[...]

Mr. Nader had worked for Blackwater as a business agent in Iraq in the years after the American invasion. Mr. Prince has longstanding ties to the Emirates, and has frequently done business with Crown Prince Mohammed.

Mr. Prince opened the meeting by telling Donald Trump Jr. that “we are working hard for your father,” in reference to his family and other donors, according to a person familiar with the meeting. He then introduced Mr. Nader as an old friend with deep ties to Arab leaders.

[...]

To underscore the point, [Nader] would open his mobile phone to show off pictures of him posing with [the Saudi and Emirati princes], some of which The New York Times obtained.

[...]

By then, a company connected to Mr. Zamel had been working on a proposal for a covert multimillion-dollar online manipulation campaign to help elect Mr. Trump, according to three people involved and a fourth briefed on the effort. The plan involved using thousands of fake social media accounts to promote Mr. Trump’s candidacy on platforms like Facebook.

Oh, you mean like Russia actuall did.

There were concerns inside the company, Psy-Group, about the plan’s legality, according to one person familiar with the effort. The company, whose motto is “shape reality,” consulted an American law firm, and was told that it would be illegal if any non-Americans were involved in the effort.

[...]

It is unclear whether such a proposal was executed, and the details of who commissioned it remain in dispute. But Donald Trump Jr. responded approvingly, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting, and after those initial offers of help, Mr. Nader was quickly embraced as a close ally by Trump campaign advisers — meeting frequently with Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, and Michael T. Flynn, who became the president’s first national security adviser. At the time, Mr. Nader was also promoting a secret plan to use private contractors to destabilize Iran, the regional nemesis of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.

After Mr. Trump was elected, Mr. Nader paid Mr. Zamel a large sum of money, described by one associate as up to $2 million. There are conflicting accounts of the reason for the payment, but among other things, a company linked to Mr. Zamel provided Mr. Nader with an elaborate presentation about the significance of social media campaigning to Mr. Trump’s victory.

That's a lot of money for a presentation about the significance of social media, no matter how elaborate it is.

Mr. Nader is cooperating with the [Mueller] inquiry, and investigators have questioned numerous witnesses in Washington, New York, Atlanta, Tel Aviv and elsewhere about what foreign help may have been pledged or accepted, and about whether any such assistance was coordinated with Russia, according to witnesses and others with knowledge of the interviews.

[...]

It is illegal for foreign governments or individuals to be involved in American elections, and it is unclear what — if any — direct assistance Saudi Arabia and the Emirates may have provided.

Bah. The Trump cabal swims in illegality.

A lawyer for Donald Trump Jr., Alan Futerfas, said in a statement that “prior to the 2016 election, Donald Trump Jr. recalls a meeting with Erik Prince, George Nader and another individual who may be Joel Zamel. They pitched Mr. Trump Jr. on a social media platform or marketing strategy. He was not interested and that was the end of it.”

We'll see about that.

A lawyer for Mr. Zamel denied that his client had carried out any campaign on Mr. Trump’s behalf. “Neither Joel Zamel, nor any of his related entities, had any involvement whatsoever in the U.S. election campaign,” said the lawyer, Marc L. Mukasey.

We'll see about that, too.

Mr. Nader had worked for years as a close adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed of Abu Dhabi, and Mr. Zamel had worked for the Emirati royal court as a consultant as well. When Mr. Trump locked up the Republican presidential nomination in early 2016, Mr. Nader began making inquiries on behalf of the Emirati prince about possible ways to directly support Mr. Trump, according to three people with whom Mr. Nader discussed his efforts.

[...]

Mr. Nader also visited Moscow at least twice during the presidential campaign as a confidential emissary from Crown Prince Mohammed of Abu Dhabi, according to people familiar with his travels. After the election, he worked with the crown prince to arrange a meeting in the Seychelles between Mr. Prince and a financier close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

[...]

