Erik Prince

Erik Prince founded Blackwater USA in 1997 as a private training facility in Moyock, North Carolina. After September 11, 2001, he pivoted — converting Blackwater into a government contractor for diplomatic security, paramilitary support, and intelligence-adjacent operations. By the peak of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Blackwater held over $1 billion in federal contracts with the State Department and the Department of Defense. Its State Department contract for diplomatic protection — the Worldwide Personal Protective Service — paid Blackwater $833 million from 2004 to 2009 alone. Prince was not a wartime volunteer. He was a vendor extracting premium rates from emergency no-bid contracts while the body counts in Iraq and Afghanistan rose.

• —Prince's background: Naval Academy (briefly), then transferred to Hillsdale College — the conservative-Christian institution the Prince/DeVos family helped fund. He completed Naval SEAL training and served briefly before leaving to join his father's auto-parts company.
• —Edgar Prince (father) founded Prince Manufacturing in Holland, MI, 1965, and built it into a multi-billion-dollar auto-parts supplier before dying in 1995. The company was sold in 1996 for $1.35 billion. Erik Prince's inheritance of that wealth is the capital foundation under Blackwater.
• —Blackwater's first major government contract came in 2002: a $5.4 million no-bid CIA contract for security work in Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban.
• —By 2007, Blackwater was pulling in approximately $300 million per year from State Department contracts alone. Total federal contract value from 2001–2010 exceeded $1 billion across State, DoD, and CIA work.
• —Blackwater also held separate CIA contracts for targeted operations — the scope and nature of which have never been fully disclosed. The New York Times reported in 2009 that CIA had hired Blackwater for aspects of its targeted killing program.

Source: Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (Nation Books, 2007)

On September 16, 2007, Blackwater's Raven 23 convoy opened fire on civilians in Nisour Square, Baghdad. Seventeen Iraqi civilians were killed. Twenty more were wounded. A subsequent FBI investigation found no credible evidence the convoy had been under attack. Four Blackwater contractors were tried in US federal court: Nicholas Slatten was convicted of first-degree murder (after two retrials — the first conviction was vacated on appeal, then reinstated); Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard were convicted of voluntary manslaughter and related charges. Slough received a 12-year sentence; Heard and Liberty, 12 years each; Slatten, life in prison. On December 22, 2020 — his final weeks in office — Donald Trump pardoned all four. Prince's sister Betsy DeVos was serving as Trump's Education Secretary at the time. Prince himself was never charged with any crime in connection with the massacre.

• —FBI investigation concluded there was "no credible evidence" the Raven 23 convoy was under hostile fire at the time of the shooting. The first shots struck a man in a white Kia — later determined to be a medical student, Ahmed Haithem Ahmed Al Rubia'i, sitting stopped in traffic.
• —Nicholas Slatten conviction history: charged 2008, first trial mistrial 2013, second trial convicted of first-degree murder 2014, conviction vacated 2017 by DC Circuit (prosecutorial misconduct), retried and convicted again of first-degree murder 2018, sentenced to life in prison. Pardoned Dec. 22, 2020.
• —Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard: convicted of voluntary manslaughter (30+ counts combined), attempted manslaughter, weapons charges. Each sentenced to approximately 12 years. Pardoned Dec. 22, 2020.
• —The pardons came during a 29-day window between Dec. 22, 2020 and January 20, 2021. The White House released no public statement of justification. Betsy DeVos resigned from the Cabinet on January 7, 2021 — two weeks after the pardons were signed.
• —Blackwater separately paid $42 million in 2010 to settle State Department arms-export-control violations — a charge unrelated to Nisour Square but arising from the same operational period. (See arms-export section below.)
• —Erik Prince sold Blackwater (renamed Xe Services) in 2010. He has repeatedly said he was not present at Nisour Square and bore no command responsibility. The legal proceedings produced no charge against him.

