Erik Prince Now Owes the President* a Favor. Think About That.
Doing business with the ex-Blackwater chief is bad news, and currying favor with him by pardoning his war criminal employees is doing serious business with him.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politic...nl22388149
_By Charles P. Pierce
Dec 23, 2020
washington october 02 erik prince, chairman of the prince group, llc and blackwater usa, is sworn in during a house oversight and government reform committee hearing on capitol hill october 2, 2007 in washington dc
Erik Prince is perhaps the most dangerous private citizen in the country. He created Blackwater to launder mercenary activities around the world, and then changed the company's name after some of his hirelings murdered civilians in Iraq, which we will get to in a moment.
He held clandestine meetings in out-of-the-way places on behalf of the president's campaign, and the president* named his sister, Betsy DeVos, to be Secretary of Education, a job for which she was as qualified as I would be to fly a 747, and a job in which she did very little, and all of it badly.
These are people with too much power and too much influence. On Tuesday evening, the president* did Prince a solid. From the Washington Post:
A White House statement said the pardons, on a list of 20 Trump granted with less than a month remaining in his presidency, were “broadly supported by the public,” specifically naming Fox News host Pete Hegseth and a number of conservative lawmakers. One of the contractors, Nicholas Slatten, has been serving a life sentence for first-degree murder.
Three others — Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard — were sentenced to between 12 and 15 years on manslaughter convictions. The four men, all veterans, worked for the now-defunct Blackwater Worldwide security firm, which had been contracted by the State Department to provide protection for U.S. diplomats in Iraq.
Investigators for the military and the FBI later described the shootings, in which the contractors unleashed a blaze of gunfire and grenade explosions in a busy Baghdad square, as unprovoked and unjustified.
Federal prosecutors said that many of the victims, including women and children, some with their hands in the air, “were shot inside of civilian vehicles while attempting to flee.” The incident came during a particularly dark period of the Iraq War and led to outcries in Iraq and the United States that private contractors — many of them former military personnel — were unsupervised and given unaccountable power in war zones.
The massacre in Nisour Square for which the four Blackwater guards were doing time was as bad an incident as can be found in the history of that godawful cluster of fck. A cabdriver got shot in the back. A mother and her infant son were killed, and one of the Blackwater contractors kept firing into crowds of civilians even while the other contractors begged him to stop.
But, as we have learned over time, the president* has a sweet-tooth for war criminals of one kind or another. All they have to do is to get someone to plead their case on Fox News, thereby guaranteeing the president*'s attention, and they're halfway home. One recalls the letter sent by a government prosecutor to President Richard Nixon after Nixon, partly at the behest of George Wallace, pardoned William Calley, the butcher of My Lai.
Sir: It is very difficult for me to know where to begin this letter as I am not accustomed to writing letters of protest ... I have been particularly shocked and dismayed at your decision to intervene in these proceedings in the midst of public clamor. ...
Your intervention has, in my opinion, damaged the military judicial system and lessened any respect it may have gained as a result of the proceedings. ... I would expect the President of the United States ... would stand fully behind the law of this land on a moral issue which is so clear and about which there can be no compromise.
The pardons to people who worked for him, probably doled out to keep himself out of jail, don't shock me. After all, this is the second Republican administration in which Bill Barr worked as attorney general that ended with pardons in order to protect the president*'s hindquarters.
We all knew these were coming, just as we know a boatload of others are coming as well. But the Blackwater pardons are a different shade of equine. I am not afflicted with paranoid fantasies about militias coming to the president*'s defense as he chains himself to the Resolute desk, but doing business with Erik Prince is bad news, and currying favor with him by pardoning his war criminal employees is doing serious business with him. As the prosecutor wrote to Nixon:
You have subjected a judicial system of this country to the criticism that it is subject to political influence, when it is a fundamental precept of our judicial system that the legal processes of this country must be kept free from any outside influences. What will be the impact of your decision upon the future trials, particularly those within the military.
Erik Prince owes the president* a favor. Ponder that. What’s a minor demon to do when the Devil himself comes to collect?
