Tag: Blackwater

Erik Prince, Trump Ally, Violated Libya Arms Embargo, U.N. Report Says

New York Times logo

Mr. Prince offered to supply weapons, drones and mercenaries to a Libyan militia commander seeking to overthrow the government, according to U.N. investigators.

NAIROBI, Kenya — Erik Prince, the former head of the security contractor Blackwater Worldwide and a prominent supporter of former President Donald J. Trump, violated a United Nations arms embargo on Libya by sending weapons to a militia commander who was attempting to overthrow the internationally backed government, according to U.N. investigators.

A confidential U.N. report obtained by The New York Times and delivered by investigators to the Security Council on Thursday reveals how Mr. Prince deployed a force of foreign mercenaries, armed with attack aircraft, gunboats and cyberwarfare capabilities, to eastern Libya at the height of a major battle in 2019.

As part of the operation, which the report said cost $80 million, the mercenaries also planned to form a hit squad that could track down and kill selected Libyan commanders.

Mr. Prince, a former Navy SEAL and the brother of Betsy DeVos, Mr. Trump’s education secretary, became a symbol of the excesses of privatized American military force when his Blackwater contractors killed 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007. Continue reading.

Demolishing Erik Prince: One TV interview shows exactly how to deal with Trump’s allies

Mehdi Hasan of Al Jazeera English took Trump pal Erik Prince apart in two minutes. American media: Watch and learn.

“He can’t keep getting away with it!” was one of the lines from “Breaking Bad” in which Aaron Paul’s award-winning acting talents were on full soul-crushing display. In the climactic scene from season five, episode 12, Paul’s Jesse Pinkman cries out in mid-nervous breakdown over the fact that Bryan Cranston’s Walter White indeed keeps getting away with one murderously bad decision after another.

Somehow, Donald Trump and his crew of mostly incompetent co-conspirators seemingly keep getting away with it — flooding the zone with one trespass after another, against the rule of law or against democratic norms or against common decency. To varying extents, we’re all Jesse Pinkman these days, raging for justice and fighting against the slowly metastasizing normalization of Trumpism.

With the exception of a few fearless White House reporters, the press has mostly been hectored into submission when directly challenging the Trump team. Credit where credit is due: Playboy’s Brian Karem and CNN’s Jim Acosta have each risked their posts by refusing to be silenced mid-question by Trump’s stumpy-fingered bullying. Likewise, Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell have been particularly relentless in their coverage of the Trump crisis. The print press has provided volumes of reporting along these lines too, but too many White House journalists continue to lose their nerve when battered by Trump’s cowardly aggression against what he calls “the enemies of the people.” (Everything he says and does telegraphs his guilt.)

Blackwater founder Erik Price hid information about 2016 Trump Tower meeting while under oath: House Intel chair

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Erik Prince hid information about his attendance at a 2016 Trump Tower meeting to discuss Iran while under oath.

In an interview with on Al Jazeera’s “Head to Head,” Price stated that he was present at an Aug. 3, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower to “talk about Iran policy,” and that he disclosed information about that meeting even though it does not appear in a transcript of his testimony.

According to Schiff, Prince, the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, is dead wrong.

View the complete March 10 article by Tom Boggioni of Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Blackwater security guard convicted in 2007 Iraqi civilian massacre at third U.S. trial

Former Blackwater Worldwide guard Nicholas Slatten leaves federal court in Washington in June 2014. Credit: Cliff Owen, AP

A former Blackwater security guard was convicted of first-degree murder Wednesday for killing the first of 14 unarmed civilians in a barrage of gunfire in a crowded Baghdad traffic circle in 2007, an episode that drew international condemnation during the Iraq War.

It was the second time a federal jury in Washington convicted Nicholas A. Slatten, 35, of murder in the death of 19-year-old Ahmed Haithem Ahmed Al Rubia’y. His 2014 conviction was overturned on appeal, and a second trial last summer ended in a hung jury. Slatten now faces a mandatory life sentence without parole.

The jury foreperson told The Washington Post that jurors rejected Slatten’s claim that his convoy of guards fired on Al Rubia’y in self-defense. “In our determination, there were no justifiable deaths,” the foreperson said. “No justifiable shooting.”

View the complete December 19 article by Tom Jackman and Spencer S. Hsu on The Washington Post website here.

Trump Jr. and Other Aides Met With Gulf Emissary Offering Help to Win Election

The following article by Mark Mazzetti, Ronen Bergman and David D. Kirkpatrick was posted on the New York Times website May 19, 2018:

Trump Tower Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

WASHINGTON — 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 was an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation. Another 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.

The meeting was convened primarily to offer help to the Trump team, and it forged relationships between the men and Trump insiders that would develop over the coming months — past the election and well into President Trump’s first year in office, according to several people with knowledge of their encounters. Continue reading “Trump Jr. and Other Aides Met With Gulf Emissary Offering Help to Win Election”

Blackwater founder Erik Prince said to have advised Trump team

The following article by Keri Geiger with Bloomberg News was posted on the Boston Globe website April 19, 2017:

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY THE DAILY BEAST

NEW YORK — In the very public, post-election parade of dignitaries, confidantes, and job-seekers filing in and out of Donald Trump’s marquee Manhattan tower, Blackwater founder Erik Prince was largely out of sight. And yet Prince was very much a presence, giving advice to Trump’s inner circle, including his top national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, according to people familiar with his activities.

Trump was weakest in the area where the stakes were highest — foreign affairs. Among those his aides turned to was Prince, a man whose specialty is paramilitary security forces, and whose company is best remembered after its employees were convicted of killing Iraqi citizens, including children, in the notorious 2007 Nisour Square gun battle. Prince wasn’t implicated in the shootings. In the decade since, Prince has carved out a role as a controversial critic of US policies to fight terrorism, a view often espoused by the incoming Trump administration, which was eager to ramp up its anti-terrorism policies. Continue reading “Blackwater founder Erik Prince said to have advised Trump team”

Blackwater founder held secret Seychelles meeting to establish Trump-Putin back channel

The following article by Adam Entous, Greg Miller, Kevin Sieff and Karen DeYoung was posted on the Washington Post website April 3, 2017:

The United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladi­mir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to U.S., European and Arab officials.

The meeting took place around Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s inauguration — in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, officials said. Though the full agenda remains unclear, the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective that would be likely to require major concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions. Continue reading “Blackwater founder held secret Seychelles meeting to establish Trump-Putin back channel”