It's my understanding he designed the training exercises, which could have included, like, you know, going out to bars in Cody and trying to get people's names and numbers, how to pitch somebody in an elevator, how to spot people who could potentially provide you information. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Mr. Seddons recruitment of Mr. "He's a very nice man," Prince said of Barrasso in the Breitbart interview. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Tell us about them. And he was pitching that plan, but it never got anywhere. The New York Times published an article chronicling a Wapiti, Wyoming-based espianoge effort. This is FRESH AIR. And then Seddon - you know, he stays on. GOLDMAN: Yeah, I would say an active - sure, an active player in certain parts of Trump's world, yeah, or conservative - the conservative world. But Trump would, from time to time, cite Project Veritas videos in his, you know, comments, public comments and speeches, right? 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. Citing his ties to the state, his attorneys opted to file Princes defamation case against The Intercept in Wyomings U.S. District Court in May. 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. During the 2018 meeting with Ms. Gore, according to one person familiar with it, Mr. A man named Samuel Chamberlain who matched the description of the one employed by Mr. OKeefe denied he worked for Project Veritas. Prince, Mr. Seddon and other topics, but he called his group a proud independent news organization that is involved in dozens of investigations. However, the story quoted a former U.S. Treasury official who suggested simply making an offer to assist Wagner might have violated current U.S. sanctions in place against the Russian firm. For example, a 2017 meeting he attended with a crown prince of the United Arab Emirates and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin became a part of the impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, whom he has served as informal adviser. And so Sofia's picture was up there. And they both say they didnt interview anyone in the state for the article. And they said, well, you know, she worked for Project Veritas. And they were doing this - it appears that they were doing this from the house where Beau and Sofia lived with others. And it all kind of went south when the Post exposed it. They were going to bug it. In the case of the FBI, you know, they were looking for bias to see if somebody - they could get somebody to say something anti-Trump, which, of course, fit the theme at the time because, you know, these infamous text messages between these two FBI officials who had worked on the Russia investigation - the FBI's Russia investigation had come out, right? Beau picks up - starts working this marijuana legalization angle to try to make contacts with people - elected officials who are, in fact, pushing this bill to legalize marijuana. DAVIES: He was at a meeting in the Seychelles, the islands in the Indian Ocean, January of 2017. document.write ("?zoneid="+zoneId+"&block=1&blockcampaign=1"); The two men had known each other since Mr. Princes days running Blackwater, and shared an affinity for guns and the American West. (SOUNDBITE OF GOGOL BORDELLO'S "NOT A CRIME"). Prince and former British spy Richard Seddon both did work for the organization. James OKeefe, the head of Project Veritas, last year at a White House social media summit. For instance, Princes 2014 memoir said he splits his time between homes in Virginia and Abu Dhabi, where he pursues a variety of business ventures.. Later that year, Mr. DAVIES: Wow. McMaster, Trump's second national security adviser. However, he ultimately did not challenge Barrasso in 2018 nor did he vote in those off-year elections, Prince acknowledged in Octobers revised declaration. officer who went on to win an important House seat in Virginia as a Democrat. GOLDMAN: Well, that's a great question and one we struggle with at the Times in trying to put this in context. Richard Seddon, in 2018, I guess, decided to stop working with Project Veritas. [I] was a Wyoming resident for many years, he told Brietbart. You know, he's a businessman. Despite making multiple comments about Princes ties to Virginia, The Intercepts legal team said its immaterial to their jurisdictional arguments, which center on the publications own lack of ties to Wyoming. What was this about? I mean, people did shoot guns. Those contentions have become a key point of early proceedings in the case. That's a name some people will know. A spokesman for the firm said that Alston & Bird has never contributed to Project Veritas on its own behalf, nor is it a client of ours. The spokesman declined to say on whose behalf the contribution was made. Prince said he regularly host[s] customers, investors, employees and other business associates at my Wyoming ranch.. Connor Wroe Southard. And Beau's mom is the ranch cook at the Erik Prince family's ranch near Cody, Wyo. 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. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. GOLDMAN: I don't know if misrepresenting yourself to - and getting a job at a Democratic organization is a crime. GOLDMAN: I was going to say, you know, talking to Republicans, moderate Republicans, I mean, moderate - these guys are pretty conservative, by the way - when we're describing it as moderate Republicans they were targeting. zoneId = '8'; Meanwhile, Prince is once again registered as a Park County voter. So O'Keefe's Instagram photo, you know, led people to realize that, you know, Prince had played a role, at least in letting Project Veritas use the ranch for training. So it was a fascinating moment in time last year when I realized what I suspected Beau and Sofia were doing. Ledeen said "someone she trusted" contacted her to help with the McMaster operation. They've targeted CNN. GOLDMAN: Yeah, and the Justice Department prosecuted a number of individuals. Mr. And his son - he brought his son, who was a former army officer, on board to help. Over two years, Mr. Seddons 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. We know that political operatives will gather opposition research as it's called - right? And I got swept away reporting on that and eventually was able to come back to it. '&charset='+document.characterSet : '')); Prince took on the role of celebrity pitchman, according to interviews and documents, raising money for Mr. Seddons spying operation, which was aimed at gathering dirt that could discredit politicians and activists in several states. The campaign discovered the operative and fired her. Now, you mentioned Project Veritas. The ex-undercover British spy, Richard Seddon, trained conservative operatives first at the Prince family ranch in Wyoming, then at a large, $10,000-a-month house near Georgetown University. DAVIES: Right. Mr. Seddon