Tag: Betsy DeVos

Russiagate

Russiagate

Decades In The Making

The Transnational Mob & Regressive Authoritarianism vs. Liberal Democracy & Personal Freedom

Russiagate Deathwatch

In parallel timeframe:

Must-Read: Disseminated on January 6, 2017, “Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution“

If you have never watched Rep. Adam Schiff‘s opening statement on March, 20, 2017, it is a good place to start.

THE CHRISTOPHER STEELE/Orbis DOSSIER published on Buzzfeed

The December 13, 2016 Steele update and statement filed April 14, 2017 that Orbis warned Sen. McCain immediately after the election of its findings

Michael Moore launches “​TrumpiLeaks” website for whistleblowers

CLICK ON NAMES FOR LINKS TO PAGES ON THIS WEBSITE

Putin’s Real Long Game Politico

The world order we know is already over, and Russia is moving fast to grab the advantage. Can Trump figure out the new war in time to win it? By MOLLY K. MCKEW POLITICO January 01, 2017

Some call it a Global War on Liberal Democracies. Rich authoritarians who can’t get enough, at peoples’ expense. It sure seems like they’re all friends, doing business and laundering each other’s money. They use established religion to gain more power, and in the case of Russian Chabad, to conduct mob activities via its established network.

  • THE TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZED CRIME NETWORK are the ones who deal in drug, sex and human trafficking, arms dealing,and more. Semion Mogilevich is the FBI’s most wanted man, hunted by Robert Mueller, James Comey, Peter Strzok and Bruce Ohr for decades.  The Trump Organization has been laundering the Russian mafia’s money since the 80s, and the NY mafia before that. He did a lot of business with the Italian mafia as well. His dad went from whorehouse owner to slum lord. Manafort’s dad was into demolition with mafia ties, and Kellyanne Conway’s grandpa was a hitman for the NJ mob. Ironically, Giuliani was a mob buster when he took down many of New York’s “Five Families” and became Mayor in 1989. He prosecuted “the Mafia’s international heroin and cocaine ring in the “Pizza Connection” case” before signing off on a Mogilevich associate, Felix Sater‘s deal with Trump, convicted criminal blood diamond smuggler Lev Leviev and Alex Sapir in Bayrock.
  • SANCTIONS for the Occupation of Crimea and the Global Magnitsky Act Russia needs sanctions dropped in order to complete the largest business deal ever, between Rosneft and ExxonMobil, referenced in the Steele Dossier with a pending 19.5% stake for Team Trump. Exxon’s lifelong CEO/employee Rex Tillerson, former US Secretary of State,  broke tradition by meeting with Turkey’s Erdogan without an interpreter.The House passed the Sanctions bill, but Trump has not signed it and the office which enforces sanctions has been closed. Trump did sanction Nicaragua and Turkish men for detaining Christian minister Andrew Brunson, followed by Khashoggi’s death on their soil and the minister’s release, but not before bringing up the release of Gulen, whom Michael Flynn was charge with taking $500,000 for taking in a kidnapping coup. Turkey wants Fethullah Gulen. Russia wants Bill Browder who created The Magnitsky Act sanctions discussed during the June 9, 2016, meeting and pivotal to this day because they threaten the personal wealth of Putin, the Oligarchs, and others. Saudi Arabia brutally murdered Jamal Khashoggi on October 2, 2018. Putin tried to take control of INTERPOL, who has arrested Browder on numerous occasions at Putin’s request.
    • Oleg Deripaska‘s company
  • ENERGY Global Pipelines have global impact. The East Med Pipeline has been a Papadopoulos project for years. The approvals, deals and support following pipeline deals gets deeply political.  European Energy  Nuclear Power in MENA

The US “Why”, Mercer and the Kochs want a Convention of States to re-invent the Constitution.

U.S. Constitution Threatened as Article V Convention Movement Nears Success

Common Cause    March 21, 2018  BY JAY RIESTENBERG

HOW 

The FSB (Former KGB) and RISS, the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies think tank devised a plan to weaken our democracy and manipulate a right-wing government into power. Steve Bannon‘s “The Movement”, political consulting, is attempting to spread right-wing authoritarianism globally. He was Director of Cambridge Analytica, closed May 1, 2018, whose parent company, SCL (Social Limited), is involved with the Trump 2020 campaign and others internationally. The RNC will absorb the Trump 2020 Campaign. Brexit was its trial before the Trump Campaign, Ukraine before that. Robert Mercer invested in Cambridge Analytica, the Trump and Cruz campaigns, and more. Russia has done this with the help of Paul Manafort in Ukraine and Turkey; Brexit and separatist movements, and attempted to throw the French election towards LePen with Alt-Right trolls and a hacked and altered email dump. Montenegro and unknown numbers of elections have been influenced in the same manner.

