You recall Donald Trump pardoning the four Blackwater mercenary guards who were convicted of killing unarmed Iraqi civilians in the street. Today Blackwater and its founder, Erik Prince, have been found to have violated a United Nations arms embargo on Libya by providing weapons to a militia, who UN investigators say was attempting to overthrow the internationally backed government. New York Times:
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. […]
In the past decade he has relaunched himself as an executive who strikes deals — sometimes for minerals, other times involving military force — in war-addled but resource-rich countries, mostly in Africa.
During the Trump administration, Mr. Prince was a generous donor and a staunch ally of the president, often in league with figures like Steve Bannon and Roger Stone as they sought to undermine Mr. Trump’s critics. And Mr. Prince came under scrutiny from the Trump-Russia inquiry over his meeting with a Russian banker in 2017.
Mr. Prince refused to cooperate with the U.N. inquiry; his lawyer did not respond to questions about the report. Last year the lawyer, Matthew L. Schwartz, told the Times that Mr. Prince “had nothing whatsoever” to do with military operations in Libya.
You’ll be interested to hear this. The Times goes on to say that the UN report raises the question of whether Prince “played on his ties to the Trump administration to pull off the Libya operation.”
It describes how a friend and former partner of Mr. Prince traveled to Jordan to buy surplus, American-made Cobra helicopters from the Jordanian military — a sale that ordinarily would require American government permission, according to military experts. The friend, assured officials in Jordan that he had “clearances from everywhere” and his team’s work had been approved “at the highest level,” the report found.
We don’t doubt that it was and that Prince had everything he needed. The surprise would be if that wasn’t the case. Who knows what other Trumpian machinations in the world are going to spring up out of the dark next?
A Western official, speaking to the Times on the condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to discuss confidential work, said the investigators had also obtained phone records showing that Mr. Prince’s friend and former partner made several calls to the main White House switchboard in late July 2019, after the mercenary operation ran into trouble.
Don’t forget who Erik Prince is. He’s not only Betsy DeVos’ brother and a mercenary, he bankrolled Mike Pence and the three of them are theocrats. If they could figure out a way to take over the United States government, I believe they would try. And Jeff Sessions would come out of the shadows and help them. And so would Mike Pompeo. Don’t underestimate the religious crazies.
What will the consequences be? That’s the rub. No consequences – nothing changed.
All of these monsters like Prince and DeVos have to be thoroughly peeled open and have every single one of their trespass of the laws, exposed and prosecuted as example to all would be’s out there lurking in the shadow world they live in. Oh and I’d like to know who among them operates under alias’s Like the attourney for Blackstone humorously named Mr. Schwartz.
I have to admit I’ve wondered if this particular snake was slithering around in some of the more organized elements of the insurgent attack on the Capitol. He has a long established and well honed recruiting operation to identify current and former military types who’d be interested in working for his group. Just because someone didn’t get hired, or hired right away wouldn’t mean he’d have stopped keeping tabs on them and having some of his guys quietly reach out in the months before the attack to offers equipment and intel on the Capitol itself is just the kind of thing Prince of Darkness would do.
I had those same thoughts.
This man is extremely dangerous!! Why isn’t he locked up right now? If I had violated a UN arms embargo, I can assure you I would not be walking around free!