was not. And they were deeply critical of Trump. Mr. Seddon used other former Project Veritas employees to help with the Wyoming operation, including James Artherton, a British operative code-named kimchi who was involved in a Project Veritas plan targeting an editor for The New York Times in London in 2017. This is FRESH AIR. Prince noted he owned a home in Wyoming and had been connected to the state since 1992. But I think - you would think that Democrats and Republicans would all be united, that this is a bipartisan issue, right? document.write ("'><\/scr"+"ipt>"); DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and our guest is Adam Goldman. DAVIES: But Sofia was just - she was active. At the time, Prince was exploring the possibility of mounting a Republican primary challenge to incumbent U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo. In 2018, Ms. Jorge infiltrated the congressional campaign of Ms. Spanberger, posing as a campaign volunteer. These two are conservatives, right? document.write ('&cb=' + m3_r); But they thanked us for bringing, you know, putting some sunlight on this. GOLDMAN: Beau does. They broke into the DNC. Erik Prince, a Park County resident and founder of the controversial private military firm Blackwater, is suing a national news organization in federal court in Wyoming after it published an. 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. GOLDMAN: The plan was to - it was basically - you know, in some ways, it was a classic sort of honey trap. You know, you say in one of these stories, this operation's use of spy craft to manipulate the politics of several states over the years greatly exceeds the tactics of traditional political tricks operations. Prince said he should have named a different company Moyock Medical Supplies LLC as an example of an entity he owns thats registered to his address in Wapiti. 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. In early 2017, Prince reportedly welcomed James OKeefe and others from the conservative group Project Veritas, which describes itself as an army of guerrilla journalists. That February, OKeefe tweeted an image of himself taking aim with a silenced handgun amid snowy mountains, saying the team was undergoing intense training from a classified location as we make Project Veritas the next great intelligence agency. The Intercept ultimately identified the site as the Prince ranch in a 2019 article. He passed away recently. Prince a former C.I.A. And we all sort of wracked our brains to try to figure out if, like, has this been done before? She actually got a contract fundraising gig with the Democrats, right? DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And, you know, we wrote the story about the operation targeting McMaster and Georgetown. GOLDMAN: It's not clear they're actually being trained in firearms training. Beyond involving a different pool of jurors and a different judge, Prince may have a better chance of learning the identity of The Intercepts sources if the case stays in Wyoming, where there is no specific shield law protecting the confidentiality of reporters sources. A local farmer was utilizing the land to grow corn and soybean crops, but the potential for the ranch was far from being realized. 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. DAVIES: Right. That got a lot of attention, was investigated by Robert Mueller. After Mr. Prince, a contractor close to the Trump administration, contacted veteran spies for operations by Project Veritas, the conservative group known for conducting stings on news organizations and other groups. GOLDMAN: She was very active. There was a massacre at a plaza in Iraq. And, you know, there were a whole range of people they went after. So what I'm saying is from Richard Seddon's standpoint, the fact that she had a picture up on Project Veritas Exposed, that was a real risk they were taking, right? It was unclear whether Mr. Seddon was involved in planning that operation. And, you know, Seddon then reached out to, you know, a family - an old friend who had worked at the FBI. Erik Prince, the founder of private military company Blackwater, whose sister Betsy DeVos was Trump's education secretary, trained the spies Their job was to find out who was disparaging Trump. As the founder of Blackwater USA, now Academi, a private military company, Prince headed the organization. Overall, how do conservatives regard Project Veritas? We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So we had never seen something like that. It is, instead, an entity dedicated to a specific political agenda.. And by the way, as we began reporting this, we started learning more about Beau's connection to people. Oct. 21, 2020. The plan was reportedly to send a female operative to Tosca, a restaurant McMaster frequented, to engage him in drinks and conversation and record him disparaging Trump or making other inappropriate remarks on camera. According to the documents, Mr. Seddons operatives also aimed to dig up information on Steve Harshman, the Republican speaker of the House in Wyoming at the time, who was also seen by some conservatives as not sufficiently supportive of Mr. Trump. We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. He comes in late '16 or '17 - around that time period. That same day Oct. 9, 2017 Prince obtained a Wyomings drivers license, which he touted in another interview with Breitbart a few days later. 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. Published October 16, 2017. Where we're not - what we hadn't really seen was an actual British spy, somebody trained in clandestine activities, launching a secret operation using undercovers with false - basically false cover stories to infiltrate political circles, gather information and collect it for whatever purpose, I guess, because ultimately, as our story says, this appeared to be a paper play. To do so would potentially reveal the sources identity, in breach of a promise of confidentiality made to the source, and creating personal risk for the source, they wrote, adding Princes real motive in bringing this lawsuit obtaining the identity of [The Intercepts] confidential source is plain., Further, if Prince is allowed to take discovery of The Intercept, the lawyers say they should be allowed to probe Princes ties to Virginia versus Wyoming, since he already has been forced to admit [his sworn statements] contained certain falsehoods.. , last year when I realized erik prince wyoming ranch I suspected Beau and Sofia doing. Okeefe, the head of Project Veritas redacted specifics about those operations from the messages, investigated! And Georgetown just - she was active or political causes when the Post exposed.! Been connected to the state for the article army officer, on to! Went on to win an important House seat in Virginia as a Democrat those have. 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