Washington D.C. was rocked with a surprise bombshell on Friday night when mercenary kingpin and war criminal Erik Prince admitted to attending a 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr, senior campaign adviser Stephen Miller, Lebanese-American businessman George Nader, and Israeli “social media expert” Joel Zamal in order to “discuss Iran policy.”
While that’s not quite so surprising, considering he arranged the meeting in the first place, he failed to mention his attendance to the House Intelligence Committee when he was interviewed by them last November. Instead, he told them that he had “no official” or just a “really unofficial role” in the campaign — but joining the candidate’s son and a top campaign adviser to discuss serious foreign policy issues makes it clear that his role was much more than that of “placing yard signs.”
When questioned on that by al Jazeera‘s Medhi Hassan, Prince grew flustered and change his tune, saying that he had told Congress about the meeting even though it wasn’t in the transcript of the testimony.
In an article for the Intercept detailing the interview, Hassan remarked that Prince had a “Trumpian relationship with the truth” and detailed exactly how the war criminal tried and failed to cover his tracks:
But why didn’t Prince tell members of Congress about his other secret meeting, in Trump Tower in August 2016? Especially if it was about a sensitive foreign policy issue like Iran?
“I don’t believe I was asked that question,” he replied.
Not true. I reminded him that he had been asked by a member of the House Intelligence Committee whether he had any “formal communications or contact with the campaign.”
The Blackwater founder then switched tack. He “did” inform the committee about the meeting, Prince told me. Why wasn’t it in the transcript of the hearing then, I countered? “I don’t know if they got the transcript wrong,” he said. Later in the interview, in response to a question from the audience, he doubled down: “Not all the discussion that day was transcribed, and that’s a fact.”
The House Intelligence Committee has not yet responded to the new revelations, but if it is true that Erik Prince perjured himself, we’re likely to see a lot more of him in the headlines as his role in the Trump campaign and in the alleged efforts to set up a secret back channel between the White House and Kremlim are brought back squarely into the crosshairs of Mueller and the House’s investigative committees.
Original reporting by Mehdi Hassan at the Intercept.
Watch Erik Prince squirm:
https://twitter.com/ScottMStedman/status/1104152592496570368
