FILE PHOTO: Erik Prince, founder of the Blackwater security firm, testifies before a committee of the U.S. Congress about security contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan on Capitol Hill in Washington, October 2, 2007. REUTERS/Larry Downing/File Photo
April 30, 2019
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. congressional committee has asked the Justice Department to investigate Trump backer Erik Prince for possible crimes, the panel’s chairman said, adding there was strong evidence he lied to U.S. lawmakers probing Russia.
Democratic Representative Adam Schiff told a Washington Post event there was evidence that Prince, who founded the now defunct Blackwater security firm and is the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, had willingly misled the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.
“I believe there was very strong evidence that he willingly misled the committee, made false statements to the committee,” Schiff said, citing Prince’s January 2017 meeting with a Russian banker in the Seychelles. “The evidence is so weighty that the Justice Department needs to consider this.”
He declined to say whether the panel also planned to submit criminal referrals for U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner and Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr.
At issue are discrepancies between Prince’s comments to Congress versus what he told U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who in April released his report on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
The report’s details over Prince’s meeting with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, who reports directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin, differ from testimony Prince gave to the intelligence panel in November 2017.
Perjury before Congress is a crime that can carry a punishment of up to five years in prison and a fine.
Marc Cohen, a spokesman for Prince, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Separately, Prince has been pushing a plan to deploy a private army to help topple Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicholas Maduro, four sources with knowledge of the effort told Reuters.
U.S. Representative Mark Meadows, head of House Republicans’ Freedom Caucus, separately told the Post event that Republicans were considering sending their own criminal referrals for two to three individuals. He declined to name them or give many details, but said two of them were linked to Fusion GPS.
Fusion GPS is a research and intelligence consultancy that hired former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to investigate Trump and Russia.
“There are two or three individuals that we believe could have potentially given false testimony to Congress,” Meadows, a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform panel. That committee and the Intelligence Committee are among several congressional panels examining Russian interference in American politics, including in the 2016 presidential election.
Meadows added that Trump had not personally encouraged House Republicans to make any referrals to the Justice Department over congressional misstatements, and that he has not spoken to the president about the issue “from a criminal referrals standpoint.”
(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Writing by Jonathan Oatis; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Howard Goller)