  1. Conspiracy: The secret meetings and identifying the players who arranged, participated, and had knowledge of the Russian plan to influence the US election.
  2. The Money Trail: Money laundering of Russian oligarchs through the Trump Organization and associates including Paul Manafort, Felix Sater of Bayrock. Russian campaign financing of key Republicans made possible by Citizens United, and also via the NRA (National Rifle Association). The most powerful Russian mobster is Semion Mogilevich. His lieutenant was Felix Sater’s father, who established the Russian mob in Brighton Beach. Felix Sater was busted for a pump and dump scheme during an historic unification of the Five Families of NYC and the Russian mob.  Trump’s mentor was NY mafia consigliere Roy Cohn, and Trump Tower was built using mob concrete with the mob labor union looking the other way while Trump hired Polish immigrants to do the demolition prep. Many Italian Mafia and Russian criminals have been Trump property owners and tenants. Trump has a long history of business ties to people from former Soviet states. Sater went to Russia and became an FBI informant. When he returned to the US, Felix Sater formed Bayrock with the FL Group. One of his primary funding partners has been Bayrock, which built Trump Soho and many other Trump-branded properties, Bayrock is under investigation in the Netherlands for money laundering and tax evasion. Deutsche Bank: Several members of the Trump and Kushner families hold accounts at DB. Mueller has requested information. The Bank of Cyprus is connected to many questionable transactions, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross led it through the financial crisis. FINCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) investigation for money laundering. In March, 2015, Trump Taj Mahal settled for a civil money penalty of $10,000,000 for having “willfully violated the program, reporting, and recordkeeping requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act and its implementing regulations”.
  3. The Data Trail: The DNC Hack, RNC Hack, Hacking of Voter roll information, United in Purpose and Pioneer Solutions; Facebook;Trump subdomains; Trump, Kushner and Ivanka‘s private email servers; GOP MegaDonors Robert and Rebekah Mercer-owned and Bannon-directed Cambridge Analytica/SCL, and Parscale’s “Project Alamo”, which optimized the advertising and memes under Jared Kushner.  Officially no one has said that Russia changed actual votes (as pro-Trump media has falsely stated). The existence of malware and other direct Russian activity in our voting system and machines is also being investigated. Although Trump was calling elections “rigged” for years, he closed the agency responsible for protection elections and the voting process. Instead, Trump nominated Kris Kobach (CrossCheck) to lead an organization requesting an illegal amount of voter data from States, including voting history. Paul Manafort delivered Polling Data to Russia. Mueller said he didn’t believe the interpretation of data involving Betsy DeVos‘s Spectrum Health and Russian Alfa Bank through a Trump server were true, and the public has yet to fully understand the data.
  4. Propaganda, Disinformation and Active Measures-Hybrid Warfare, The Russians have broken it down and made it a science.  The goal is to cause division, get favorable candidates elected, and dominate from within. Social and Right Wing Media: Hacking and release of emails and information through Wikileaks and DC Leaks dumps of DNC / Clinton hacked emails. Having returned from Russia himself, now-guilty cooperating witness Michael Flynn spread Pizzagate conspiracies from Podesta emails to weaken Clinton. Alt-Right Meme Warriors on Reddit and Gab funded by American tech billionaire Peter Thiel (who has since left “liberal silicon valley”) with now-fired from Breitbart and disgraced hate speech provacateur Milo Yiannopoulos as the conduit; Russian Bots and Trolls employed by the Internet Research Agency posing as American Trump supporters and protestors; and the US social (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc) & traditional media and Trump Campaign which furthered Russian-generated propaganda.  The Hamilton 68 dashboard tracks Russian bots real-time. Russians have invested in these companies.
  5. In a move of fraudulent informational self-dealing, these Fake News stories sometimes use Breitbart backer’s Robert and Rebekah Mercer & Peter “Clinton Cash” Schweizer’s unaccounted for “Governmental Accountability Institute“ as source “factual” material to back its fake news claims.
  6. The Cover Up, Diversion, Obstruction of Justice and Impeachment.
  7. Emoluments violations: New and Ongoing enrichment of the Administration since the Inauguration.
  8. Other Trump lawsuits, including Michael Cohen‘s payoff to a Playmate and Porn Star for silence before the election (and Trump’s friend David Pecker from American Media who bought story rights for the purposes of silencing it).
  9. Trump suggested a joint US-Russia cyber security task force at the G20 Summit which would entail sharing our system with them so they could hack us even more. At the end of January 2018, the heads of the FSB and RISS had a meeting with CIA Dir. Pompeo and DNI Dan Coats, despite one of them being on the sanctioned list and prohibited from entering the US.
  10. Trump Tower Moscow.    Trump’s business sought deal on a Trump Tower in Moscow while he ran for president Trump’s business sought deal on a Moscow Trump Tower during campaign While campaigning during the 2016 election, President Trump’s company was pursuing a plan to develop a massive Trump Tower in Moscow, according to several people familiar with the proposal. The Washington Post August 27, 2017

