The Prince Of Darkness Strikes Back

America's favorite mercenary Bond villain, Erik Prince, has had his latest evil scheme exposed by the NY Times. Prince apparently was using his conservative connections to his sister Betsy DeVos, Trump's former Education Secretary, to raise money for a secret intel operation to spy on Trump's political enemies.

During the summer of 2018, as Richard Seddon, a former British spy, was trying to launch a new venture to use undercover agents to infiltrate progressive groups, Democratic campaigns and other opponents of President Donald J. Trump, he turned for help to a longtime friend and former colleague: Erik Prince, the private military contractor.

Mr. Prince took on the role of celebrity pitchman, according to interviews and documents, raising money for Mr. Seddon’s spying operation, which was aimed at gathering dirt that could discredit politicians and activists in several states. After Mr. Prince and Mr. Seddon met in August 2018 with Susan Gore, a Wyoming heiress to the Gore-Tex fortune, Ms. Gore became the project’s main benefactor.

Mr. Prince’s role in the effort, which has not been previously disclosed, sheds further light on how a group of ultraconservative Republicans employed spycraft to try to manipulate the American political landscape. Mr. Prince — a former C.I.A. contractor who is best known as the founder of the private military firm Blackwater and whose sister, Betsy DeVos, was Mr. Trump’s education secretary — has drawn scrutiny over the years for Blackwater’s record of violence around the world and his subsequent ventures training and arming foreign forces.

His willingness to support Mr. Seddon’s operation is fresh evidence of his engagement in political espionage projects at home during a period when he was an informal adviser to Trump administration officials.

Mr. Seddon’s recruitment of Mr. Prince to help him secure funding is just one of the new details about Mr. Seddon’s operation revealed in documents obtained by The Times and interviews with people familiar with his plans. They provide additional insight into the ambition of the operation to use undercover operatives to target Republicans seen as insufficiently conservative, as well as to, as one document describes it, “research, penetrate and infiltrate the radical left networks.”

The Times previously reported that, in 2016 and 2017, Mr. Prince recruited Mr. Seddon to join the conservative group Project Veritas to teach espionage skills to its operatives and manage its undercover operations. Mr. Prince also allowed Project Veritas to use his family’s Wyoming ranch for training. Mr. Seddon launched his privately funded spying effort after leaving Project Veritas in 2018.

It is unclear how many potential donors Mr. Prince might have approached for money for Mr. Seddon’s venture besides Ms. Gore. Separately, Ms. Gore unsuccessfully tried to raise money for the project from Foster Friess, a billionaire Wyoming businessman, during a January 2019 meeting, three people said.

During the 2018 meeting with Ms. Gore, according to one person familiar with it, Mr. Prince and Mr. Seddon said the goal of the private spying operation was to gather dirt both on Democrats and “RINOs” — slang in conservative circles for “Republicans in name only.” The plan was to begin in Wyoming, they said, and expand operations from there.

Over two years, Mr. Seddon’s undercover operatives also developed networks in Colorado and Arizona, and made thousands of dollars in campaign donations posing as Democrats, both to the Democratic National Committee and individual campaigns. Funneling money surreptitiously to campaigns through other donors — known as straw man donations — would violate federal campaign finance laws.

Mr. Prince is separately under investigation by the Justice Department on unrelated matters, according to people familiar with the case. The scope of that investigation is unclear.

 

The DoJ has been a little busy investigating Prince's ties to Trump's illegal Saudi and UAE donors having already nabbed George Nader, the Lebanese fixer behind that little deal.  But this is yet more campaign finance felony level stuff, and Prince needs to be spending a couple of decades in a box somewhere looking forward to pudding night.

Last Call For Trump Gets Schooled

California calls the Trump regime's cards on cutting federal funding to schools that do not open classrooms for in-person teaching, as both Los Angeles and San Diego school districts say they will go to online only courses this fall.

California’s two largest public school districts said Monday that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers.

The Los Angeles and San Diego unified school districts, which together enroll some 825,000 students, are the largest so far in the country to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August.

More than a third of California’s coronavirus cases are in Los Angeles County, and San Diego County has had 18 community outbreaks over the past week, more than double the state’s acceptable threshold.

“There’s a public health imperative to keep schools from becoming a petri dish,” said Austin Beutner, the school superintendent in Los Angeles.

The joint announcement came as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos continued to press the Trump administration’s case to quickly reopen public schools, not only for students’ social and emotional development, but also to allow parents to return to work fully.

In television appearances over the weekend, she downplayed both the virus and the school reopening guidelines issued by the administration’s own public health officials. “I think the go-to needs to be kids in school, in person, in the classroom, because we know for most kids, that’s the best environment for them,” Ms. DeVos said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

She also reiterated the administration’s stance that guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deeming in-person classes the “highest risk” option were not mandatory. President Trump threatened last week to cut off federal funding to schools that did not reopen their campuses.

The recommendations from the president and Ms. DeVos have been disputed by many public health officials and teachers. On Friday, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association and AASA, the School Superintendents Association issued a statement saying that reopening recommendations should be “based on evidence, not politics.”

The groups added that “we should leave it to health experts to tell us when the time is best to open up school buildings, and listen to educators and administrators to shape how we do it.”

In the Los Angeles and San Diego districts’ joint statement, they noted that research is incomplete and recommendations have been contradictory.

But “one fact is clear,” the statement said. “Those countries that have managed to safely reopen schools have done so with declining infection rates and on-demand testing available. California has neither. The skyrocketing infection rates of the past few weeks make it clear the pandemic is not under control.”

The bigger problem is that COVID-19 is spreading in 48 of 50 states right now, and New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts are all getting close to reversing that progress.  Only Maine and New Hampshire are seeing fewer cases right now.

We'll see if Trump and DeVos move to punish school districts, but I doubt they will, hell I doubt they even can, legally.

Stay tuned.

Florida Goes Super-Viral

Florida is now heading directly for a NYC March/April scenario where tens of thousands of daily infections lead to thousands of deaths, and several other states will soon follow.

Florida on Sunday reported a record 15,300 new coronavirus cases, the most by any state in a single day since the pandemic reached the United States.

The staggering number was the result of both increased testing and widespread community transmission that has affected the state’s population centers as well as its rural areas. It shattered the previous highs of 11,694 reported by California last week and 11,571 reported by New York on April 15.

Florida is set to hold the Republican National Convention in Jacksonville next month and has ordered schools to reopen five days a week.

Here are some significant developments:

President Trump on Saturday wore a mask in public for the first time, while visiting wounded service members and health-care workers at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Trump has previously shown disdain toward face coverings amid the coronavirus pandemic and refused to wear them. 

Louisiana’s Democratic governor announced a new requirement that most people wear a mask in public. The state’s Republican lawmakers have opposed coronavirus restrictions. 

Walt Disney World in Orlando reopened after having been shuttered for nearly four months, even as Florida continued to report record infections. Testing supplies in the state are running low, and some big labs are taking several days to return results, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said at a news conference. He partly attributed the backlog to testing many asymptomatic people.
Shortly before Florida announced the new cases, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made the rounds on Sunday news talk shows, where she continued to press schools to reopen even as fresh evidence emerged that the United States was failing to control new waves of infection and death.

In an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union,” DeVos said she would like to see closed schools be the “exception” rather than the norm. “The goal needs to be that kids are learning, full-time, this fall,” she said. “Kids need to get back in the classroom.”

DeVos added on “Fox News Sunday” that the Trump administration was looking at “all the options” for pulling federal funding from schools that don’t open in the fall. “American investment in education is a promise to students and their families,” she said. “If schools aren’t going to reopen … they shouldn’t get the funds.”

So we're right back to where we were around Easter: not enough testing supplies, no political appetite for a lockdown until  it's too late, and a Trump regime actively encouraging more infections and deaths so that the economic numbers don't get worse heading into the election.

