The life of Erik Prince has been a complicated globe-trotting journey complete with extensive mercenary activities, spying on American citizens, brokering arms deals with despotic regimes and essentially taking advantage of any situation he can in order to line his personal pockets. But, you know, over 18, they - it grew closer. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. Project Veritas tax filings list Mr. Halderman as a project manager.. Why are they there? DAVIES: But the idea was that these public officials or FBI agents were secretly - they were part of the deep state. 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. On Sept. 30, Prince personally visited the Park County Elections Office, registered and cast a general election ballot, according to the clerks office. Prince provided funding to hire a tech adviser to ascertain the authenticity of the emails. So we had never seen something like that. James OKeefe, the head of Project Veritas, declined to answer detailed questions about Mr. She was involved in that. But I don't know how close they are. As the founder of Blackwater USA, now Academi, a private military company, Prince headed the organization. During the 2018 meeting with Ms. Gore, according to one person familiar with it, Mr. Presiding Judge Johnson, who is based in Cheyenne, has himself signaled some uncertainty about whether Wyoming is the right place for Princes case to be heard; in early November, Johnson asked the parties to submit additional briefs on either transferring the case to another district or delving further into the issues related to jurisdiction. And, you know, there were a whole range of people they went after. She actually got a contract fundraising gig with the Democrats, right? } And it was interesting to hear some of these Wyoming Republicans, you know, thank us for our reporting, you know, being The New York Times, because Trump has, you know, vilified us. Did it expand their operations? Both operations were run by Project Veritas, a conservative group that has gained attention using hidden cameras and microphones for sting operations on news organizations, Democratic politicians and liberal advocacy groups. GOLDMAN: They were thwarting the president's agenda. DAVIES: Right. DAVIES: Right. It's not clear to us why Prince decided to help Project Veritas. You know, Princes are pretty savvy. Where we're not - what we hadn't really seen was an actual British spy, somebody trained in clandestine activities, launching a secret operation using undercovers with false - basically false cover stories to infiltrate political circles, gather information and collect it for whatever purpose, I guess, because ultimately, as our story says, this appeared to be a paper play. And I realized they were giving money to Democrats in Wyoming, Arizona and Colorado. The website for Mr. OKeefes coming wedding listed Donald Trump Jr. as an invited guest. GOLDMAN: Well, some people have speculated this was some sort of back channel to Russia because there was a - I believe there was a Russian investment manager there who has ties to Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia. And it all kind of went south when the Post exposed it. At the time, Prince was exploring the possibility of mounting a Republican primary challenge to incumbent U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo. Key figures in the operation are a former British spy named Richard Seddon and private security contractor Erik Prince, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump. New details reveal the ambitions of an operation intended to infiltrate opponents of Donald Trump, including moderate Republicans as well as progressives and Democrats. Mr. Reaching out to several intelligence veterans and occasionally using Mr. Seddon to make the pitch Mr. Did it expand the number of people that they had? It's a conservative group, and they conduct undercover operations, for instance, to expose bias or what they would describe as, you know, wrongdoing primarily in liberal circles. Mark Gordon, who was viewed as a RINO in some Wyoming conservative circles. This is FRESH AIR. I think it was called "Deep State Exposed" or "Deep State Uncovered." You know, O'Keefe has clearly raised a lot of money, you know, millions of dollars. And they thought McMaster had fired, you know, several people who the president had brought on and - or Mike Flynn, his former - his first national security adviser had brought on. document.write (document.charset ? He did not respond to follow-up phone messages or an email. They targeted The Washington Post. For example, the co-authors of the piece in dispute, Cole and Alex Emmons, say theyre New York and Washington, D.C., residents whove never been to Wyoming. Prince noted he owned a home in Wyoming and had been connected to the state since 1992. But we were unaware of that. DAVIES: What did you learn about how Beau and Sofia met? MATTHEW COLE: In. This couple, Beau and Sofia - they spent real time and effort trying to ingratiate themselves with Democrats and progressives. O'Keefe writes about it in his book. But if the case was transferred to New York, that states laws could apply. Princes parents, Elsa Prince and the late Edgar Prince, bought the 940-acre Double E Ranch in the Wapiti Valley in the early 1990s. The scope of