New York Daily News’ “A Very Simple Guide To Everyone In The Trump-Russia Investigation”

July 10, 2017: White House Press Briefing Started Clinton Russian Hacking Rumors, Again “Don Jr. took a very short meeting from which there was absolutely no follow-up.  Frankly, I think something that may make sense is looking at the Democrat National Committee coordinated opposition research directly with the Ukrainian Embassy.  This is not an accusation, that’s an on-the-record action that they took.  So if you’re looking for an example of a campaign coordinating with a foreign country or a foreign source, look no further than the DNC who actually coordinated opposition research with the Ukrainian Embassy.  And no one in this room to my knowledge really had a big problem with that. The only thing I see inappropriate about the meeting was the people that leaked the information on the meeting after it was voluntarily disclosed.  “
July 12, 2017 Cyber Berkut started publishing emails continued rumor that was played on Fox News for the next 5 days. It is believed to be an alter ego of Fancy Bear, pro-Russian hacker group It’s Not Over..Rachel Maddow Show    In Ukraine, a Malware Expert Who Could Blow the Whistle on Russian Hacking NY Times

Rachel Maddow Show  GOP Operative Peter Smith created scandals for Bill Clinton similarly to how Flynn has for Hillary. He tried to obtain the 33,000 Clinton emails on behalf of Flynn.

Election Hackers Altered Voter Rolls, Stole Private Data, Officials Say

“In one case, investigators found there had been a manipulation of voter data in a county database but the alterations were discovered and rectified, two sources familiar with the matter tell TIME. Investigators have not identified whether the hackers in that case were Russian agents.

The fact that private data was stolen from states is separately providing investigators a previously unreported line of inquiry in the probes into Russian attempts to influence the election. In Illinois, more than 90% of the nearly 90,000 records stolen by Russian state actors contained drivers license numbers, and a quarter contained the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers, according to Ken Menzel, the General Counsel of the State Board of Elections.

Congressional investigators are probing whether any of this stolen private information made its way to the Trump campaign, two sources familiar with the investigations tell TIME. “If any campaign, Trump or otherwise, used inappropriate data the questions are, How did they get it? From whom? And with what level of knowledge?” the former top Democratic staffer on the House Intelligence Committee, Michael Bahar, tells TIME. “That is a crux of the investigation.”  Time  June 22, 2017 Massimo Calabresi

Who is investigating?

 

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Intelligence Committees, and the Department of Defense are investigating the Russian interference in the 2016 Election. “Keith Olbermann – nonetheless confirmed last night, Tuesday, May 9th, that subpoenas were issued from the Eastern District of Virginia against associates of General Flynn.”  Patribotics

The US Treasury Department Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) which tracks money laundering worldwide and is sharing information with the investigation. The FinCEN is under Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.

US Justice Preet Bharara was fired in January, after being personally assured by Trump in November after the election that he would not. Bharara was investigating Trump’s money laundering connections from Russians through his real estate. His jurisdiction was the headquarters of Trump and therefore the court for multiple lawsuits and ALSO presided over the Money Laundering Division in the Southern District of New York. Two days before going to trial, Jeff Sessions dropped the case.

The Inspector General at the Defense Department was the first to officially  investigated Michael Flynn, the announcement of which was followed by Jeff Sessions recusing himself from that investigation. The Inspector General at Jeff Sessions’ Justice Department started by investigating Clinton’s emails but has not stated if Sessions has recused himself from the Paul Manafort investigation.