Nearly 140,000 Americans have already died from this pandemic, and we could easily see another 140,000 more before the end of the year, and most likely a lot more.

I expect the death toll in Florida will eclipse that of New York by December 31.

Oh, and Texas isn't far behind, either.

Indepen-Dunce Week: It's About The Kids, See

House GOP minority leader Kevin McCarthy takes to USA Today to sell the Republican priority of legal immunity to COVID-19 lawsuits for businesses by using America's schoolchildren as bargaining chips.

The economic shutdown has transformed many American households into makeshift day cares, middle school classrooms and summer camps. Parents have had to take on the roles of teachers and coaches while trying to manage full-time jobs. Now, as we look to reopen parts of the economy, those same parents are facing limited to zero options for child care.

Under COVID-19 orders, 50% of providers recently surveyed reported their center was completely closed, and most of the providers who did remain open were operating at less than 25% capacity. And 1 in 3 jobs in child day care centers went away, likely for good. Additionally, many schools will reopen this fall with staggered or part-time schedules and at least 60 private schools have permanently closed, displacing more than 8,000 students.

We now see a looming crisis for schools and child care. If it's left unaddressed, it will exacerbate the economic crisis caused by the pandemic by preventing parents across the country from returning to work, and continue to widen the socioeconomic gap.

There is an important role for Congress to play in alleviating the stress on our families. We should begin by addressing the shortage of child care options by working to keep existing providers in business and encouraging new child care providers, including home-based providers, to start up in as safe and healthy a way as possible. Any additional financial relief considered by Congress to businesses to aid in the economic recovery should prioritize child care providers and schools.

Small home-based providers should be treated like start-ups and given small business support, including access to regional networks, to help improve quality and access to group purchasing power. This will also help providers with recruitment and professional development of the workforce, for both new and returning employees. Many of these businesses are owner-operated, women and minority owned businesses. Helping them launch and setting them up for success could be a win-win in aiding the recovery.

Again, this is exactly what Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have been proposing for over two months now, and Senate Republicans have been blocking for over two months now.  So what's the catch?

Next paragraph, please.

A part of helping schools and child care centers confidently reopen will involve providing liability protections against frivolous lawsuits. COVID-19 related lawsuits against businesses (including child care providers as well as K-12 schools), when good-faith efforts to follow best health practices and recommendations are followed, are an existential threat to companies large and small.

K-12 schools across the country have asked Congress to provide meaningful, targeted protection from frivolous claims and lawsuits resulting from possible exposure to the coronavirus on school facilities and property. A wave of such lawsuits threatens to prevent child care providers and schools from reopening, which would undermine the economic and social recovery of our country.

And there it is.

Republicans are already making plans to force schools to reopen this fall regardless of safety. Florida is already forcing all schools to reopen next month and Texas is doing the same thing. Nationally, the Trump regime says it will not allow public schools to reopen on partial or staggered schedules, and that distance learning will not be accepted.

The CDC's guidance for schools recommends that students and teachers wear masks “as feasible,” spread out desks, stagger schedules, eat meals in classrooms instead of the cafeteria, and add physical barriers between bathroom sinks.

Some schools have announced plans to bring students back for only a few days a week, an option that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Tuesday said was unacceptable.

“It’s clear that our nations schools must fully reopen and fully operate this school year. Anything short of that robs students, not to mention taxpayers, of their future,” DeVos said.

During a call with governors, DeVos slammed plans by Virginia's Fairfax County Public Schools to have families decide between fully remote instruction or two days a week at school. “A choice of two days per week in the classroom is not a choice at all," DeVos said, according to audio of the call obtained by The Associated Press.

DeVos also criticized many schools' attempts at distance education after the pandemic prompted them to move classes online last spring. She said she was disappointed in schools that “didn’t figure out how to serve students or who just gave up and didn’t try.”

The same thing can’t happen again this fall, she said, urging governors to play a role in getting schools to reopen.

They gave up because of school funding cuts across the board by Republicans.  By the way, Cincinnati plans to open schools in the fall on a staggered schedule. Mayor Cranley says he disagrees with the plan and says schools have no choice but to open as normal.

Finally, Donald Trump made it clear today that he plans to cut all federal funding for any school district, college, or university that doesn't open this fall.

Trump on Wednesday morning tweeted, "In Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and many other countries, SCHOOLS ARE OPEN WITH NO PROBLEMS. The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if U.S. schools open before the November Election, but is important for the children & families. May cut off funding if not open!" 

On Tuesday night, DeVos said she is “very seriously” looking at withholding federal funds from schools that don't open their doors this fall.

“Kids have got to continue learning,” she told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson during an interview late Tuesday. “Schools have got to open up, there has got to be concerted effort to address the needs of all kids and adults who are fear mongering and making excuses simply have got to stop doing it and turn their attention on what is right for students and for their families.” 

Federal funding for K-12 schools includes billions for low-income schools and special education. But education leaders immediately questioned how the administration would propose to hold back those funds or others. 

"To be clear: there is no mechanism by which they can decide to magically withhold funding without Congressional authorization," tweeted Sasha Pudelski, advocacy director for AASA, The School Superintendents Association.

This is going to be the big fight over the next several weeks across the country, and it's going to play out against a backdrop of a massive spike in cases and very soon a massive spike in COVID-19 deaths.  Kids are going to be Republican pawns, put in the direct path of a pandemic that will kill thousands and cripple tens, maybe hundreds of thousands more. And teachers, educators, and school staff?  When they start dropping dead in classrooms?

What then?  "Find a way to open as normal or lose all funding, you have six weeks."

Keep an eye on this. The future of public education in America is now very much in doubt.

And that's exactly what Republicans want.

The end of public education.

Egghead Week: Methinks They Doth Protest Too Much

The protests are beginning in earnest now.

Oh, not of people angry at Trump's failures and that nearly 30,000 Americans have died so far.

This is America, the country that elected Trump in the first place.

No, these protests are of people angry at social distancing orders that save lives.

A crowd of protesters organized by a conservative group descended on Michigan's state Capitol on Wednesday to protest Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's (D) stay-at-home order during the coronavirus outbreak.

Supporters of the Michigan Conservative Coalition (MCC) urged Whitmer to reopen the state's nonessential businesses on May 1 while urging their own members to practice social distancing during the "Operation Gridlock" protest, local news radio station WWJ reported.

Video of the event posted on Twitter showed some demonstrators on the Capitol steps while others remained in their vehicles, honking loudly.

“When did one size solve everyone’s local issues?" one unidentified organizer asked WWJ. "Gov. Whitmer will put you out of business before allowing mere citizens to be responsible for their own behavior. That is madness.”

Whitmer has ordered Michigan residents to stay at home unless performing essential tasks until April 30, and has closed nonessential businesses in the state, though activists are complaining about which businesses have been allowed to stay open — as well as the de facto cancellation of Easter and Passover services.

And of course, this is about as grass roots as the Brooks Brothers riots back in Florida in 2000.

In a statement at a news conference earlier this week, the governor pointed out that the MCC is funded in large part by the family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, which is very active in Michigan conservative politics.

"This group is funded in large part by the DeVos family," she said Monday, according to WWJ. "And I think it's really inappropriate for a sitting member of the United States president's Cabinet to [be] waging political attacks on any governor."

Whitmer added: "I think that they should disavow it, and I encourage people to stay home and be safe."

That's right.

Trump's Education Secretary is funding protests in her home state in support of getting stupid people back to work so that they can die from COVID-19 for billionaires like the DeVos family.

That's where we are.

Similar protests took place in North Carolina yesterday and in Ohio on Monday, Pennsylvania is their target next week.

All of these protests taking place in battleground states that Trump needs to win of course.  Most have Democratic governors. There's a method to this madness.  Expect Wisconsin to have these soon.

The protests are already here in Kentucky.

