James O'Keefe and Erik
Prince
(Nasty, conniving, and crooked
as they come)
Very startling yet not surprising as more Trump-related campaign
and dirty tricks to win in 2020 anyway possible come to light:
Erik Prince Recruits Ex-Spies to Help Infiltrate
Liberal
Groups
Quick intro to this story and
a lot more details and background below – extensive but critically important at this point in time:
WASHINGTON —
Erik Prince, the security contractor
with close ties to the Trump administration, has in recent years helped recruit
former American and British spies for secretive intelligence-gathering
operations that included infiltrating Democratic congressional campaigns, labor
organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda,
according to interviews and documents.
One of the former spies, an
ex-MI6 officer named Richard Seddon,
helped run a 2017 operation to copy files and record conversations in a
Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest
teachers’ unions in the nation. Seddon directed an undercover operative to
secretly tape the union’s local leaders and try to gather information that
could be made public to damage the organization, documents show.
Using a different alias the
next year, the same undercover operative infiltrated the congressional campaign
of Abigail Spanberger, then a former
CIA officer who went on to win an important House seat in Virginia as a
Democrat. The campaign discovered the
operative and fired her.
Both
operations were run by Project Veritas (a lot on Veritas is here and below, too. Some very scary stuff, BTW.
It is a conservative group
that has gained attention using hidden cameras and microphones for sting
operations on news organizations, Democratic politicians, and liberal advocacy
groups.
Seddon’s role in the
teachers’ union operation — detailed in internal Project Veritas emails that
have emerged from the discovery process of a court battle between the group and
the union — has not previously been reported, nor has Prince’s role in
recruiting Seddon for the group’s activities.
Both Project Veritas and Prince have ties to President Trump’s aides
and family. Whether any Trump administration officials or advisers to the
president were involved in the operations, even tacitly, is unclear.
But the
effort is a glimpse of a vigorous private campaign to try to undermine
political groups or individuals perceived to be in opposition to Trump’s
agenda.
Prince, the former head of
Blackwater Worldwide and also the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, has at times served as an
informal adviser to Trump administration officials. He worked with the former
national security adviser Michael Flynn
during the presidential transition.
In 2017, he met with White
House and Pentagon officials to pitch a plan to privatize the Afghan war using
contractors in lieu of American troops. Jim
Mattis, then the defense secretary, rejected the idea.
Prince appears to have become
interested in using former spies to train Project Veritas operatives in
espionage tactics sometime during the 2016 presidential campaign. Reaching out
to several intelligence veterans — and occasionally using Seddon to make the
pitch — Prince said he wanted the Project Veritas employees to learn skills
like how to recruit sources and how to conduct clandestine recordings, among
other surveillance techniques.
James O’Keefe,
the head of Project Veritas, declined to answer detailed questions about Prince,
Seddon, and other topics, but he called his group a “proud independent news
organization that is involved in dozens of investigations.
He said that numerous sources
were coming to the group: “To provide confidential documents, insights into internal processes and
how to wear hidden cameras to expose corruption and misconduct, and no one
tells Project Veritas who or what to investigate.”
A spokesman for Prince
declined to comment, and emails to Seddon went unanswered.
Prince is under investigation
by the DOJ over whether he lied to a congressional committee examining Russian
interference in the 2016 election, and for possible violations of American
export laws.
Last year, the House
Intelligence Committee made a criminal referral to the Justice Department about
Prince, saying he lied about the circumstances of his meeting with a Russian
banker in the Seychelles in January 2017.
Once a small operation
running on a shoestring budget, Project Veritas in recent years has had a surge
in donations from both private donors and conservative foundations.
According to its latest
publicly available tax filing, Project Veritas received $8.6 million in contributions
and grants in 2018, with O’Keefe earning about $387,000.
So, who is Erik Prince and his nastiness over the years – his quick bio:
At one point during the Iraq
War, Blackwater was the largest State Department security contractor, providing
security services in Iraq and other “War on Terror” combat zones. He founded Blackwater in 1997, but
he left the company in 2010.