“New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman as well as Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. also have been examining real-estate transactions by Mr. [Paul] Manafort, who has spent and borrowed tens of millions of dollars in connection with property across the U.S. over the past decade” WSJ 

“A member of the Federal Election Commission is calling on the agency to investigate whether Russian agents paid for Facebook ads to spread damaging stories about Hillary Clinton ahead of last fall’s presidential election. “I think there is potential there for finding a violation, but I don’t want to suggest that I have prejudged anything that could potentially come before me,” said FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, a Democratic appointee to the commission. Her assertion comes as agency staff is already moving to investigate a related complaint filed in December by a pair of watchdog groups against President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government.” Politico  There are more. 17 US Intelligence agencies and the Netherlands.

“John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director, described on Tuesday a nerve-fraying few months last year as American authorities realized that the presidential election was under attack and feared that Donald J. Trump’s campaign might be aiding that fight. Mr. Brennan, in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, said he was concerned by a series of suspicious contacts between Russian government officials and Mr. Trump’s associates. The C.I.A. learned about those meetings just as it was beginning to grapple with Russian hackers and propagandists trying to manipulate the presidential race.”  May 23, 2017 NY Times

June 2, 2017 Trump Reviewing Whether to Block Comey Testimony to Senate “Independent analysts have said they don’t believe Comey, now a private citizen, can be stopped if he is intent on telling his story.” Bloomberg

May 26, 2017: NSA CHIEF Admiral Mike Rogers Admits Donald Trump Colluded with Russian “According to multiple reports, the president approached top intelligence bosses to coax them into joining Trump’s personal war with Comey. In particular, Trump is reported to have asked Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence (DNI), and Admiral Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, to go public in denying that Team Trump had any ties to Russia during the 2016 election campaign. Admiral Rogers anecdotally flatly denied Trump’s request, which—if true—was inappropriate, unethical and dubiously legal, while Coats, a Trump appointee who’s only been in the DNI job since mid-March, likewise refused to back the president against the FBI. This was a stunning setback for Trump, who seems to view our nation’s top security officials as his personal employees who ought to follow his presidential whim rather than the law and the Constitution, which all of them take an oath to defend.” Observer Exclusive

Following are different resources of compiled information written as evidence has been revealed:  Salon, 4/9/17

PutinTrump.org: Mother Jones’ even deeper dive

THE CHRISTOPHER STEELE DOSSIER   The current investigation became widely known upon release of the 35-page memo which was authored by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele of Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd.  “was hired between June and November last year by Fusion GPS, a Washington-based research consultancy to look into Trump’s links with Russia.”  Read the original “Golden Showers” intelligence report here courtesy Buzzfeed, released a month later. A second Steele memo was drafted December 13, 2016, including intelligence which had continued to come in unsolicited after the November election.  Court docs embedded in The Guardian      Buzzfeed

The Christopher Steele/Orbis memos reference Source A, Russian Foreign Ministry who had been feeding Trump intelligence on opponents including Clinton for several years, confirmed by Source D. Source B, an active top-level Russian intelligence officer “who asserted that the TRUMP operation was both supported and directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Its aim was to sow discord and disunity both within the US itself, but more especially within the Transatlantic alliance which was viewed as inimical to Russia’s interests. ”  In June 2016, Source B asserted there was enough “embarrassing material on the now Republican presidential candidate to be able to blackmail him if they so wished.” Source B confirmed a dossier of “kompromat” on Hillary Clinton but it was mainly recorded phone calls “and focused on things she had said which contradicted er current position on various issues.”.”Source C, a Senior Russian Financial Official said the TRUMP operation should be seen in terms of PUTIN’s desire to return to Nineteenth Century ‘Great Power’ politics anchored in countries’ interests rather than the ideals-based international order established after World War Two.”  “Source D, a close associate of Trump who had organized and managed his recent trips to Moscow, and who reported, also in June 2016, that this Russian intelligence had been “very helpful.”  Source E (most likely hotel staff) confirmed the Moscow Ritz-Carlton Presidential Suite “Golden Showers” prostitute party in 2013 and introduced Source F, a female hotel staffer who worked there at the time. “Source G, a senior Kremlin official, confided that the CLINTON dossier was controlled exclusively by chief Kremlin spokesman, Dmitriy PESKOV, who was responsible for compiling/handling it on the explicit instructions of PUTIN himself.”