Doing business with the ex-Blackwater chief is bad news, and currying favor with him by pardoning his war criminal employees is doing serious business with him.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politic...nl22388149
_By Charles P. Pierce
Dec 23, 2020
washington october 02 erik prince, chairman of the prince group, llc and blackwater usa, is sworn in during a house oversight and government reform committee hearing on capitol hill october 2, 2007 in washington dc
Erik Prince is perhaps the most dangerous private citizen in the country. He created Blackwater to launder mercenary activities around the world, and then changed the company's name after some of his hirelings murdered civilians in Iraq, which we will get to in a moment.
He held clandestine meetings in out-of-the-way places on behalf of the president's campaign, and the president* named his sister, Betsy DeVos, to be Secretary of Education, a job for which she was as qualified as I would be to fly a 747, and a job in which she did very little, and all of it badly.
These are people with too much power and too much influence. On Tuesday evening, the president* did Prince a solid. From the Washington Post:
A White House statement said the pardons, on a list of 20 Trump granted with less than a month remaining in his presidency, were “broadly supported by the public,” specifically naming Fox News host Pete Hegseth and a number of conservative lawmakers. One of the contractors, Nicholas Slatten, has been serving a life sentence for first-degree murder.
Three others — Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard — were sentenced to between 12 and 15 years on manslaughter convictions. The four men, all veterans, worked for the now-defunct Blackwater Worldwide security firm, which had been contracted by the State Department to provide protection for U.S. diplomats in Iraq.
Investigators for the military and the FBI later described the shootings, in which the contractors unleashed a blaze of gunfire and grenade explosions in a busy Baghdad square, as unprovoked and unjustified.
Federal prosecutors said that many of the victims, including women and children, some with their hands in the air, “were shot inside of civilian vehicles while attempting to flee.” The incident came during a particularly dark period of the Iraq War and led to outcries in Iraq and the United States that private contractors — many of them former military personnel — were unsupervised and given unaccountable power in war zones.
The massacre in Nisour Square for which the four Blackwater guards were doing time was as bad an incident as can be found in the history of that godawful cluster of fck. A cabdriver got shot in the back. A mother and her infant son were killed, and one of the Blackwater contractors kept firing into crowds of civilians even while the other contractors begged him to stop.
But, as we have learned over time, the president* has a sweet-tooth for war criminals of one kind or another. All they have to do is to get someone to plead their case on Fox News, thereby guaranteeing the president*'s attention, and they're halfway home. One recalls the letter sent by a government prosecutor to President Richard Nixon after Nixon, partly at the behest of George Wallace, pardoned William Calley, the butcher of My Lai.
Sir: It is very difficult for me to know where to begin this letter as I am not accustomed to writing letters of protest ... I have been particularly shocked and dismayed at your decision to intervene in these proceedings in the midst of public clamor. ...
Your intervention has, in my opinion, damaged the military judicial system and lessened any respect it may have gained as a result of the proceedings. ... I would expect the President of the United States ... would stand fully behind the law of this land on a moral issue which is so clear and about which there can be no compromise.
The pardons to people who worked for him, probably doled out to keep himself out of jail, don't shock me. After all, this is the second Republican administration in which Bill Barr worked as attorney general that ended with pardons in order to protect the president*'s hindquarters.
We all knew these were coming, just as we know a boatload of others are coming as well. But the Blackwater pardons are a different shade of equine. I am not afflicted with paranoid fantasies about militias coming to the president*'s defense as he chains himself to the Resolute desk, but doing business with Erik Prince is bad news, and currying favor with him by pardoning his war criminal employees is doing serious business with him. As the prosecutor wrote to Nixon:
You have subjected a judicial system of this country to the criticism that it is subject to political influence, when it is a fundamental precept of our judicial system that the legal processes of this country must be kept free from any outside influences. What will be the impact of your decision upon the future trials, particularly those within the military.
Erik Prince owes the president* a favor. Ponder that. What’s a minor demon to do when the Devil himself comes to collect?
