Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told the Washington Post that the panel will ask the Justice Department to launch a criminal probe into Erik Prince, a businessman and informal adviser to President Donald Trump's campaign.
Prince is the former head of the military contracting firm Blackwater USA, which is now known as Academi. He is also the brother of Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education.
Prince testified before the House Intelligence Committee as part of its Russia investigation in November 2017. During the hearing, Prince was asked about a meeting he had in the Seychelles with George Nader, a Middle East consultant who acted as a conduit for the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Prince told the committee the meeting, which took place during the transition period in January 2017, was unplanned and that he did not attend as a representative of the incoming Trump administration.
But the special counsel Robert Mueller's report revealed that shortly before the meeting, Prince met with Nader and the two men discussed Dmitriev. Nader told Prince the Russians were "looking to build a link with the incoming Trump Administration," the report said. Prince agreed to the meeting after.
"The evidence strongly suggests that he misled our committee," Schiff told the Post. He added that it was unclear whether or not the DOJ will move to prosecute Prince, because it's possible Prince revealed details about the meeting during his proffer sessions with Mueller, which could shield him from criminal charges.
Schiff has also said Prince omitted from his testimony another meeting he had in August 2016 with Nader, Donald Trump Jr., and an Israeli social media specialist, Joel Zammel, at Trump Tower.
Prince first acknowledged the meeting in an interview with Al Jazeera's Mehdi Hasan in March.
Hasan initially asked him why he didn't disclose the meeting — first reported by The New York Times in May 2018 — to Congress. Prince replied, "I did. As part of the investigations, I certainly disclosed any meetings. The very, very few I had."
But a transcript of Prince's testimony shows he did not mention the meeting, and when Hasan pressed him on it, Prince eventually said, "I don't know if they got the transcript wrong. I don't know. I remember — I certainly remember discussing it."
Earlier this month, Schiff told NBC's "Meet The Press" that Prince did not tell the panel about the August 2016 meeting, despite claiming otherwise to Hasan.
Schiff also told the Post this week that the House Intelligence Committee may ask Steve Bannon — the former head of Breitbart News and former White House chief strategist — to come in for further questioning because he "refused to answer almost all of our questions" when he testified in early 2018.
"When we asked whether he was asserting some privilege, he merely said he was not answering questions because the White House told him not to," Schiff recalled. "The communications between Mr. Prince and Mr. Bannon has apparently fled their devices."
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