One of the main tactics used by the Kremlin to control politicians is through “Kompromat”:  compromising material and dossiers kept on individuals under the control of Dmitriy Peskov and/or Department K of the FSB.  Steele

Putin controlled a think tank to sway the US Elections, and the knowledge thereof started the FBI Investigations called the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies or RISS [en.riss.ru/] “Neither of the Russian institute documents mentioned the release of hacked Democratic Party emails to interfere with the U.S. election, according to four of the officials. The officials said the hacking was a covert intelligence operation run separately out of the Kremlin. The overt propaganda and covert hacking efforts reinforced each other, according to the officials. Both Russia Today and Sputnik heavily promoted the release of the hacked Democratic Party emails, which often contained embarrassing details.” Reuters Exclusive

Congressman Eric Swalwell (CA-15) has an excellent introduction to the initial 15 men involved in the scandal  and the history of known Russian global cyber attacks

Erik Prince

“Notorious Mercinary” Erik Prince founded Blackwater Security and made headlines during the Iraq war with his company’s abuses and “conviction of killing Iraqi citizens, including children, in the notorious 2007 Nisour Square gun battle.” Bloomberg He is brother to Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education, the their father, Edgar Prince’s auto parts manufacturing The Prince Corporation sold in 1996 to Johnson Controls for $1.35 billion. They grew up in Holland, MI, and their father “was a major contributor to the Family Research Council, whose mission is to “advance faith, family and freedom in public policy and the culture from a Christian worldview”.[4]  Critics argue that the organization advocates against LGBT rights, abortion, divorce, embryonic stem-cell research, and pornography.[5][6]” Prince  which joined Trump’s campaign as a major financial backer in August 2016.

He’s under investigation for money laundering and involvement with Chinese intelligence in a Lybian deal with current corporation FSB, which supplies African and conflict-zone aviation, evacuation and paramilitary support. China is heavily invested in Africa for its mining and natural resources. Prince sought to secretly rebuild his private CIA and special operations enterprise by setting up foreign shell companies and offering paramilitary services. He is currently or planning to train the People’s Liberation Army using former US Special Ops trainers, on behalf of the Chinese government in Africa, while Bannon and Trump say the US is heading towards a trade or real war with China.

THE TESTIMONY OF ERIK PRINCE ON NOVEMBER 30, 2017, BEFORE THE HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE

January 11, 2016, The Seychelles Meeting, arranged by the UAE Crown Prince. Afterwards, Erik Prince met with Kirill Dmitriev, per the Testimony.  Note: Prince was invited to testify by Kush Patel, major force behind the “Nunes Memo” The Atlantic.  Patel and Presley went to London in search of Christopher Steele, and in early November before the Prince testimony, Patel circulated an internal memo “urging Nunes to hold top officials at the Justice Department and the FBI in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over documents related to the Obama administration’s alleged use of the dossier to surveil Trump associates during the transition period, one of the sources told me. That memo was first reported by Fox News in November.” The Atlantic

PODCAST: Privatizing the War in Afghanistan  Recommended Reading:

New York Times: Trump Aides Recruited Businessmen to Devise Options for Afghanistan — “President Trump’s advisers recruited two businessmen who profited from military contracting to devise alternatives to the Pentagon’s plan to send thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan, reflecting the Trump administration’s struggle to define its strategy for dealing with a war now 16 years old.”

The Atlantic: The ‘Blackwater 2.0’ Plan for Afghanistan — “Here’s a crazy idea floating around Washington these days, outlandish even by today’s outlandish standards: The United States should hire a mercenary army to “fix” Afghanistan, a country where we’ve been at war since 2001, spending billions along the way. The big idea here is that they could extricate U.S. soldiers from this quagmire, and somehow solve it.”

Wall Street Journal: The MacArthur Model for Afghanistan — “Afghanistan is an expensive disaster for America. The Pentagon has already consumed $828 billion on the war, and taxpayers will be liable for trillions more in veterans’ health-care costs for decades to come. More than 2,000 American soldiers have died there, with more than 20,000 wounded in action. For all that effort, Afghanistan is failing. The terrorist cohort consistently gains control of more territory, including key economic arteries. It’s time for President Trump to fix our approach to Afghanistan in five ways.”

FYI: Fellow Mercer associate Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, Assistant to the President Christopher Liddell, and Sebastian Gorka, Former Breitbart writer and current Deputy Assistant to Trump and National Security Aide, formed an additional advisory group to potentially supersede the NSC called the Strategic Initiatives Group in January 2017. Reed Cordish also joined the SIG. Per reports, Robert Mercer has the largest private arsenal in the United States. Steve Bannon and other devotees of “The Fourth Turning”, want a huge war as a cleansing process, after which an idealized, structured society emerges (See his film “Generation Zero” on the Steve Bannon page).

