Robert Mueller lands Erik Prince as a cooperating witness against Donald Trump
Special Counsel Robert Mueller now has his hands on the cellphones and computer belonging to Erik Prince, who is accused of having tried to set up a backchannel between Donald Trump and the Kremlin. How did Mueller get his hands on these? It turns out Prince simply turned them over voluntarily, in the hope of avoiding being criminally charged. That makes him a cooperating witness. That’s got to be awkward, considering he’s Betsy DeVos’s brother.
Last week Erik Prince announced to the media that he’s been cooperating with Robert Mueller’s investigation. Now suddenly Mueller has Prince’s electronic devices, according to an ABC News report, and Prince is confirming that he gave them to Mueller. So now we know that Prince, one of the central figures in the Trump-Russia backchannel scandal culminating in the infamous meeting in the Seychelles, is playing for Team Mueller. Where does this get us?
What’s not yet known is how thoroughly Erik Prince is cooperating. In some instances like this, targets of an investigation will turn over some of their devices – the ones without anything incriminating on them – in the hope of convincing investigators that they’re not guilty. Of course this strategy never works, because the turned-over devices end up making it easier for cyber investigators to find their way to what’s not been turned over. Prince doesn’t appear to be a dummy, so we’d guess his decision to cooperate is the real deal. There’s a key reason he would do this.
Erik Prince’s Seychelles meeting with the Kremlin was allegedly set up by international political operative George Nader, who was given partial immunity by Robert Mueller earlier this year. If Nader has given up Prince, then it means that Prince’s only way out of this is to give up Donald Trump. Now we’re in a remarkable situation in which a Trump cabinet member’s brother is a cooperating witness against him.