that investigation is unclear. Adam Goldman reports on the FBI and national security for the Times and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for national reporting on Russia's meddling in the presidential election. While he has not been actively involved in Wyoming politics specifically, Prince comes from a political family he is the brother of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and is an active political donor. How Times reporters cover politics. You know, you say in one of these stories, this operation's use of spy craft to manipulate the politics of several states over the years greatly exceeds the tactics of traditional political tricks operations. Defendants wrote and published a false and defamatory article about a Wyoming residents Wyoming-based business activities knowing that it would cause harm principally in Wyoming, New York attorney Matthew Schwartz charged in one filing. But, you know, his sister is Betsy DeVos, and she was Secretary of Education during the Trump administration. And then, you know, they both end up giving to the DNC. GOLDMAN: Project Veritas is founded by James O'Keefe. Trump, of course, wanted to pull out. Fast-forward to 2007, and Erik Prince was living in McLean, Virginia, and spending time on his Middleburg property, Blackwater Ranch, designed as a family retreat just as his parent's home in Cody had been originally. O'Keefe did not respond to the substance of the Times' report but did accuse the newspaper of running a "smear piece" on Project Veritas. By Derek Royden - July 2, 2021 2466 SOURCE NationofChange GOLDMAN: She was very active. GOLDMAN: Yeah, and the Justice Department prosecuted a number of individuals. This is when there was the special Senate election in Alabama, right? Do we know why? He's a former British intelligence officer who served in Washington, D.C., and in Pakistan and eventually leaves the British Secret Intelligence Service and develops some relationship with Erik. But he was extremely wealthy conservative in Wyoming named Foster Friess, who had actually run for governor in '18. And they admitted doing, you know - engaging in political activity while working for these government institutions, which Project Veritas asserted was, you know, wrong or even, you know - I can't remember if they said it was illegal or not. Mr. Halderman was copied on several messages providing updates about the Michigan operation, and in one message, he gave instructions to Ms. Jorge. According to the documents, Mr. Seddons operatives also aimed to dig up information on Steve Harshman, the Republican speaker of the House in Wyoming at the time, who was also seen by some conservatives as not sufficiently supportive of Mr. Trump. DAVIES: You know, the other thing that I wanted to just clarify to the extent I can is how much of a driving force Erik Prince was in this. That's a name some people will know. Funneling contributions through a third party is a feature of the federal election code and most state election codes. Later that year, Mr. The former Navy SEAL gained fame for the supporting role his Blackwater firm played in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the security contractor became infamous when its employees killed 14 Iraqi civilians and wounded 17 others in Baghdad in 2007. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And then I started Googling them and doing some research on them. Read more about the operation and its cast of characters at The New York Times. Mr. Seddon wrote that Ms. Jorge copied a great many documents from the file room, and Mr. OKeefe bragged that the group would be able to get a ton more access agents inside the educational establishment.. GOLDMAN: Well, they - you know, they - Beau is from Cody, Wyo., so he had some Wyoming roots. Wagner which The Intercept described as a semi-private military force that operates in countries or conflicts where the Russian government seeks plausible deniability for its activities reportedly turned down Princes offer. (SOUNDBITE OF FRANK ZAPPA'S "EAT THAT QUESTION"). You know, again, as when Barbara Ledeen, the staffer for the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was run by Chuck Grassley, you know, was trying to find Hillary Clinton's missing emails, and Prince gets involved in that, too. I have always understood him to be a resident of Northern Virginia, the lead writer of The Intercepts April story, Matthew Cole, wrote in a declaration. A spokesman for Mr. Amid his globe-trotting, however, Prince says he does most of his work from Wyoming and calls Park County home. They also did the secret interviews at the airport in Cody in the - at the Prince hangar. Anyone can read what you share. And, you know, typically they would have a male individual working for Project Veritas who would accompany these women on these dates as sort of, like, security. They were going to bug it. Valued at roughly $12 million by the Park County Assessors Office, the property includes a 17,470-square-foot residence that ranks among the largest in the area; county records show Prince owns a smaller home on an adjoining 10-acre parcel. In 2016, Republican operatives believed they had obtained deleted Hillary Clinton emails from the dark web, and sought Mr. Princes assistance to authenticate them, an episode investigated