Source: US v. Slatten et al., USDC DC — conviction records and pardon proclamation (Federal Register, Dec. 22, 2020)

In August 2010, the State Department announced that Blackwater (by then renamed Xe Services) had agreed to pay $42 million to settle 288 criminal and administrative violations of US arms-export-control law. The violations included unauthorized exports of defense services and equipment to Afghanistan and Sudan, conducting business in Sudan in violation of US sanctions, and falsifying export documents. Separately, federal investigators scrutinized Prince personally for alleged efforts to negotiate contracts with the Sudanese government and for arms transfers that may have violated sanctions. The investigations did not produce criminal charges against Prince. Later reporting also documented Prince's alleged role in Libya — attempting to establish a private oil-extraction militia force in the eastern part of the country.

• —The $42 million ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) settlement covered 288 violations across multiple countries. The State Department's Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance called it "one of the most significant voluntary disclosures" it had processed.
• —Specific Sudan violations included direct negotiation of security contracts with the Government of Sudan — a US-sanctioned state — and export of defense services without required licenses.
• —Prince has acknowledged traveling to Sudan and meeting with officials. He denied the contacts violated sanctions. Federal investigators at the Justice Department and FBI pursued the matter from approximately 2010–2014; no charges resulted.
• —Libya: New York Times reporting (2014) documented Prince's alleged attempts to organize a private mercenary force in eastern Libya to protect oil facilities, connected to parties aligned with Khalifa Haftar's faction. The Intercept provided additional reporting. No formal charges resulted.
• —Senate Foreign Relations Committee separately examined Prince-affiliated meetings related to Iran during this period; the full scope of those inquiries has not been publicly disclosed.

Source: State Dept press release: Xe Services (formerly Blackwater) $42M ITAR settlement (August 2010) — via Internet Archive

After selling Blackwater, Prince brokered a contract with the government of the United Arab Emirates to build and operate a private military unit — staffed not by Emiratis but by foreign nationals, primarily Colombian and South African ex-soldiers recruited specifically because their nationalities would complicate claims they were covered by US law. The New York Times reported the arrangement in detail in May 2011 (reporting by Mark Mazzetti). The force, approximately 800 soldiers, was reportedly used in Yemen during the Saudi-led military intervention. The legal status of the operation depended entirely on whether US law could reach a UAE-contracted force led by an American operating through foreign corporate structures.

• —The contract was valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the NYT's 2011 reporting. The UAE government sought the force for use in suppressing potential internal unrest (following Arab Spring developments) and for external operations.
• —Prince specifically recruited Colombian ex-soldiers through South African intermediaries — a design choice the NYT reported was intended to avoid potential coverage under US law, which can apply to US citizens directing violence abroad.
• —The force's role in Yemen's civil war (which began in 2015): reporting by The Intercept and other outlets documented Prince-affiliated security operations in Yemen during the Saudi-led intervention. Casualty figures remain disputed and difficult to confirm from open sources.
• —Senator Patrick Leahy and others in Congress raised concerns about whether Prince's activities violated the Neutrality Act or other US law. No criminal charges were filed.
• —Prince has been a persistent advocate for privatizing US military functions — the UAE operation is the clearest real-world execution of that doctrine.

Source: New York Times / Mark Mazzetti: "Secret Desert Force Set Up by Blackwater's Founder" (May 14, 2011)

On February 1, 2019, Frontier Services Group (FSG) — the Hong Kong-listed logistics and security company Prince co-founded in 2014 — announced it had signed a memorandum with the management committee of Caohu Industrial Park in Tumxuk, Xinjiang, to build a training center. The announcement appeared on FSG's official website and its Hong Kong Stock Exchange filings. FSG's financial disclosures indicated planned spending of approximately HK$120.8 million (USD ~$15.4 million) in Pakistan and Xinjiang. Prince, through an FSG spokesman, told Reuters he had "no knowledge or involvement" and that the Xinjiang announcement had been published "in error by a staff member in Beijing." FSG removed the announcement from its website. The announcement had already been documented by Western media. Prince later testified before Congress that he had no business in China. FSG's financial filings, which Prince signed as a director, referenced Xinjiang as a planned operational region.

