The GOP just really loves their nefarious tactics, don’t they? Reports have now revealed that Erik Prince, who is both the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the founder of the military contractor company Blackwater, got former spies to be involved in espionage operations that were led the infamous right-wing agitators Project Veritas, who have worked to target interests and organizations that could even be perceived as on the opposite side of the so-called “Trump agenda.” One former M16 agent named Richard Seddon, who Prince recruited, even directed an operative to go undercover in the Congressional campaign of Virginia Democrat Abigail Spanberger, who was eventually successful in her bid for a spot in Congress — and whose campaign was forced to fire the agent when their secret double identity as a Prince/Seddon plant was revealed.
Prince, Seddon, and that same undercover lackey — who used aliases to get close to the organizations that the lot of them targeted — also participated in operations like one 2017 gambit targeting a Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers, who had some of their files stolen and conversations secretly recorded. The details about Seddon’s participation (and Prince’s) “have emerged from the discovery process of a court battle between the group and the union,” The New York Times reports, referencing the American Federation of Teachers’ legal challenge against Project Veritas and its leader, James O’Keefe.
The Times reports that Prince’s efforts stretch at least back to the 2016 campaign season — adding yet another facet to the corruption that Trump has always so feverishly claimed was never there, despite all the only barely metaphorical smoke. The publication explains:
‘Mr. 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 Mr. Seddon to make the pitch — Mr. 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.’
It’s unclear, the paper notes, what role anyone with any more formal connection to Trump may have had in the espionage that Prince helped with and has ensnared them in court struggles — although Project Veritas has enjoyed an increasing profile in conservative circles. In 2018 alone, the group “received $8.6 million in contributions and grants,” The Times explains, and that same year, “Mr. O’Keefe earned about $387,000.”
Meanwhile, Prince “worked with the former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn during the presidential transition,” The Times explains, and later, he tried to convince then-Trump officials to take up a plan to privatize American fighting forces in Afghanistan. That plan was never accepted, and just recently, the president’s team announced a plan to run the exact opposite direction and withdraw all American troops from the country, pending Taliban adherence with a peace agreement that’s been set up.
Prince is one of many deeply questionable figures circulating close to the president. He’s faced an investigation into seemingly lying to Congress about the circumstances of his meeting with a Russian banker around the same time that he got his Project Veritas association going.