A senior official in Saudi Arabia said it had never employed Mr. Nader in any capacity or authorized him to speak for the crown prince.

This investigation is going to take years, isn't it?

Blackwater founder Erik Prince appears to have a problem.

[...]

Prince told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, under oath, that he had no formal communication or contact with the Trump campaign.

[...]

Prince also told the committee that he met Trump Jr. “at a campaign event,” and at Trump Tower “during the transition.” He did not mention the meeting with Trump Jr. and Nader.

ABC News reported last month that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has evidence that seems to contradict another claim Prince made before the Intelligence Committee: Prince said a meeting he attended in Seychelles during the presidential transition with a Russian financier close to Vladimir Putin was an unplanned encounter. Nader, who is cooperating with Mueller, has told investigators that he arranged for Prince to travel to the Seychelles to meet Kirill Dmitriev, the manager of a Russian sovereign wealth fund, after giving Prince information about Dmitriev, according to ABC.

[...]

Prince, unlike most witnesses who appeared before the House Intelligence Committee, agreed to allow the panel to release his entire testimony. As a result, Mueller’s team can use the transcript as evidence to potentially charge Prince for lying to Congress.

  Mother Jones

Measure Mr. Prince for an orange jumpsuit.

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

Settle in...it's a long and winding journey

Eric Prince was investigated by his own Hong Kong-based company, Frontier Services Group (FSG) for possible violations of US weapons sales laws.

The FSG-hired lawyers [King & Spalding] 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.

[...]

In their February 22, 2016 meeting with officials from the Justice Department’s National Security Division, FSG’s lawyers from King & Spalding “raised the possibility” that [Eric] Prince may have been illicitly brokering defense services to a foreign government without the necessary approvals from the U.S. government, according to the March 2016 letter from Smith, FSG’s then-CEO.

In the letter, Smith alleged that Prince modified the aircraft with weapons systems “without FSG management knowledge” to “prevent management oversight.” Smith alleged that Prince “for his own interests directed the aircraft modification and then promoted the sale of the modified aircraft to private buyers and governments.”

[...]

The King & Spalding findings centered around a deal Prince tried to make with Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense for several American crop dusters that Prince had secretly modified into attack and surveillance aircraft. The deal was Prince’s last-ditch effort to realize a long-held desire to sell small offensive aircraft to governments around the world for small and low-intensity conflicts.

[...]

The deal ultimately fell apart.

  The Intercept

To FSG's surprise, nothing came of reporting their concerns to the government.

At the time, Prince was being investigated by U.S. law enforcement and his communications were being monitored. What began as an investigation into Prince’s attempts to sell defense services in Libya and other countries in Africa widened to include allegations that Prince received assistance from Chinese intelligence to set up an account for his Libya operations through the Bank of China. FSG’s single largest shareholder is Citic Group, the Chinese government’s largest state-owned investment firm. Citic, which recently invested another $60 million in FSG, is the company’s largest single shareholder.

[...]

“Based on the documents and information available, FSG’s review did not identify ITAR violations,” said the FSG/Prince spokesperson, adding “there has been no follow up whatsoever making it crystal clear that this matter has ended.”

[...]

After Trump’s election, Prince emerged from the shadows he’d occupied for much of the Obama administration. He was one of the top contributors to the pro-Trump super PAC, Make America Number One Again. Prince was a frequent guest at Trump Tower and secretly advising Trump during the transition.

[...]

Prince seemed unconcerned about the investigations into his activities. He openly, though unsuccessfully, campaigned — through White House meetings, cable news interviews, and op-eds in major publications — to have the war in Afghanistan privatized by mercenary forces and effectively placed under his control. Prince pitched this and other intelligence operations to the CIA and senior administration officials.

And, in a twist whose implications are not entirely clear, the supervisor of the lawyersat King & Spalding who FSG hired to review their legal exposure was none other than the current FBI Director Chris Wray. Another of the lawyers was Robert Hur, who is now US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's top lieutenant.

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