More news on the Erik Prince indictment front
About three weeks ago, the government of Austria criminally indicted Erik Prince on charges of illegal arms dealing. Then a few days ago we learned that just one week after Prince’s Austrian indictment, the DOJ began sending subpoenas in a new investigation into a 2020 election related plot stemming out of Wyoming (of all places) involving Erik Prince.
At the time, I asked what the odds were that this was coincidence, and concluded that I didn’t know what to make of it. These two alleged criminal plots don’t appear to have anything in common. It’s not as if one is an offshoot of the other. And it’s not even clear yet whether or not Prince is the target in this DOJ probe.
But it appears that just one week after Prince was indicted overseas, the DOJ decided to move forward with a new probe in 2023 about a plot that ran from 2018 to 2020 and was first exposed by the media in 2021. So why is the DOJ suddenly launching a new probe into Prince’s actions years ago?
We still don’t have any answers about the “why” of what’s going on here. But now conservative news outlet The Bulwark is doing long-form coverage of the arms dealing plot that got Erik Prince indicted in Austria, and providing context for how prosecutors first tried to bring these charges five years ago.
Of course this in turn raises more questions about why the DOJ is suddenly launching an investigation of its own into an alleged Prince-related criminal plot that also started five years ago.
Hey, coincidences sometimes happen. Not everything is connected. But it does make you wonder if perhaps the DOJ is indeed trying to take Prince down before Austria can. Why? For one thing, the DOJ may not want to risk losing Prince to extradition before it can charge him. For all we know perhaps Jack Smith’s January 6th probe is targeting Prince, but that indictment is still down the road, and the Wyoming-based plot is its way of charging Prince with something sooner. Or maybe it is all just coincidence. We’ll see where this goes. But with an actual indictment now confirmed in Austria, and a DOJ investigation confirmed as well, it doesn’t feel like nothing.