ERIK PRINCE IN THE HOT SEAT

Blackwater’s Founder Is Under Investigation for Money Laundering, Ties to Chinese Intel, and Brokering Mercenary Services The Intercept

“He’s a rogue chairman,” said one of Prince’s close associates, who has monitored his attempts to sell mercenary forces in Africa. That source, who has extensive knowledge of Prince’s activities and travel schedule, said that Prince was operating a “secret skunkworks program” while parading around war and crisis zones as FSG’s founder and chairman. “Erik wants to be a real, no-shit mercenary,” said the source. “He’s off the rails exposing many U.S. citizens to criminal liabilities. Erik hides in the shadows … and uses [FSG] for legitimacy….“Erik is always pressing the limits as to what is possible,” said the close associate of Prince’s. In 2010, Prince sold most of his equity in the companies that fell under the Blackwater umbrella. Claiming that left-wing activists, Democratic politicians, and lawsuits had destroyed his companies, he left the United States and became a resident of Abu Dhabi. The remnant of his network was renamed Academi LLC. Federal prosecutors eventually attempted to prosecute Prince’s former companies, culminating in a 2012 deferred prosecution agreement to settle a lengthy list of U.S. legal and regulatory violations committed from 2005 through 2008 when Prince was in charge, including ITAR violations.” ITAR is International Traffic in Arms Regulations, issued by the State Department’s (currently under Rex Tillerson) Directorate of Defense Trade Controls.” The Intercept

Blackwater Founder Said to Have Advised Trump Team  Bloomberg By Keri Geiger and Michael Riley
April 18, 2017 “During the Iraq war, Blackwater landed more than $1 billion worth of government contracts to provide personal protection for visiting officials and assist with military operations and, according to Prince’s memoir, carry out covert operations for the Central Intelligence Agency.  Click here for more on Erik Prince’s work in Iraq”  Bloomberg

NOTORIOUS MERCENARY ERIK PRINCE IS ADVISING TRUMP FROM THE SHADOWS  The Intercept  January 17, 2017  “Prince has long fantasized that he is the rightful heir to the legacy of “Wild Bill” Donovan and his Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA. After 9/11, Prince worked with the CIA on a secret assassination program, in addition to offering former SEALs and other retired special operators to the State Department and other agencies for personal security…The Trump presidency could result in Prince working for both Beijing and the White House. The Blackwater founder has also endorsed some of Trump’s overtures to Russia, saying: “Think about it: If FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, can deal with Stalin to defeat German fascism in World War II, certainly the United States of America could work with Putin to defeat Islamic fascism. We don’t have to agree with the Russians on everything, or even on a lot, but we can at least agree that crushing ISIS in the Middle East is a very good idea.” Prince described Democrats as “anti-Catholic, anti-Evangelical,” saying the DNC hacks and leaks revealed “the disregard, the disdain they have for the average American voter and citizen.” Prince has a close relationship with Breitbart News and Steve Bannon, Trump’s senior counselor and chief strategist. Prince has appeared frequently — and almost exclusively — on Breitbart Radio. Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, is Trump’s nominee for education secretary and she has all but vowed to embark on a crusade to push a privatization and religious agenda in education that mirrors her brother’s in military and CIA affairs. Prince has long been a contributor to the campaign of fellow Christian warrior Mike Pence, and he contributed $100,000 to the pro-Trump Super PAC Make America Number 1. Prince’s mother, Elsa, pitched in another $50,000. That organization, run by Rebekah Mercer, daughter of billionaire hedge funder Robert Mercer, was one of the strongest bankrollers of Trump’s campaign. According to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, in December Prince attended the annual “Villains and Heroes” costume ball hosted by Mercer. Dowd wrote that Palantir founder Peter Thiel showed her “a picture on his phone of him posing with Erik Prince, who founded the private military company Blackwater, and Mr. Trump — who had no costume — but joke[d] that it was ‘N.S.F.I.’ (Not Safe for the Internet).” The Intercept

Betsy DeVos’s Brother, The Founder of Blackwater, Is Setting Up A Private Army For China, Sources Say