His companies have been
notorious for various high-profile scandals, including allegations of fraud and
death threats, weapons trafficking, and involvement in the massacre of
civilians in Iraq.
Note: He renamed Blackwater
to Xe, then to Academi, and now to Frontier Services Group, apparently HQ in
China. He can’t make up his mind on a name. He probably should settle
on “Crooks я Us” that is more apropos.
Much of Blackwater's original revenues came from security contracts for guarding high-profile officials and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
For example, from 2001
through 2006, Blackwater had $832 million in two State Department contracts for
providing “protective services” in Iraq.
Ironically, in 2000, his corporation
only earned $200,000 in federal contracts, compared with $25 million in 2003
and $1 billion in late 2007.
Noteworthy:
By 2007, Prince reported that at least 90 percent of Blackwater's revenue came
from government contracts, two-thirds of which were no-bid.
More Erik Prince background follows:
This story from TPM (December 2007).
His major
effort in China (April 2017).
His spies in this amazing report
from The Intercept (December 2017).
Background on James O’Keefe and his
group here, and here. They have taken
aim at targets over the years including Planned Parenthood, The New York Times,
The Washington Post, and Democracy Partners, a group that consults with liberal
and progressive electoral causes.
In 2016, a Project Veritas
operative infiltrated Democracy Partners using a fake name and fabricated
résumé and made secret recordings of the staff. The year after the sting,
Democracy Partners sued Project Veritas, and its lawyers have since deposed O’Keefe.
In that deposition, O’Keefe
defended the group’s undercover tactics, saying they were part of a long
tradition of investigative journalism going back to muckraking reporters like
Upton Sinclair.
O’Keefe said: “I’m not ashamed of the methods that we use
or the recordings that we use.”
He was asked whether he had
provided any of the group’s secret recordings of Democracy Partners to the
RNC or any member of the Trump family. He said that
he did not think so.
On May 10, 2010, O’ Keefe and
three others pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor after admitting they
entered a government building in New Orleans under false pretenses as part of a
sting. That was the office of then U.S.
Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) – details here:
The four
defendants were arrested in January in Sen. Landrieu's office in the Federal complex in New Orleans posing as repairmen. They pleaded guilty federal
court to entering real property belonging to the United States under false
pretenses.
Magistrate Judge Daniel
Knowles III sentenced Stan Dai, Joseph Basel, and Robert Flanagan each to two
years of probation, a fine of $1,500, and 75 hours of community service during
their first year of probation.
Recall that O'Keefe, as
leader of the group and famous for posing as a pimp in the
2009 ACORN office videos, received three years of probation, a fine of
$1,500, and 100 hours of community service.
Recent nasty O’Keefe crap during
the 2016 campaign and his smear of Hillary Clinton – it backfired big time as reported
on here (NY
Times).
Note in this article that Trump praised O’Keefe’s work (even
for the discredited video of Clinton). Trump then pledged $10,000 to him from
his Trump Foundation fund.
My 2 cents: This whole story is very troubling but as I said, very
timely. It really underscores the criminal activities of Trump that are hard to
prove, but seemingly real) from the Trump Organization or the Trump Foundation –
all “mob-like” and led by this “2020 style Don.”
How it all comes is able to be prosecuted and put to rest (jail would
be the best outcome) remains to be seen.
Trump is clever in staying out of jail, while sending close allies
instead or so it seems.
ABC News report says: In all, 14 Trump aides, donors, and advisers have
been indicted or imprisoned since the days when the first-time candidate promised
that he would only hire “the best people.”
Short ABC News video proof seen here – in Trump’s own words not mine.
In the end, Trump expects that whatever he says MUST be accepted as the
truth and nothing else matters: not you, not your job, your family, your
health, or your future – only his. Believe him no matter, ore suffer his wrath
and disaster that follow.
Trump seems to always have an escape plan and safe route away from
the problems he creates by blaming someone else – that much is clear.
However, it’s
only a matter of time until it all falls apart around him and surely it will –
time will tell without any doubt I believe.
Thanks for stopping by.
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