This is WILD pic.twitter.com/j1krHMOkNP

— Joe Sonka 😐 #StayHome (@joesonka) April 15, 2020

Protestors yelling outside @GovAndyBeshear’s press room. ‘Facts over fear’ they also yell pic.twitter.com/ASfyE7Kigl

— Matt Stone (@mattstonephotog) April 15, 2020

After all, it's an honor to die for you new God, Donald Trump.

Last Call For Separation Of Church And State Department

Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, like many large universities, get grants from the federal government to develop skills employers want, in this case, language skills necessary to help the State Department and intel community's insatiable need for countries and cultures of the Middle East.  No surprise here, this has been going on since 9/11.

What's new is that the Trump regime has decided that these NC schools aren't sufficiently portraying Islam as a threat to white Christian America enough, and that teaching people about Farsi or Arabic that also actually includes sufficient cultural context of Islam in the Islamic world is a problem, so much so to the racist, Islamophobic Trump regime that they are demanding this thorough and objective portrayal of 2 billion people as "not savages" be stopped immediately or all federal funding will be cut.

The Trump administration is threatening to cut funding for a Middle East studies program run by the University of North Carolina and Duke University, arguing that it’s misusing a federal grant to advance “ideological priorities” and unfairly promote “the positive aspects of Islam” but not Christianity or Judaism. 

An Aug. 29 letter from the U.S. Education Department orders the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies to revise its offerings by Sept. 22 or risk losing future funding from a federal grant that’s awarded to dozens of universities to support foreign language instruction. The consortium received $235,000 from the grant last year, according to Education Department data. 

A statement from the UNC-Chapel Hill says the consortium “deeply values its partnership with the Department of Education” and is “committed to working with the department to provide more information about its programs.” Officials at Duke declined to comment. The Education Department declined to say if it’s examining similar programs at other schools. 

Academic freedom advocates say the government could be setting a dangerous precedent if it injects politics into funding decisions. Some said they had never heard of the Education Department asserting control over such minute details of a program’s offerings. 

“Is the government now going to judge funding programs based on the opinions of instructors or the approach of each course?” said Henry Reichman, chairman of a committee on academic freedom for the American Association of University Professors. “The odor of right wing political correctness that comes through this definitely could have a chilling effect.” 

More than a dozen universities receive National Resource Center grants for their Middle East programs, including Columbia, Georgetown, Yale and the University of Texas. The Duke-UNC consortium was founded in 2005 and first received the grant nearly a decade ago. 

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos ordered an investigation into the program in June after North Carolina Rep. George Holding, a Republican, complained that it hosted a taxpayer-funded conference with “severe anti-Israeli bias and anti-Semitic rhetoric.” The conference, titled “Conflict Over Gaza: People, Politics and Possibilities,” included a rapper who performed a “brazenly anti-Semitic song,” Holding said in an April 15 letter.

In a response , DeVos said she was “troubled” by Holding’s letter and would take a closer look at the consortium.

The inquiry joins a broader Education Department effort to root out anti-Semitism at U.S. universities. Speaking at a summit on the topic in July, DeVos attacked a movement to boycott Israel over its treatment of Palestinians, calling it a “pernicious threat” on college campuses.

Betsy DeVos deciding that insufficient Islamophobia equals anti-Semitic teachings should concern everybody, regardless of religion.  But it's very interesting that Antisemitism here is described solely as "being critical of Israel". 

As I keep saying, we live in dark times.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Former Blackwater founder Erik Prince is up to his neck in Trump's international pay-for-play money laundering scheme, and he blew a healthy chunk of his cover this week while talking with Al Jazeera's Mehdi Hasan.

Erik Prince, the founder of the private American security company Blackwater, has admitted to meeting with members of the Trump campaign in August 2016 after, according to a public transcript, apparently failing to disclose the gathering during his testimony in front of the House Intelligence Committee last year.

When asked by Mehdi Hasan on Al Jazeera's Head to Head programme about the August 3, 2016, Trump Tower meeting that reportedly took place between Prince, Donald Trump campaign officials, an Israeli social media specialist and an emissary for two Gulf princes, the former Blackwater CEO did not deny the meeting took place.

"We were there … to talk about Iran policy," Prince said when pressed by Hasan.

According to the New York Times, that meeting was attended by Prince, Donald Trump Jr, George Nader, a former Blackwater employee and emissary for the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Stephen Miller, then a top aide to the Trump campaign and currently a senior policy adviser to the president and Joel Zamel, whose company Psy-Group employed former Israeli intelligence operatives and specialised in social media manipulation and was reportedly contacted by Rick Gates, a top Trump campaign official, for proposals for social media manipulation to help Trump win the election.

Prince, however, apparently did not disclose information about the meeting when testifying before the House Intelligence Committee on November 30, 2017, according to a public transcript.

Prince testified under oath that he had "no official, or, really unofficial role" in the Trump campaign. He also told the House panel that he did not have any formal communications or contact with the campaign other than policy papers given to Steve Bannon, attending some fundraisers and a "yard sign".

When asked by Al Jazeera's Hasan about why he didn't then disclose the August 2016 Trump Tower meeting, Prince initially said he "disclosed any meetings, the very, very few" he had.

When pressed further by Hasan, Prince said, "I don't believe I was asked that question."

Prince later contradicted himself, saying he did tell the panel about the meeting. When asked to explain why it was not in the transcript, Prince said, "I don't know if they got the transcript wrong."

They didn't, of course.

Erik Prince committed perjury on live TV.  He was there at the Trump Tower meeting in June 2016. He helped Donald Trump arrange a major campaign money laundering scheme with the Russian, the Saudis, the UAE, and more.  He was paid off by his sister gaining control of the nation's public education system and she is gleefully destroying it.  He's as dirty as the day is long.

Lock them up.

It's Mueller Time...Around The World

A big scoop from Erin Banco at the Daily Beast: the Mueller investigation is set to indict foreign nationals from countries that tried to influence the Trump campaign, and it's a whole lot bigger than just Russia.

Over the past year, the indictments, convictions, and guilty pleas have largely been connected, in one way or another, to Russia. But now, special counsel Robert Mueller’s office is preparing to reveal to the public a different side of his investigation. In court filings that are set to drop in early 2019, prosecutors will begin to unveil Middle Eastern countries’ attempts to influence American politics, three sources familiar with this side of the probe told The Daily Beast.

In other words, the “Russia investigation” is set to go global.

While one part of the Mueller team has indicted Russian spies and troll-masters, another cadre has been spending its time focusing on how Middle Eastern countries pushed cash to Washington politicos in an attempt to sway policy under President Trump’s administration. Various witnesses affiliated with the Trump campaign have been questioned about their conversations with deeply connected individuals from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, according to people familiar with the probe. Topics in those meetings ranged from the use of social-media manipulation to help install Trump in the White House to the overthrow of the regime in Iran.

Now, according to those same sources, the Special Counsel’s Office is ready to outline what cooperating witnesses have told them about foreigners’ plans to help Trump win the presidency. Two sources with knowledge of the probe said Mueller’s team has for months discussed the possibility of issuing new charges on this side of the investigation.

“If this is going to be unveiled, this would be like the surfacing of the submarine but on the other plank which we haven’t seen,” said Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney. “I guess what Mueller has to date has turned out to be pretty rich and detailed and more than we anticipated. This could turn out to be a rich part of the overall story.”

The switch in focus comes as Mueller winds down cooperation with former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who participated in 19 interviews with the special counsel’s team. In often-heavily redacted court documents made public over the last two weeks, the Special Counsel’s Office hinted at ways in which Flynn helped with its investigation into links between Trumpworld figures and the Russian government.

But Flynn was also involved in conversations with representatives and influential individuals from other foreign governments, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Israel—encounters The Daily Beast has reported over the last several months. Flynn’s cooperation with Mueller could bring new details about the scope of the special counsel’s probe into how individuals from those countries offered not only to help Trump win the presidential election, but also how they sought to influence foreign policy in the early days of the administration.