The controversial Blackwater founder says he is setting up two bases in China, but his company says “this does not involve armed personnel.” Aram Roston “In December (2016), Frontier Services Group, of which Prince is chairman, issued a press release that outlined plans to open “a forward operating base in China’s Yunnan province” and another in the troubled Xinjiang region, home to the mostly Muslim Uighur minority. When Frontier later told its board it was shifting into security services — largely to assist China’s international development policy — the development disgusted two American executives at Prince’s Hong Kong company. Gregg Smith, the former CEO of Frontier, said he was ready to quit last March if Erik Prince was not removed from the company. Then, at a board meeting late that month, he said a company official made clear that Frontier would be providing security services in support of Chinese government objectives. “That was the final straw,” he told BuzzFeed News. Retired US Admiral William Fallon, a Frontier board member, was at the same board meeting. He resigned too when he heard that the firm was providing security services. “That wasn’t what I signed up for,” he said in an interview. Former executives said that Frontier’s “forward operating bases” will be training former People’s Liberation Army soldiers to work as discreet non-uniformed soldiers for hire. The former associate, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Prince “is making Frontier Services a full-on private military company.” President Donald Trump has talked tough about China. To be sure, he recently reaffirmed that the United States will formally recognize only mainland China and not Taiwan, a crucial point for Beijing. But Trump has installed a sharply anti-China critic as the head of his National Trade Council. Before winning the presidency, Trump called China an “enemy.” Trump adviser Stephen Bannon, who interviewed Prince on Breitbart frequently, predicted last year that the US will be at war with China “in the South China Sea in five to 10 years.” And even if no hot war breaks out, many experts believe Trump is gearing up for a trade war with the country that manufactures much of the world’s goods (including some Trump brand products.) During the campaign, Prince donated $100,000 to the Trump Victory Committee, which supported both Trump’s election bid and the Republican Party. Jeremy Scahill, a journalist who has long covered Prince, recently wrote that the businessman is advising the Trump Administration. Just four days before the election, Prince gave an interview to Breitbart radio, part of the media empire that Bannon used to run, in which Prince pushed an unfounded theory that the NYPD had been about to announce arrest warrants in the Clinton investigation but was blocked by the Justice Department, and that Hillary Clinton had been to a “sex island” with a convicted pedophile “at least six times.” Prince’s bizarre claims were prominently displayed on Breitbart’s website leading up to the election and were widely distributed on right wing websites.” Buzzfeed

New Super-PAC Launches for Donors Who Won’t Back Trump But Loathe Clinton

Supported by former Ted Cruz backer Robert Mercer, a new player enters the fray. Bloomberg By Joshua Green and Zachary Mider 

June 21, 2016: The Robert Mercer-led Super-Pac “Make America Number One” aka “Defeat Crooked Hillary PAC” with Kellyanne Conway, president of Keep the Promise PAC, led by long-time Clinton hater David Bossie, president of Citizens United, made headlines appealing to Republican donors who don’t like Trump after their candidate Cruz dropped out. Bloomberg

INVOLVEMENT WITH TRUMP TRANSITION TEAM

“Blackwater Founder said to Have Advised Trump Team” Bloomberg “In one informal discussion in late November, Prince spoke openly with two members of Trump’s transition team on a train bound from New York to Washington. He boarded the same Acela as Kellyanne Conway and they sat together. Joining the conversation at one point was Kevin Harrington, a longtime associate of Trump adviser Peter Thiel who is now on the National Security Council. They discussed, in broad terms, major changes the incoming administration envisioned for the intelligence community, as recounted by a person on the train who overheard their conversation. A longtime critic of government defense and security policies, Prince advocated a restructuring of security agencies as well as a thorough rethink of costly defense programs, even if it meant canceling existing major contracts in favor of smaller ones, said a person familiar with the matter. Prince is no longer talking to those in the administration, said the person close to him, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions were intended to remain private. His influence waned after Flynn was ousted as National Security Adviser in February over concerns about his own disclosures and conversations with the Russian ambassador. And Prince has no relationship with Flynn’s successor, General H. R. McMaster.”

April 3, 2017, The Washington Post “Blackwater founder held secret Seychelles meeting to establish Trump-Putin back channel”   “Prince is best known as the founder of Blackwater, a security firm that became a symbol of U.S. abuses in Iraq after a series of incidents, including one in 2007 in which the company’s guards were accused — and later criminally convicted — of killing civilians in a crowded Iraqi square. Prince sold the firm, which was subsequently re-branded, but has continued building a private paramilitary empire with contracts across the Middle East and Asia. He now heads a Hong Kong-based company known as the Frontier Services Group……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. Though Prince had no formal role with the Trump campaign or transition team, he presented himself as an unofficial envoy for Trump to high-ranking Emiratis involved in setting up his meeting with the Putin confidant, according to the officials, who did not identify the Russian. Prince was an avid supporter of Trump. After the Republican convention, he contributed $250,000 to Trump’s campaign, the national party and a pro-Trump super PAC led by GOP mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, records show. He has ties to people in Trump’s circle, including Stephen K. Bannon, now serving as the president’s chief strategist and senior counselor. Prince’s sister Betsy DeVos serves as education secretary in the Trump administration. And Prince was seen in the Trump transition offices in New York in December.  ” Washington Post Continued

