WASHINGTON D.C., DC — On Tuesday, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif) the chairman of the House intelligence committee made a criminal referral to the Justice Department about Erik Prince, a Holland native, the founder of the security firm Blackwater and brother to Betsy DeVos.
The referral alleges that he lied to the committee in 2017 during its probe into connections between Trump's campaign and Russia. Schiff said there is strong evidence that Prince, a supporter of Trump, "willingly misled" the intelligence committee.
"The evidence is so weighty that the Justice Department needs to consider this," Schiff said.
Prince is accused of making false statements to Congress about his meeting with a Russian banker in Jan. 2017, before President Trump's inauguration.
ABC News reports that during his testimony to the intelligence committee, Prince depicted his meeting as a chance encounter. But Schiff, after examining a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, says the investigation paints a different picture.
“We know from the Mueller report now that it was not a chance meeting, that he had preparatory materials about him before he left,” Schiff said Tuesday, according to ABC News, “He was also asked whether he was attempting to establish a backchannel for the Trump transition or campaign, which he also denied.”
Mueller's report said investigators couldn't figure out "conflicting accounts" about the meeting. The Associated Press reports that Prince told Mueller's team that he told Steve Bannon about the meeting, but Bannon said they never discussed it. Text messages between the two are missing.
An attorney for Prince, Matthew L. Schwartz, said there is nothing for the Justice Department to consider. ABC News also reports that a source close to Prince downplayed the criminal referral, saying that Congress asked "imprecise" questions during his testimony.
Prince is a former Navy SEAL, and his family is well-known in West Michigan. His father, Edgar Prince, founded Prince Automotive, which was sold to Johnson Controls in 1997.
Erik Prince used his inheritance to form the private security firm, Blackwater, in 1997. He grew it into a company that provided security teams for U.S. diplomats in Iraq during the Iraq War.
Blackwater made national headlines for a controversy in 2007 when company employees fired into a crowd at Nisour Square, Baghdad, killing 14 unarmed civilians.
Prince now heads a private equity firm after selling Blackwater—now known as Academi—to a group of investors.
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