ZVTS readers shouldn't be surprised by this, I've told you this was coming for months.  The story first surfaced in June 2017, but really gelled in March 2018.

Hey look, it's our old friend Erik Prince, Blackwater founder and brother of Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos!  If  the Times story seems familiar, that's because it should be. The CNN story that got retracted was really the other half of last year's Washington Post story from April on Prince attending this secret early January 2016 meeting with the Russians in the Seychelles.

Now we know who the UAE's broker was, George Nader...and he's cooperating with Mueller over possibly extremely illegal foreign campaign contributions to Trump. Kudos to the New York Times for putting these together.

Prince runs as a fixer for this meeting where money flows to Trump, and his sister ends up in Trump's cabinet.  Oh, and Prince gets access to the Pentagon to sell his latest mercenary war scheme just as the drums of war start up for North Korea.

Now imagine what Mueller's team knows about Nader, Prince, and DeVos, folks.  If Nader is getting a deal to talk to Mueller, the information he has is valuable to his investigation.  That means it's high-level stuff, like say, the Russians sending money to Trump's campaign through the UAE, and expecting things in return.

George Nader is the key to this side of the collusion and influence game.  He's been cooperating with Mueller for close to a year now., and yes, that includes Erik Prince's attempt to set up a Trump backchannel to Putin through the UAE.

Turns out that Robert Mueller knows all about that meeting because Nader is cooperating with Mueller's team, and that means there was far more to this January 2016 meeting than just a friendly chat.  We now know what that additional info is and what Nader is providing: it was a secret attempt at a backchannel between Trump and Putin and Nader was a witness to it all.


It also means that Prince lied to Congress straight up about the meeting when he testified.  Perjury is the kind of thing that puts you in federal prison.  Remember, Republicans impeached and attempted to remove Bill Clinton from office over his perjury.  We'll see what happens to Prince, but at this point, assume Robert Mueller has a nice box for him to live in for a while.

You, the ZVTS readers, knew about this nine months ago.  I told you then it was going to bear fruit, and it looks like the grim harvest is coming next month.

Stay tuned.

It's Mueller TIme, Con't

The Trump regime has installed its Potemkin court and believes they have won, and will coast to an easy victory in November followed by the end of the Mueller probe and with it, American democracy.  Unfortunately for them, reality is a harsh mistress.

A top Trump campaign official requested proposals in 2016 from an Israeli company to create fake online identities, to use social media manipulation and to gather intelligence to help defeat Republican primary race opponents and Hillary Clinton, according to interviews and copies of the proposals.

The Trump campaign’s interest in the work began as Russians were escalating their effort to aid Donald J. Trump. Though the Israeli company’s pitches were narrower than Moscow’s interference campaign and appear unconnected, the documents show that a senior Trump aide saw the promise of a disruption effort to swing voters in Mr. Trump’s favor.

The campaign official, Rick Gates, sought one proposal to use bogus personas to target and sway 5,000 delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention by attacking Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Mr. Trump’s main opponent at the time. Another proposal describes opposition research and “complementary intelligence activities” about Mrs. Clinton and people close to her, according to copies of the proposals obtained by The New York Times and interviews with four people involved in creating the documents.

A third proposal by the company, Psy-Group, which is staffed by former Israeli intelligence operatives, sketched out a monthslong plan to help Mr. Trump by using social media to help expose or amplify division among rival campaigns and factions. The proposals, part of what Psy-Group called “Project Rome,” used code names to identify the players — Mr. Trump was “Lion” and Mrs. Clinton was “Forest.” Mr. Cruz, who Trump campaign officials feared might lead a revolt over the Republican presidential nomination, was “Bear.”

There is no evidence that the Trump campaign acted on the proposals, and Mr. Gates ultimately was uninterested in Psy-Group’s work, a person with knowledge of the discussions said, in part because other campaign aides were developing a social media strategy. Psy-Group’s owner, Joel Zamel, did meet in August 2016 with Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Trump’s eldest son.

Investigators working for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russia’s campaign to disrupt the 2016 election and whether any Trump associates conspired, have obtained copies of the proposals and questioned Psy-Group employees, according to people familiar with those interviews.

The scope of the social media campaigns, essentially a broad effort to sow disinformation among Republican delegates and general election voters, was more extensive than the work typically done by campaign operatives to spread the candidate’s message on digital platforms. The proposal to gather information about Mrs. Clinton and her aides has elements of traditional opposition research, but it also contains cryptic language that suggests using clandestine means to build “intelligence dossiers.”

We know now that ultimately instead of going with Psy-Group that Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and Steve Bannon went with Cambridge Analytica for their social media manipulation tactics to be used on American voters in 2016.  But the real story here is that this ties Rick Gates to Zamel, and Zamel to Donald Trump Jr. as linked in the article above, and we know Zamel's Psy-Group and Bannon's Cambridge Analytica announced a partnership just after Election Day 2016.

This was the May 2018 NYT article that found Zamel met with Trump, Jr. and Erik Prince in the Seychelles, along with Saudi, Emirati, and Russian nationals to discuss a larger plan involving the 2016 election.  As I said in May:

So this brings up an excellent point.  It wasn't just Putin who wanted to see Trump win.  The Trump campaign was open for business, and Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Russia, and possibly more foreign influences knew that Trump was open to the highest bidder.  And they took them up on the offer.

So now we have the timeline more clearly:  Kushner turned Zamel down officially, but then Trump's son met with Zamel after, off the books, with Erik Prince facilitating.  Kushner couldn't be caught with this meeting on record, so Junior did the dirty work.

Zamel gets a fat partnership contract with CA.  Erik Prince's sister Betsy DeVos becomes Education Secretary, while Erik Prince himself gets to pitch privatizing Trump's war in Afghanistan (and still is.)  The Saudis, Emiratis, and Russians get the access they want to the White House.

And Mueller knows it all.

Clock's ticking...

Last Call For It's Mueller Time

Time to check in with the Mueller probe as the investigation continues to close in on Donald Trump, and while last week I mentioned that former Blackwater CEO (and brother of current Education Secretary Betsy DeVos) Erik Prince is now cooperating with Mueller on Prince's role brokering meeting between the Trump campaign and foreign interests, it seems this Prince is now singing as prolifically as his late musical namesake.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is digging deeper into Trump ally and Blackwater founder Erik Prince, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter.

Prince, America’s most famous private military contractor, acknowledged last week that he “cooperated” with Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election after falling under scrutiny amid questions about an alleged effort to establish a backchannel between the Trump administration and the Kremlin, something Prince has vehemently denied.

ABC News has since learned that Mueller is also reviewing Prince’s communications. In response to questions from ABC News, a spokesperson for Prince released a statement noting that Prince has provided Mueller with “total access to his phone and computer.” 

“As Mr. Prince told the Daily Beast he has spoken voluntarily with Congress and also cooperated completely with the Special Counsel’s investigation, including by providing them total access to his phones and computer,” the spokesperson said. “Mr. Prince has a lot of opinions about the various investigations, but there is no question that they are important and serious, and so Mr. Prince will keep his opinions to himself for now and to let the investigators do their work. All we will add is that much of the reporting and speculation about Mr. Prince in the media is inaccurate, and we are confident that when the investigators have finished their work, we will be able to put these distractions to the side.”

Prince knows full well what Mueller and his team are capable of wringing out of him, and those meetings in the Seychelles are looking more and more like serious pay-for-play action with foreign powers.  That may be cool when you buy and sell wars all over the globe, but being, say, frozen out of Pentagon contracts for being a felon is bad business.

Prince also isn't taking the fall for Trump, and he knows he has enough to be useful to Mueller in exchange for a deal.Dying on Trump's hill isn't profitable, after all.  He wants this done with ASAP so he can get back to being, you know a respectable international arms dealer and James Bond villain.

He also figures he's smart enough to get out of this mess, and that Trump isn't.  He's more than likely correct on both accounts.

We'll see.

