erik prince wyoming ranch

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 Prince, a security contractor, and ends up being director of field operations at the conservative group known as Project Veritas. DAVIES: So an active player in the Trump world. (SOUNDBITE OF BRUNO COULAIS' "SPINK AND FORCIBLE"). GOLDMAN: Yes, very wealthy and very conservative. The two men had known each other since Mr. Princes days running Blackwater, and shared an affinity for guns and the American West. He said that he did not think so. And we actually - I, you know, I - Mark and I reached out to our - one of great political reporters, Jonathan Martin, and asked him, you know. I mean, if the idea was to get inside information, which would be useful to, you know, Republicans and conservatives, did they succeed? DAVIES: So how did you come upon this couple, Beau and Sofia? There was a meeting at lunch which led to a resignation, I believe, of GOLDMAN: They targeted our editor, Dean Baquet. DAVIES: Right - Erik Prince, the security contractor who we'll talk more about. It is, instead, an entity dedicated to a specific political agenda.. Im not ashamed of the methods that we use or the recordings that we use, he said. 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. DAVIES: And then Beau and Sofia married, right? He gave the examples of Jones Creek and CMNS Systems. However, neither of those entities appear to be registered to do business in Wyoming; the only reference the Tribune could find to a company named CMNS Systems was an LLC formed in Delaware in August months after Prince filed his suit. Erik Prince decides that Project Veritas needs something new. GOLDMAN: I believe that O'Keefe has interacted with Trump. Once a small operation running on a shoestring budget, Project Veritas in recent years has had a surge in donations from both private donors and conservative foundations. It also seems, to me, murky. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross, who's off this week. But Trump would, from time to time, cite Project Veritas videos in his, you know, comments, public comments and speeches, right? That same day Oct. 9, 2017 Prince obtained a Wyomings drivers license, which he touted in another interview with Breitbart a few days later. And then as I sort of gathered - started to gather information on this, I knew this was going to be a story. GOLDMAN: That's a good question. There's an annual one, Nellie T. Ross Banquet, and I believe it's in Cheyenne every February. And, of course, that was an entree into a larger circle of prominent Democrats. It's a conservative organization. That's how you found them, and that's what raised the question? The woman was claiming she had been impregnated by the Senate candidate, thinking that The Washington Post would be so excited to get dirt about a conservative that they would publish a bogus story. So Erik Prince, the private security contractor who is an ally and avid supporter of President Trump, connects with Project Veritas, who does these videos, and then they develop this whole different operation. It is unclear how many potential donors Mr. And they will get, you know, negative information from public records. "He is not registered in Park County or [Wyoming] presently, unless he is not going by Erik Dean Prince and has changed his name," Park County Elections Deputy Pat Cole said in a Sept. 17 email; he said Prince hadn't voted in Wyoming since 2000. Mr. OKeefe and his group have taken aim at targets over the years including Planned Parenthood, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Democracy Partners, a group that consults with liberal and progressive electoral causes. DAVIES: Wow. GOLDMAN: Yes. I'm Dave Davies. They've targeted CNN. On Sept. 30, Prince personally visited the Park County Elections Office, registered and cast a general election ballot, according to the clerks office. (SOUNDBITE OF GOGOL BORDELLO'S "NOT A CRIME"). The Powell Tribune was unable to learn Princes voter history from 2002 and 2017. A local farmer was utilizing the land to grow corn and soybean crops, but the potential for the ranch was far from being realized. Later that year, Mr. The parties are currently awaiting a ruling from Judge Johnson, who could choose to allow the case to proceed in Wyoming; permit some more limited fact-gathering about the appropriate jurisdiction; transfer the case to New York; or throw it out entirely. Did it expand the number of people that they had? He did not respond to follow-up phone messages or an email. Prince grew up in Michigan, where their father made a fortune in the auto parts business. You know, was it effective? (Last week, Trump pardoned the four Blackwater guards who were convicted of crimes in connection with the killings in Baghdad.). And so, you know, I can't tell you right now it hasn't, that somebody else isn't doing this. We'll talk more about his stories on undercover operations by conservatives to infiltrate Democratic and progressive groups after a short break. We'll talk about Project Veritas in a moment. The companys principal office is listed as being at the Prince familys ranch in Wapiti, though the mailing address is a property in Virginia. And, you know, there were a whole range of people they went after. And ultimately, it did blow up in their face. He's a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. She and Mr. }else{ And then Mark Mazzetti, you know, my colleague, who just is an extraordinary journalist, we - you know, we managed to suss out what was going - we think - to a great degree what was going on in Wyoming and these other states. You know, and each time, you know, money is wired in furtherance of that crime, you know, that's also - that could be a possible count of mail fraud. One of the documents indicates that Marti Halverson, a former Wyoming state lawmaker, provided a list of people for the operatives to target. Erik Prince, Betsy DeVos's brother, is also deeply steeped in far-right militancy. You know, in this recent story that you wrote with Mark Mazzetti of the Times, you introduce us to a couple. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. And I certainly don't think he thought he was going to get dragged into this. What was going on there? And as we quoted an expert in our story, you know, if there's a sudden pattern of somebody giving money to the Democrats and they had never done that before, you know, that could also raise suspicions. One of the former spies, an ex-MI6 officer named Richard Seddon, helped run a 2017 operation to copy files and record conversations in a Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers unions in the nation. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. Previously, he covered national security for The Washington Post and worked on the investigative team at the Associated Press, where he and his colleagues revealed the New York Police Department's Muslim spying programs. Prince registered to vote in Park County back in 1992, but that registration lapsed after he failed to vote in the countys 2002 elections, according to county records. According to Prince, the tech adviser determined that the emails were not authentic.. And the operatives had to give a - you know, had to give a cover story under duress. I don't know. In a Jan. 15 order, U.S. District Court Judge Alan Johnson of Cheyenne tossed out Prince's defamation lawsuit against The Intercept. In a book published in 2018, Mr. OKeefe wrote that Mr. Trump years earlier had encouraged him to infiltrate Columbia University and obtain Mr. Obamas records. He did not mention the inquiries from the Powell Tribune about his lapsed registration that preceded his vote. DAVIES: Coming up, rock critic Ken Tucker reviews new songs by veteran artist Tom Jones, Jackson Browne and John Mayer. The emails refer to other operations, including weekly case updates, along with training activities that involved operational targeting. Project Veritas redacted specifics about those operations from the messages. I mean, we know that Erik Prince was trying to sell a plan to the Trump administration to put these - for him, in fact, to put a private, you know, army of a bunch of mercenaries in Afghanistan and sort of take over those responsibilities from the government, sort of, in some ways, replace the U.S. forces on the ground there. Prince might have approached for money for Mr. Seddons venture besides Ms. Gore. DAVIES: But Sofia was just - she was active. In 2010, Mr. O Keefe and three others pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor after admitting they entered a government building in New Orleans under false pretenses as part of a sting. - where you have people in your organization who aren't who they say they are, you know, collecting intelligence, if that's what you want to call it. McMaster. You know, a big question about the stories that you've described is, is this activity illegal, what the couple did in Wyoming, you know, presenting themselves as - dishonestly as active Democrats in order to get information? Prince recruited Mr. Seddon to join the conservative group Project Veritas to teach espionage skills to its operatives and manage its undercover operations. Princes parents, Elsa Prince and the late Edgar Prince, bought the 940-acre Double E Ranch in the Wapiti Valley in the early 1990s. It's not clear, though, if any of that was actually used in a way that thwarted anybody's candidacy or damaged their political reputation. They received training for covert operations at a ranch near Cody owned by Blackwater founder Erik Prince, where Maier's mother works as a cook. I believe he was involved in an effort to battle pirates in Somalia. 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. And he comes from a wealthy, conservative family in Michigan, right? 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After Mr. Gordon won a close Republican primary battle against Mr. Friess, the billionaire, in August 2018, Mr. Friess blamed his loss on Democrats switching parties on Election Day to vote for Mr. Gordon. DAVIES: That's a really fascinating example of the power of, you know, database reporting now because you knew they were doing the thing in Georgetown, but their campaign contributions in Wyoming have to be publicly reported. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. GOLDMAN: Beau does. So what exactly was the plan to (laughter) catch McMaster saying something he shouldn't? So, you know, this is not something I had ever done as a - you know, this is not something journalists do. DAVIES: And when we say they targeted these public officials or FBI agents, what would they do? GOLDMAN: Well, again, this is a little murky. The list included John Cox, then the director of the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services, and Scott Talbott, then the director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Well, that and - by the way, at some point - I don't know the time period. I don't know. A document that month said that Mr. Seddons operatives had identified three potential sources in the new governors administration and have begun accelerated cultivations with a view to early recruitment., Later in January, the operatives wrote that they had successfully recruited another source with a role in the new governors administration, adding that the source has agreed to provide insights, help expose corruption and assist with eventual placement of undercovers.. Two weeks later, on Oct. 14, Prince submitted a new sworn statement in his defamation case, in which he acknowledged he had not registered to vote in Wyoming in 2017. Whether any Trump administration officials or advisers to the president were involved in the operations, even tacitly, is unclear. And this photo of James O'Keefe, who's, you know, the founder of Project Veritas, firing a weapon with a silencer, apparently, at Erik Prince's ranch - were they being trained in firearms there? Efforts to locate Mr. Thomas were unsuccessful.