by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel in the Trump-era Russia inquiry. - trying to find, you know, damaging information on, you know, on political rivals, you know, using, you know, private investigative firms. It is, instead, an entity dedicated to a specific political agenda.. However, lawyers for the publication say they should not have to reveal who told them about Princes alleged meeting with Wagner Group or where they were told it occurred. At the time, Ms. Spanberger was running to unseat a sitting Republican congressman in a race both parties considered important for control of the House. NY Times reporter Adam Goldman describes an undercover effort, headed up by an avid Trump supporter, that trained conservatives in espionage techniques and sent them to dig up dirt on progressives. Jim Mattis, then the defense secretary, rejected the idea. Blackwater founder Erik Prince arranged for political activist James O'Keefe's conservative group Project Veritas to receive more than one round of "training in intelligence and elicitation. Project Veritas has said its activities are legal and protected by the First Amendment, and the case is scheduled to go to trial in the fall. if (document.MAX_used != ',') document.write ("&exclude=" + document.MAX_used); DAVIES: Did any of them have opinions about whether these two had done damage? This is FRESH AIR. Many conservatives have gleefully pounced on Project Veritass disclosures, including one particularly influential voice: Donald Trump Jr., the presidents eldest son. DAVIES: So he is the guy who hires this British spy, Richard Seddon, to train operatives to, you know, gather intelligence from, you know, Democrats and progressives. Why did they want to embarrass him and get him out of the government? And, you know, Seddon was out at the farm. When a muckraking news site published a story alleging private security contractor and Blackwater founder Erik Prince had offered his services to a Russian mercenary firm, the connections to Wyoming were not obvious; the state was never mentioned in the piece. For instance, Princes 2014 memoir said he splits his time between homes in Virginia and Abu Dhabi, where he pursues a variety of business ventures.. For example, Rolling Stone published an investigative piece in October, The New York Times broke the news of Princes potential run on Oct. 8, 2017, in another interview with Breitbart a few days later, identified the site as the Prince ranch in a 2019 article, asserting Prince participated in a plan to dampen turnout among Black voters, Powered by Creative Circle Media Solutions. He owns a home on a lot adjoining his familys Double E Ranch in Wapiti. Is that what these interviews were about? if( width > 480 ){ In particular, you know, Sofia targeted a employee with the GAO. There's a long backstory there. DAVIES: Adam Goldman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. When does he do this, and do we know why? There was eventually litigation about that, wasn't there? In the case of the FBI, you know, they were looking for bias to see if somebody - they could get somebody to say something anti-Trump, which, of course, fit the theme at the time because, you know, these infamous text messages between these two FBI officials who had worked on the Russia investigation - the FBI's Russia investigation had come out, right? And last year, I learned that Beau and Sofia had been working out of this house in Georgetown. GOLDMAN: Well, I think it was - our latest story revealed, you know, at least one person who had been working for the Democrats thought that Sofia likely might have gotten some damaging information about Democratic efforts to help, you know, moderate Republicans. Erik Prince doesn't live in the state, he's from the same party as the incumbent, Sen. John Barrasso, and he's best known for founding a private security firm, Blackwater, that was kicked out of . GOLDMAN: Richard Seddon is a former MI6 spy. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. DAVIES: Let's talk about some of the people who are behind this. 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 also seems, to me, murky. Mr. Seddon used other former Project Veritas employees to help with the Wyoming operation, including James Artherton, a British operative code-named kimchi who was involved in a Project Veritas plan targeting an editor for The New York Times in London in 2017. GOLDMAN: In some instances, they were on, you know, these social - these dating apps, right? WASHINGTON A British former spy recruited by Erik Prince, the security contractor close to the Trump administration, played a central role in a secretive effort to hire dozens . What was this about? "He's a very nice man," Prince said of Barrasso in the Breitbart interview. DAVIES: Right. It argues the article was not defamatory and the challenged statements would be protected as opinion based on disclosed facts., The dispute over jurisdiction could have a direct impact on the case. And by the way, as we began reporting this, we started learning more about Beau's connection to people. They used a code name LibertyU for their operative inside the organization, Marisa Jorge, who graduated from Liberty University in Virginia, one of the nations largest Christian colleges. var m3_u = (location.protocol=='https:'?