Heavens To Betsy, This Is Corrupt

You can make the argument that Trump EPA head Scott Pruitt is the most corrupt member of the Trump regime, at least from a personal perspective, and that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's corruption may be the most far-reaching, stretching all the way from Alaska to Puerto Rico and back.

But there's little argument that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos's corruption has done the most damage to America because of her massive undermining of America's schools and colleges and her relentless efforts to trap millions of young people in a for-profit $1.5 trillion-plus student loan system that threatens to wreck America's entire economy for decades.

Members of a special team at the Education Department that had been investigating widespread abuses by for-profit colleges have been marginalized, reassigned or instructed to focus on other matters, according to current and former employees.

The unwinding of the team has effectively killed investigations into possibly fraudulent activities at several large for-profit colleges where top hires of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, had previously worked.

During the final months of the Obama administration, the team had expanded to include a dozen or so lawyers and investigators who were looking into advertising, recruitment practices and job placement claims at several institutions, including DeVry Education Group.

The investigation into DeVry ground to a halt early last year. Later, in the summer, Ms. DeVos named Julian Schmoke, a former dean at DeVry, as the team’s new supervisor.

Now only three employees work on the team, and their mission has been scaled back to focus on processing student loan forgiveness applications and looking at smaller compliance cases, said the current and former employees, including former members of the team, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation from the department.

In addition to DeVry, now known as Adtalem Global Education, investigations into Bridgepoint Education and Career Education Corporation, which also operate large for-profit colleges, went dark.

And of course let's not forget the investigation into Trump University, where the corruption goes all the way to the top.  It's obnoxious and severely damaging to the future of our country.  With people under 35 saddled with a trillion and a half dollars in debt, and Gen X still reeling from the Great Recession, how does anyone in my generation or younger afford a house these days?

Of course, working as intended I guess.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

Don't look now, but the Erik Prince/George Nader angle of the Trump collusion story just got a whole lot bigger with this astonishing piece from Erin Banco at NJ.com.

Special counsel Robert Mueller's team is examining a series of previously unreported meetings that took place in 2017 in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, as part of its broader investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, according to two sources briefed on the investigation.

The sources said several of those meetings took place around the same time as another meeting in the Seychelles between Erik Prince, founder of the security company Blackwater, Kirill Dmitriev, the director of one of Russia's sovereign wealth funds, and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the effective ruler of the United Arab Emirates (also known as "MBZ"). Details of that earlier meetingwere first reported by the Washington Post last year.

The sources requested to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

The inquiry into the meetings in the Seychelles suggests there is growing interest on the Mueller team in whether foreign financing, specifically from Gulf states, has influenced President Trump and his administration.

The New York Times reported in March that Mueller's team questioned George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who helped broker the Seychelles meeting, about whether the Emiratis attempted to buy political influence in the White House.

That's what we knew: that Nadler and the Emiratis were the brokers and Erik Prince was Trump's point man, and that as a result Prince's sister, Betsy DeVos, got the position of Trump's Secretary of Education.  Here's what we didn't know:

Documents obtained by this reporter, and interviews with those familiar with the probe, suggest Mueller is also looking at other foreign influencers, including individuals from Russia and from Saudi Arabia.

The meetings in the Seychelles are a key component of Mueller's investigation, sources familiar with the investigation said. The meetings connect powerful players from Russia, the U.S., the UAE and Saudi Arabia across the political, financial and defense worlds. The details of what was discussed in the meetings in January and in the following months, however, are scarce.

Flight records and financial documents obtained by this reporter over twelve months, as well as interviews with parliamentary and aviation officials in the Seychelles, paint a scene out of a Hollywood thriller.

Wealthy and politically-connected individuals from across the globe -- from Russia, France, Saudi Arabia and South Africa -- land in the Seychelles for meetings that take place as a part of a larger gathering hosted by MBZ, according to an individual briefed on the matter, who also requested anonymity. Many of them fly in on private jets and several do not clear customs. Some check into the Four Seasons Hotel while others arrive and stay on their yachts.

Individuals connected to the Saudi financial system, including the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency and the Arab National Bank, flew into the island the second week of January 2017, as did an aircraft purportedly owned by the former deputy minister of defense, Prince Khaled bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz, fight records show. Other individuals on those aircraft held passports from Egypt and Singapore.

Dmitriev flew into the Seychelles Jan. 11, 2017 with his wife Natalia Popova and another woman with the last name Boldovskaia. Six other Russian individuals flew to the island just a few days after Dmitriev. The aircraft's ownership is unclear but it flew between Russia, Geneva and Cyprus in 2017.

Others on the island included Alexander Mashkevitch, an alleged financier of Bayrock, an investment vehicle linked to Trump, and Sheikh Abdulrahman Khalid BinMahfouz, according to flight records. BinMahfouz's father, before his death, was a billionaire and the former chairman of Saudi Arabia's first private bank.

Nader travelled to Seychelles Jan. 7, 2017 and again on March 24 on an aircraft with the tail number VP-CZA, flight records show. The aircraft is registered to Gryphon Asset Management, an aviation consulting company based out of Dubai.

Prince and Nader were putting together a series of meetings to sell the Trump regime to the highest bidder, with some of the richest people on Earth in the hunt.  These are the people Trump owes allegiance to.  It's not just Putin, but multiple people from multiple countries.

And Mueller knows it all, guys.  With the raid on Cohen, Trump is 100% exposed on this.  The scope and size involved in this influence peddling will be utterly shocking.

But will Mueller be allowed to continue at this point?  The NY Times is reporting that Trump not only tried to fire Mueller in June, but again told his advisers that Mueller had to go last December when the Mueller subpoenas of Trump-related finances from Germany's Deutsche Bank became known.

In early December, President Trump, furious over news reports about a new round of subpoenas from the office of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, told advisers in no uncertain terms that Mr. Mueller’s investigation had to be shut down.

The president’s anger was fueled by reports that the subpoenas were for obtaining information about his business dealings with Deutsche Bank, according to interviews with eight White House officials, people close to the president and others familiar with the episode. To Mr. Trump, the subpoenas suggested that Mr. Mueller had expanded the investigation in a way that crossed the “red line” he had set last year in an interview with The New York Times.

In the hours that followed Mr. Trump’s initial anger over the Deutsche Bank reports, his lawyers and advisers worked quickly to learn about the subpoenas, and ultimately were told by Mr. Mueller’s office that the reports were not accurate, leading the president to back down.

Mr. Trump’s quick conclusion that the erroneous news reports warranted firing Mr. Mueller is also an insight into Mr. Trump’s state of mind about the special counsel. Despite assurances from leading Republicans like Speaker Paul D. Ryan that the president has not thought about firing Mr. Mueller, the December episode was the second time Mr. Trump is now known to have considered taking that step. The other instance was in June, when the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, threatened to quit unless Mr. Trump stopped trying to get him to fire Mr. Mueller.

So Trump lost his marbles over this because he thought Mueller might have had the goods on him in December.  What happens now that Trump's lawyer has been raided and Trump is really, truly screwed?  Obstruction of justice doesn't matter if nobody's left to hold Trump accountable.

The Saturday Night Massacre may be on.

President Donald Trump is considering firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, multiple people familiar with the discussions tell CNN, a move that has gained urgency following the raid of the office of the President's personal lawyer. 

Such an action could potentially further Trump's goal of trying to put greater limits on special counsel Robert Mueller. 

This is one of several options -- including going so far as to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions -- Trump is weighing in the aftermath of the FBI's decision Monday to raid the office of Michael Cohen, the President's personal lawyer and longtime confidant. 

Officials say if Trump acts, Rosenstein is his most likely target, but it's unclear whether even such a dramatic firing like this would be enough to satisfy the President. 

Trump has long been angry at top Justice Department officials, who he feels have not done enough to protect him from Mueller's ongoing probe. But two sources said the raid could mark a tipping point that would prompt the President to take more aggressive action against the special counsel.