Erik Prince in the Hot Seat  March 24, 2016 “Erik Prince, founder of the now-defunct mercenary firm Blackwater and current chairman of Frontier Services Group, is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and other federal agencies for attempting to broker military services to foreign governments and possible money laundering, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the case. What began as an investigation into Prince’s attempts to sell defense services in Libya and other countries in Africa has widened to a probe of allegations that Prince received assistance from Chinese intelligence to set up an account for his Libya operations through the Bank of China. The Justice Department, which declined to comment for this article, is also seeking to uncover the precise nature of Prince’s relationship with Chinese intelligence. Despite the provenance of FSG’s funding and Prince’s history of bad publicity, Prince was able to recruit an impressive line-up of former U.S. military and intelligence officers to run the company. Key to Prince’s ability to retain such personnel, given FSG’s ties to China, has been the firm’s strictly circumscribed mission, which does not include military-related services. FSG is a publicly traded aviation and logistics firm specializing in shipping in Africa and elsewhere. The company also conducts high-risk evacuations from conflict zones. Prince has described his work with FSG as being “on the side of peace and economic development” and helping Chinese businesses to work safely in Africa. Behind the back of corporate leadership at FSG, Prince was living a double life. Working with a small cadre of loyalists — including a former South African commando, a former Australian air force pilot, and a lawyer with dual citizenship in the U.S. and Israel — Prince sought to secretly rebuild his private CIA and special operations enterprise by setting up foreign shell companies and offering paramilitary services, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept and interviews with several people familiar with Prince’s business proposals. Several of the proposals for private security services in African nations examined by The Intercept contained metadata in the digital files showing Prince and his inner circle editing and revising various drafts. Since 2014, Prince has traveled to at least half a dozen countries to offer various versions of a private military force, secretly meeting with a string of African officials. Among the countries where Prince pitched a plan to deploy paramilitary assets is Libya, which is currently subject to an array of U.S. and United Nations financial and defense restrictions…The Libyan proposal, reviewed by The Intercept, was code-named Operation Lima. It offered the Libyans an array of military equipment and services — including weaponized vehicles, helicopters, boats, and surveillance airplanes — to help stabilize eastern Libya. The ground force, according to a person involved with the plan, would consist of a troop of former Australian special operations commandos...By May 2015, Prince had rebranded himself and claimed a legitimate public reputation as FSG’s chairman. Without the approval of FSG’s management, he returned to Libya offering a freshly repackaged proposal. Prince’s private force would operate in Libya for the stated purpose of stopping the flow of refugees to Europe…One person involved in Prince’s plan said the anti-migration force was seen as a vehicle for Prince to build a “backdoor” for so-called kinetic, or lethal, operations in Libya — a form of mercenary mission-creep. “During the day, you do interdiction of migrants — not kinetic,” said the person involved in the plan. “But those routes are used by weapons smugglers and drug traffickers at night. Insurgents too. Erik’s guys can then be offered to the Libyans to help with their other problems. That’s how you get kinetic.” By then, the U.S. government was already investigating Prince for possible weapons deals in Africa, according to the former senior U.S. intelligence official and the former intelligence official briefed on the matter. In the course of the surveillance operation for that investigation, U.S. intercepts revealed Prince appearing to discuss efforts to open bank accounts in China to help his Libyan associates. “Money laundering for Libyan officials using a Chinese bank — that is the issue that pushed it over the edge” for the Justice Department, said the second former intelligence official. The U.S. spies monitoring Prince soon discovered that he had traveled to the Chinese-controlled peninsula of Macau in an effort to open a bank account, according to two people familiar with the investigation.Later, Prince traveled to Beijing, where he met with Chinese agents from the Ministry of State Security. In January (2016), Prince returned to Macau and opened an account at the Bank of China, according to several sources, including the second former intelligence official and the source with close connections to Macau’s banking community. “It was not a personal account,” said the former U.S. intelligence official briefed on the investigation. “He was doing it for the purpose of what is considered now — in the investigation — money laundering on behalf of the Libyans.” The Intercept