• —Tumxuk, Xinjiang: the location of the proposed Caohu Industrial Park training center, is within the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region during the period the Chinese government was operating a network of internment camps holding an estimated 1–1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.
• —FSG was Hong Kong-listed (HKEX: 0572). Its 2019 annual financial filings, which Prince signed as a board director, referenced planned capital expenditure in Xinjiang. The filings do not describe the nature of the training.
• —Prince's denial — "no knowledge or involvement" — is contradicted by his board-director position and the signed financial disclosures. His congressional testimony asserting he had no business in China postdates the publicly documented Xinjiang MOU.
• —The Intercept and Washington Post both documented the FSG Xinjiang announcement and Prince's denial. CNN reported the FSG announcement on February 1, 2019.
• —FSG's business model explicitly includes training of security and military personnel — in Africa and Asia. The company's largest investor at the time of the Xinjiang announcement was a Chinese state-affiliated investment group (CITIC Group), which held approximately 15% of FSG.

Source: Washington Post: "Blackwater founder Erik Prince's new company is building training center in Xinjiang" (Feb 1, 2019)

On January 11, 2017 — nine days before Trump's inauguration — Erik Prince met with Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (a Kremlin sovereign-wealth vehicle), at a hotel in the Seychelles. The meeting was brokered by Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi. The Mueller Report documented the meeting in Volume I, pages 147–158, describing it as an attempt to establish a back-channel communication between the incoming Trump administration and the Russian government. Prince told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in November 2017 that the Seychelles meeting was "a chance encounter" with no Trump transition purpose. The Mueller Report found this account was contradicted by other witnesses and documentary evidence. The Special Counsel's Office referred the potential perjury to the DOJ for consideration. No charges were filed.

• —Mueller Report, Vol. I, pp. 147–158: The Special Counsel found that Prince "had advance knowledge that Dmitriev would attend the January 11 meeting" and that the meeting "was coordinated in advance by both sides." This directly contradicts Prince's "chance encounter" testimony.
• —Kirill Dmitriev is head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a Kremlin-controlled sovereign wealth fund under US and EU sanctions following Russia's 2014 invasion of Ukraine. Prince's meeting with Dmitriev constituted an informal diplomatic contact during a period when US intelligence was actively investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.
• —Prince testified before HPSCI on November 30, 2017. He told the committee he was in the Seychelles "on business," that the meeting with Dmitriev was "brief" and "not a pre-planned meeting," and that no Trump transition or policy matters were discussed.
• —Mueller's findings: multiple witnesses — including UAE officials — told investigators the meeting was arranged specifically to create a back-channel. Dmitriev told investigators he was under the impression he was meeting a Trump representative.
• —The referral for potential perjury was made to the DOJ. The DOJ did not charge Prince. Prince denied lying and attributed Mueller's contrary findings to witness error.

Source: Mueller Report, Vol. I, pp. 147–158 (DOJ release, April 2019)

Reporting by The Intercept (2019) and The New York Times (2020) documented Prince-affiliated intelligence operations targeting individuals perceived as adversaries of the Trump administration. The operations allegedly used ex-Israeli intelligence personnel — some with ties to the Project Veritas / James O'Keefe network — to conduct surveillance, build pretextual profiles, and attempt to obtain compromising material through undercover methods. Reported targets included labor union organizers, FBI personnel who had been critical of Trump's firing of James Comey, and academic critics of the administration. No criminal charges have been filed against Prince or any named operator in connection with these operations. Several participants were separately charged in unrelated Project Veritas-adjacent operations.

• —The Intercept's reporting (January 2019) described a Prince-affiliated operation involving ex-Mossad and Shin Bet personnel operating through a front company. The operation's targets were described as including individuals involved in progressive political organizing.
• —The New York Times (2020) reported separately on an overlapping network involving an Israeli company (Black Cube, also used by Harvey Weinstein for journalist surveillance) and operatives with connections to the Prince network.
• —Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe — fired by Trump and a public critic of the president — was among the reported targets of intelligence-gathering operations. McCabe has said he was aware of surveillance attempts.
• —The operations, if accurately reported, would constitute violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, depending on whether the operatives were acting on behalf of a foreign government, and potentially federal surveillance law.
• —Prince has denied involvement in the surveillance operations described in the reporting.