All indications are that he's off his rocker at this point.  If Trump has somebody in mind to replace Rosenstein and/or Sessions, nobody knows.  Either one could fire Mueller, or simply greatly curtail the investigation.  That could maybe satisfy Trump.  I bet it won't.

Don't count on Republicans in Congress to lift a finger to protect Mueller either. They'll say that Trump won't fire him right up until it happens, then say he always had the right to do it.  The White House is already taking that stance, and Trump is meeting with GOP leaders later today to make that clear.

Stay tuned.  We're at the breaking point, and something's going to give way, but keep in mind should Mueller actually be fired, he does have the option to make public everything he's found so far.

At this point, that might be what stays Trump's hand.

Last Call For Betsy Flunks The Test

Trump Regime Education Secretary Betsy DeVos did not acquit herself well on 60 Minutes tonight when it came to defending the Trump approach to "school choice" in her home state of Michigan.

Lesley Stahl: Why take away money from that school that's not working, to bring them up to a level where they are-- that school is working?

Betsy DeVos: Well, we should be funding and investing in students, not in school-- school buildings, not in institutions, not in systems.

Lesley Stahl: Okay. But what about the kids who are back at the school that's not working? What about those kids?

Betsy DeVos: Well, in places where there have been-- where there is-- a lot of choice that's been introduced-- Florida, for example, the-- studies show that when there's a large number of students that opt to go to a different school or different schools, the traditional public schools actually-- the results get better, as well.

Lesley Stahl: Now, has that happened in Michigan? We're in Michigan. This is your home state.

Betsy DeVos: Michi--Yes, well, there's lots of great options and choices for students here.

Lesley Stahl: Have the public schools in Michigan gotten better?

Betsy DeVos: I don't know. Overall, I-- I can't say overall that they have all gotten better.

Lesley Stahl: The whole state is not doing well.

Betsy DeVos: Well, there are certainly lots of pockets where this-- the students are doing well and--

Lesley Stahl: No, but your argument that if you take funds away that the schools will get better, is not working in Michigan where you had a huge impact and influence over the direction of the school system here.

Betsy DeVos: I hesitate to talk about all schools in general because schools are made up of individual students attending them.

Lesley Stahl: The public schools here are doing worse than they did.

Betsy DeVos: Michigan schools need to do better. There is no doubt about it.

Lesley Stahl: Have you seen the really bad schools? Maybe try to figure out what they're doing?

Betsy DeVos: I have not-- I have not-- I have not intentionally visited schools that are underperforming.

Lesley Stahl: Maybe you should.

Betsy DeVos: Maybe I should. Yes.

DeVos is the only Cabinet secretary protected by a squad of U.S. Marshals because she's gotten death threats. She's frequently met by protesters who accuse her of pushing an elitist agenda.

She often manages to offend, as when she called historically black colleges and universities "pioneers" of "school choice" – as though they had a choice.

At this commencement speech at Bethune-Cookman University, students booed and turned their backs to her.

Lesley Stahl: Why have you become, people say, the most hated Cabinet secretary?

Betsy DeVos: I'm not so sure exactly how that happened. But I think there are a lot of really powerful forces allied against change.

Lesley Stahl: Does it hurt?

Betsy DeVos: Sometimes it does. Sometimes it does. Again, I think-- I think--

Lesley Stahl: Do you ever say--

Betsy DeVos: --I'm more misunderstood than anything.

Of all the Trump cabinet secretaries, DeVos is second only to Attorney General Jeff Sessions in the sheer amount of damage she's doing to the country, particularly to people of color.  Naturally if given a choice, people want to send their kids to the best schools, but all DeVos's plan is doing is taking money out of public schools and putting it in the pockets of "education reform" companies, opening charter schools across the country that are nothing but huge scams.

Oh, and there's the issue of DeVos's brother, Erik Prince, and his involvement in Trump's foreign fundraising and how DeVos ended up with this job when she's clearly unqualified for it.

There's no way DeVos should have this job, but she does.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

So remember back in June when CNN fired three journalists over a retracted article that stated that a Russian investment fund with ties to Trumpies was being investigated?  The CNN reporters were fired over not having solid information, but Trump screamed FAKE NEWS for weeks:

An internal investigation by CNN management found that some standard editorial processes were not followed when the article was published, people briefed on the results of the investigation said. 

The story, which reported that Congress was investigating a "Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials," cited a single anonymous source. 

These types of stories are typically reviewed by several departments within CNN -- including fact-checkers, journalism standards experts and lawyers -- before publication.
This breakdown in editorial workflow disturbed the CNN executives who learned about it. 

In a staff meeting Monday afternoon, investigative unit members were told that the retraction did not mean the facts of the story were necessarily wrong. Rather, it meant that "the story wasn't solid enough to publish as-is," one of the people briefed on the investigation said. 

The reporting about the Russian investment fund and Trump officials was not relayed on CNN's television channels, but it was published on the web and shared on social media.

Fast forward to this week, where the New York Times does get the CNN story correct and gives a whole lot more to add.

An adviser to the United Arab Emirates with ties to current and former aides to President Trump is cooperating with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and gave testimony last week to a grand jury, according to two people familiar with the matter. 

Mr. Mueller appears to be examining the influence of foreign money on Mr. Trump’s political activities and has asked witnesses about the possibility that the adviser, George Nader, funneled money from the Emirates to the president’s political efforts. It is illegal for foreign entities to contribute to campaigns or for Americans to knowingly accept foreign money for political races.

Mr. Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who advises Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the effective ruler of the Emirates, also attended a January 2017 meeting in the Seychelles that Mr. Mueller’s investigators have examined. The meeting, convened by the crown prince, brought together a Russian investor close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia with Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and an informal adviser to Mr. Trump’s team during the presidential transition, according to three people familiar with the meeting. 

Mr. Nader’s cooperation in the special counsel’s investigation could prompt new legal risks for the Trump administration, and Mr. Nader’s presence at the Seychelles meeting appears to connect him to the primary focus of Mr. Mueller’s investigation: examining Russian interference during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Mr. Nader represented the crown prince in the three-way conversation in the Seychelles, at a hotel overlooking in the Indian Ocean, in the days before Mr. Trump took office. At the meeting, Emirati officials believed Mr. Prince was speaking for the Trump transition team, and a Russian fund manager, Kirill Dmitriev, represented Mr. Putin, according to several people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Nader, who grew close later to several advisers in the Trump White House, had once worked as a consultant to Blackwater, a private security firm now known as Academi. Mr. Nader introduced his former employer to the Russian.

Hey look, it's our old friend Erik Prince, Blackwater founder and brother of Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos!  If  the Times story seems familiar, that's because it should be. The CNN story that got retracted was really the other half of last year's Washington Post story from April on Prince attending this secret early January 2016 meeting with the Russians in the Seychelles.

Now we know who the UAE's broker was, George Nader...and he's cooperating with Mueller over possibly extremely illegal foreign campaign contributions to Trump. Kudos to the New York Times for putting these together.

Prince runs as a fixer for this meeting where money flows to Trump, and his sister ends up in Trump's cabinet.  Oh, and Prince gets access to the Pentagon to sell his latest mercenary war scheme just as the drums of war start up for North Korea.

Now imagine what Mueller's team knows about Nader, Prince, and DeVos, folks.  If Nader is getting a deal to talk to Mueller, the information he has is valuable to his investigation.  That means it's high-level stuff, like say, the Russians sending money to Trump's campaign through the UAE, and expecting things in return.

You know, like conspiracy to collude with Moscow.

Somebody should remind Erik (and all the Trumpies for that matter) that Moscow ties up its loose ends with loose lips rather abruptly.

A former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned by a nerve agent in England this week, the British authorities said on Wednesday, heightening suspicions that the episode was an assassination attempt by a national government, amid rampant speculation that Russia was responsible. 

The development forces the British government to confront the possibility that once again, an attack on British soil was carried out by the government of President Vladimir V. Putin, which Western intelligence officials say has, with alarming frequency, ordered the killing of people who have crossed it. 

In 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian agent who was harshly critical of Mr. Putin, was fatally poisoned in London with a rare radioactive metal; in 2016, an official inquiry concluded that he was murdered by Russian operatives, probably with Mr. Putin’s approval. 

“This is being treated as a major incident involving attempted murder by administration of a nerve agent,” said Mark Rowley, Britain’s chief police official for counterterrorism and international security.

Stay tuned.

The Prince Of Loot

I've talked several times on the blog about Erik Prince, the closest we've got to a James Bond villain/video game bad guy around, founder of Blackwater security and the kind of guy who has his own private army for hire.  He's neck deep in Russia too, having pitched his services to some of our friends in the Gulf and using his contacts there to arrange off-the-record meetings with Moscow. His sister, Betsy DeVos, married into the Amway fortune and is now Secretary of Education, and Erik wanted to hustle his way into replacing the US military in Afghanistan. 

It's that last part that the crew at BuzzFeed News have a story on this week, having obtained the presentation that Prince made to the US military and as you can probably expect from a mercenary warlord literally named Prince, it's all about looting the country.

Controversial private security tycoon Erik Prince has famously pitched an audacious plan to the Trump administration: Hire him to privatize the war in Afghanistan using squads of "security contractors." Now, for the first time, Buzzfeed News is publishing that pitch, a presentation that lays out how Prince wanted to take over the war from the US military — and how he envisioned mining some of the most war-torn provinces in Afghanistan to help fund security operations and obtain strategic mineral resources for the US. 

Prince, who founded the Blackwater security firm and testified last week to the House Intelligence Committee for its Russia investigation, has deep connections into the current White House: He’s friends with former presidential adviser Stephen Bannon, and he’s the brother of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary. 

Prince briefed top Trump administration officials directly, talked up his plan publicly on the DC circuit, and published op-eds about it. He patterned the strategy he's pitching on the historical model of the old British East India Company, which had its own army and colonized much of Britain's empire in India. "An East India Company approach," he wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "would use cheaper private solutions to fill the gaps that plague the Afghan security forces, including reliable logistics and aviation support." 

But the details have never been made public. Here is the never-before-published slide presentation for his pitch, which a source familiar with the matter said was prepared for the Trump administration.

One surprising element is the commercial promise Prince envisions: that the US will get access to Afghanistan’s rich deposits of minerals such as lithium, used in batteries; uranium; magnesite; and "rare earth elements," critical metals used in high technology from defense to electronics. One slide estimates the value of mineral deposits in Helmand province alone at $1 trillion. 

The presentation makes it plain that Prince intends to fund the effort through these rich deposits. His plan, one slide says, is "a strategic mineral resource extraction funded effort that breaks the negative security economic cycle." The slides also say that mining could provide jobs to Afghans.

It's the best of "the oil will pay for the war!" days of Dubya.  Only it's rare earth metals.

And man, this slide show is something.

"What is laid out in the slides is a model of an affordable way for the US to stabilize a failed state where we are presently wasting American youth and tens of billions of dollars annually," a Prince spokesperson emailed BuzzFeed News Thursday.

Defense Secretary James Mattis “did meet with Mr. Prince earlier this year,” a Defense Department spokesperson said. “He meets with people all the time to listen and hear new ideas.” The CIA declined to comment. It’s been widely reported that the Pentagon pushed back against Prince’s concept, and that national security adviser H.R. McMaster was opposed to it as well. 

Prince currently runs a Chinese security and logistics company, as BuzzFeed News has previously reported. Still, in his pitch to America's policymakers, he plays the US against China. One slide, devoted to "market manipulation in rare earth elements," presents China as dominating the market for the valuable minerals. 

Ironically, the statement from Prince's spokesman that said Prince's Chinese company, Frontier Services Group, would participate in the Afghanistan plan, and "would provide logistics support to the extractive firms with secure transportation and camp support."

Not only will Prince help you get the loot, he'll help you move it as well.  I mean mercenary armies already have to be pretty good at large-scale logistics, right?  For a percentage of the take, that is.

A pretty good scam if you ask me.  Guess Trump didn't get enough of the pie to pursue it.  He's all about real estate, not commodities.  Can't build a luxury hotel on a strip mine, ya know.  Bad neighborhood.

We Don't Need No Education, Con't

The slow death of the civil rights era under the Trump regime continues as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will proceed with handcuffing the department's civil rights office, because systemic racism and sexism in education is embarrassing to Dear Leader, so in order to Make America Great Again™ it will no longer be exposed or even acknowledged.

The Department of Education is scaling back investigations into civil rights violations at the nation’s public schools and universities, easing off mandates imposed by the Obama administration that the new leadership says have bogged down the agency.

According to an internal memo issued by Candice E. Jackson, the acting head of the department’s office for civil rights, requirements that investigators broaden their inquiries to identify systemic issues and whole classes of victims will be scaled back. Also, regional offices will no longer be required to alert department officials in Washington of all highly sensitive complaints on issues such as the disproportionate disciplining of minority students and the mishandling of sexual assaults on college campuses.

The new directives are the first steps taken under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to reshape her agency’s approach to civil rights enforcement, which was bolstered while President Barack Obama was in office. The efforts during Mr. Obama’s administration resulted in far-reaching investigations and resolutions that required schools and colleges to overhaul policies addressing a number of civil rights concerns.

That approach sent complaints soaring, and the civil rights office found itself understaffed and struggling to meet the department’s stated goal of closing cases within 180 days.

The office’s processing times have “skyrocketed,” the Education Department spokeswoman, Liz Hill, said, adding that its backlog of cases has “exploded.” The new guidelines were to ensure that “every individual complainant gets the care and attention they deserve,” she said.

In the memo, which was first published by ProPublica, Ms. Jackson emphasized that the new protocols were aimed at resolving cases quickly.

“Justice delayed is justice denied, and justice for many complainants has been denied for too long,” Ms. Hill said in a statement.

But civil rights leaders believe that the new directives will have the opposite effect. They say that Education Department staff members would be discouraged from opening cases and that investigations could be weakened because efficiency would take priority over thoroughness.

“If we want to have assembly-line justice, and I say ‘justice’ in quotes, then that’s the direction that we should go,” said Catherine Lhamon, who was the assistant secretary of the Education Department’s civil rights office under Mr. Obama, and who now heads the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

It's so funny, these assholes see that Obama demanded action and accountablility, and then under Trump they say "Well we can't possibly close civil rights cases in six months, so why bother opening them?"

Oh well, black and brown people with inferior schools, you're on your own. As long as Taylor and Hunter and Cameryn are OK in their school in the suburbs, well why would their parents need to worry about the rest of those kids in school district?

They don't need no education if it's going to come at the expense of the zero-sum game of education funding in America, right?

Guess Who's Coming To Father's Day

The Trump regime isn't even really trying to hide their contempt for public education anymore, and are just being obviously awful now whenever Education Secretary Betsy DeVos can manage it.

The Education Department invited representatives from two anti-LGBT groups to speak at a secretive event on Thursday, a move that prompted the national Parent Teacher Association to pull out of the daylong "Engaging Fathers and Families" event. 

Representatives for the evangelical groups Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council — which advocate for gay conversion therapy — both spoke at the event, according to a copy of the agenda that was obtained by BuzzFeed News, sitting on a panel called "Family Engagement in Faith-based Organizations." The agenda was first reported by Politico. 

The National PTA, which has 4 million members nationwide, said it withdrew from the event after it learned of the two groups' participation, saying in a statement that they were "not in alignment" with the PTA's stance on protecting gay youth. 

The event Thursday, which was hosted ahead of Father's Day, included several high-level officials, including acting undersecretary Jim Manning and the head of elementary and secondary education. 

While the event was live streamed, there was no agenda made publicly available in advance. 