Source: The Intercept: "How Erik Prince Used the Rise of Trump to Make an Improbable Comeback" (May 2019)

On May 3, 2020, a group of ex-US Special Forces soldiers entered Venezuela by speedboat from Colombia in an attempt to capture President Nicolás Maduro and transport him to the United States, where he had been indicted on drug trafficking charges. The operation — called Operation Gideon by its organizer, Jordan Goudreau of Silvercorp USA — failed immediately: Venezuelan security forces intercepted the boats and captured several participants. Associated Press and McClatchy reporting connected Prince to the operation's early planning phase, citing documents and sources with direct knowledge. Prince denied any involvement in the operation as executed. Goudreau and several captured operatives faced Venezuelan prosecution. The operation's connection to the US government — if any — has not been officially established.

• —Jordan Goudreau, a former US Green Beret, signed a $212.9 million contract with Venezuelan opposition figures for what he described as an extraction-and-destabilization operation. The contract was later disputed as unauthorized by opposition leadership.
• —AP and McClatchy reporting (May 2020) cited evidence connecting Prince to early planning discussions, including messages reviewed by reporters. Prince's spokesman denied any connection to Operation Gideon.
• —Six Americans were ultimately captured or involved in the operation. Luke Denman and Airan Berry — both ex-Special Forces — were captured by Venezuelan authorities, tried, and sentenced. They were eventually released in prisoner exchange negotiations.
• —The Trump administration officially denied any US government involvement in Operation Gideon. The State Department had publicly offered $15 million for information leading to Maduro's capture.
• —If the AP/McClatchy reporting is accurate, Prince's involvement in early planning would potentially constitute a violation of the Neutrality Act, which prohibits US persons from organizing military operations against countries with which the US is at peace.

Source: Rolling Stone: "Venezuela: Inside Operation Gideon, a Coup Gone Very Wrong" (2020)

By early 2025, Erik Prince had re-positioned himself as a vendor for the Trump second-term immigration enforcement apparatus. Through an entity called 2USV — co-developed with former Blackwater COO Bill Mathews — Prince proposed a $25 billion privatized mass deportation plan targeting 12 million undocumented immigrants before the 2026 midterms. The 26-page proposal called for deputized private security contractors, a fleet of 100 private aircraft, and military-style "processing camps." Independent estimates placed the plan's actual cost at approximately $80 billion. CNN reported in March 2025 that the White House had kept Prince "at arm's length" and that he had not secured a formal meeting with senior administration officials. He had not won a formal contract as of the reporting date. The ICE contracting environment he was pitching into — no-bid contracts, rapid private-prison expansion — was proceeding without him through GEO Group and CoreCivic.

• —The 2USV entity is registered as a government contractor. Prince's co-developer is Bill Mathews, former Blackwater COO who also served in the post-Prince management of the renamed company.
• —The $25 billion figure is Prince's own. Independent analysis by immigration policy researchers placed the cost of the operational plan he described — 12 million deportations via private aircraft and contracted detention camps — at approximately $80 billion.
• —CNN's March 2025 reporting noted that despite Prince's Trump-orbit media presence and his history of access, the White House had been reluctant to formalize a meeting or contract — a posture attributed to his legal exposure and the political toxicity of the Blackwater brand.
• —The ICE contracting environment Prince was pitching into was, as of 2025, expanding rapidly: multi-hundred-million-dollar no-bid contracts with GEO Group and CoreCivic for new detention beds, and separate skip-tracing contracts with smaller firms.
• —Prince has publicly advocated privatizing ICE functions since at least 2018, when he proposed a similar framework in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Source: CNN Politics: "The return of Erik Prince: How a notorious military contractor maneuvered his way back inside Trump's orbit" (March 13, 2025)