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos did not attend the event, according to the agenda. She has said publicly that she "supports equality" and has "always" been opposed to gay conversion therapy, but under her watch, the department has come under fire for several stances that advocates say harm gay children. Along with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, DeVos rescinded protections for transgender children put in place by the Education and Justice departments under Barack Obama. 

DeVos's extended family are some of the biggest donors to both Focus and the Family and FRC, giving millions of dollars over the course of the past decade.

On its website, FRC warns of the danger of allowing gays to raise children, and it has falsely claimed that gay men are more likely to sexually abuse children in their care.

I've long talked about the DeVos dream of privatizing the tens of billions spent on public education in America and creating a permanent two-tier system where only the "right kids" get a quality education, and "undesirable" children get nothing...hey, maybe they don't even need an education because they should maybe start working for a living, the little vermin.  The notion that groups like the FRC weren't specifically invited by DeVos, one of their biggest donors, is too stupid to fathom as she bravely ducked out of the meeting.

After all, you need to cover both ends of the school to prison pipeline in this country, and you have to profit from it while doing it.

We Don't Need No Education, Con't

On the final day of Black History Month, the Trump regime decided it was going to shoot a photo op with presidents of several Historically Black Colleges and Univesities (HBCUs) coming to the White House for help in preserving the legacies of these important institutions.  What the HBCU presidents got instead was the DeVos special.

President Donald Trump’s efforts to bolster relations with historically black colleges erupted in controversy Tuesday after Education Secretary Betsy DeVos released a statement equating the history of the schools — founded during an era of racial segregation — to “school choice” policies. 

“HBCUs are real pioneers when it comes to school choice,” DeVos said in the statement, released Monday night in advance of Trump’s planned signing of an executive order giving the schools more clout. “They are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality. Their success has shown that more options help students flourish.”

Now, DeVos's statement only makes sense if you completely ignore the fact that HBCUs were founded in response to American collegiate apartheid.  Literally, these colleges were founded because black students were not allowed to go to white colleges and universities in the Jim Crow era. In 1962 when James Meredith attended Ole Miss, it led to statewide riots and more than 30,000 National Guard troops called into action to deal with them.

What it had nothing to do with was "school choice" policies.  Why DeVos would choose to so viciously and stupidly gaslight away a century of black history, well that's what the Trump regime does, guys.  Everything was really great back in the Jim Crow south, and black people even had their own colleges!

DeVos also seemed to reject one thing the schools are really hoping to get from the administration: More money. One school president told POLITICO that the colleges had asked the White House to back a $25 billion investment in infrastructure improvements on their campuses in their meeting with DeVos Monday. They also advocated for year-round Pell grants and to maintain or increase funding that goes to schools that serve low-income students. 

“Rather than focus solely on funding, we must be willing to make the tangible, structural reforms that will allow students to reach their full potential,” DeVos said in her statement.

Tangible structural reforms, huh.  But no money to pay for them.

If you want to know what's coming for K-12 education for American kids under the Trump regime, look at the way HBCUs are treated.  It's an era where the framework of segregation by class and race already exists.  Imagine your school district becoming Ivy League white schools, and HBCUs for black students.  That's what's coming.  And like DeVos and HBCUs now, it will be sold as "pioneering school choice" when of course, the actual choice part won't exist.

Sunday Long Read: Defining DeVos

If you want to know what awaits America's public education system under the Trump regime and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, you have to go no further than Grand Rapids, Michigan as a primary example.

Mid-century Michigan conservatives no doubt felt their ideological zeal ratcheting up because, for much of the post-war era, unions called most of the shots in the state’s political economy. Especially during the 1970s, when Amway was hitting its stride and the young DeVoses and Princes—whose ranks included Betsy’s brother Erik, who would gain plenty of infamy of his own as the founder of the private-army concern Blackwater—were coming of age, union power was peaking in the state. By 1974, unions represented more than 40 percent of workers in Michigan, the highest rate in the country. The shift in the balance of power between labor and capital, set off when the auto workers sat down in Flint in 1936, had been tilting steadily in the workers’ direction ever since. Worse still for free-market ideologues of the DeVosian stripe, public sector workers in Michigan—its teachers, police and firefighters—had collective bargaining rights too. Not only was the government “in our pockets,” it was handing over the money it confiscated to the Detroit Federation of Teachers.

The union tide that swept across Michigan never reached the western part of the state, though. As Jeffrey Kleiman documents in his history of the great Grand Rapids furniture strike of 1911, that action, which paralyzed the city’s major industry for six days, ended in a near total loss for labor. Not only did the thousands of workers who’d walked off the job fail to win a single concession from their bosses, the strike also concentrated the power of local businessmen, bankers and industrialists. In a pamphlet called “What’s the Matter with Grand Rapids?” the Industrial Workers of the World argued that ethnic tensions kept the city’s workers divided, while high rates of homeownership and churchgoing kept them conservative. Local historian Robert P. Swierenga has a more straightforward explanation: the west Michigan Dutch, with their legendarily strong work ethic, didn’t really go in for unions. Polish workers were the main force behind the furniture strike, and the Dutch crossed the picket line. “The aura of a willing labor force and strong work ethic has not been lost on industrialists coming into the region,” Swierenga writes.

In 2012, the DeVoses pulled off something that would have seemed unimaginable to their free-market forebears: they made Michigan a right-to-work state. Workers in the state are finally free; they can no longer be compelled to join a union as a condition of employment. A subsequent law has made it illegal for employers to process union dues, while simultaneously making it easier for corporations to deduct PAC money from employee paychecks. By 2015, just 15 percent of workers in Michigan were union members. “They won,” former state Rep. Ellen Lipton told me. “It may have taken them longer than they wanted, but they won.” Lipton was referring to the DeVoses’ remarkable success in shaping the state to conform to their hardcore laissez-faire vision over the past two decades. This improbable crusade was immeasurably aided by Michigan’s strict term-limit laws, which keep legislators beholden to donors and party apparatchiks rather than to their constituents. 

The tourist motto for Grand Rapids these days is “cool city.” It’s a nod to a campaign by Michigan’s last democratic governor, Jennifer Granholm, whom Dick DeVos tried and failed to unseat in 2006. Granholm donned sunglasses to dramatize her fealty to the trendy development counsel of urbanologist Richard Florida. Across Michigan the word went forth: the key to a bright future for the state’s battered cities was to make them cool, filling them with the sorts of amenities that the young and college educated find irresistible, such as farmers markets, lofts, and art. The right-wing Mackinac Center for Public Policy, funded by the DeVoses, mocked the concept, arguing that “cool cities” discriminated against the extractor class, people who “build things and use energy and emit pollution — things that are not considered environmentally correct by the political ruling class.” Success was mixed. Flint and Pontiac never made it onto the cool list, while Detroit was somehow too cool to be included. But Grand Rapids took the business of being cool seriously.

“It’s a cool place, for a company town,” Mary Bouwense told me over craft beers at one of the city’s many brew pubs. There are more than a dozen breweries in Grand Rapids—including one at Gerald Ford International Airport. Bouwense, who is the president of the local teachers union, offered to take me on a tour of DeVos-related sites, but the snow once more intervened. Founders, the brew pub where she brought me instead, was packed on a Sunday afternoon, a sign, perhaps, of the diminishing influence of the once all-powerful Dutch Christian Reformed Church that helped incubate the moral conviction of the DeVoses. Since the tour was off, Bouwense, who is of Dutch descent, was helpfully guiding me through the theological divides separating the Christian Reformed and the Dutch Reformed. She also confirmed that the DeVoses are apostles of a different sort of Protestant ethic altogether, where conspicuous consumption no longer provokes much anxiety on the part of the believer. “I can see their helicopter coming and going from my office window,” she says.

The DeVos family is selling the American dream as a pyramid scheme through Amway.  Now they have control of America's entire education system with intent to do the same.

And it's your kids on the bottom of that pyramid.  I guarantee it.