Erik Prince, former US Navy officer and founder of private military company Academi LLC (formerly Blackwater), filed a defamation lawsuit against the news site The Intercept over an April article that alleged that he “sought in recent months to provide military services to a sanctioned Russian mercenary firm in at least two African conflicts”, RealClearInvestigations revealed, citing comments from Prince’s lawyer.
In the article, titled “Erik Prince Offered Lethal Services to Sanctioned Russian Mercenary Firm Wagner”, the Intercept suggested that Prince, who is the brother of the current US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, earlier allegedly met with officials from Russia’s Wagner Group in order to offer his mercenary forces to support paramilitary activities in Libya and Mozambique. The Russian company apparently refused his services. The article did not provide any exact details about the purported offer but cited “three people with knowledge of the efforts” as sources.
“Any business relationship between Prince and Wagner would, in effect, make the influential Trump administration adviser a subcontractor to the Russian military”, the article’s authors, Matthew Cole and Alex Emmons, claimed on 13 April.
However, Prince’s attorney from Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, Matthew L. Schwartz, denied the allegations, arguing that his client had “no choice but to defend himself”, after ignoring falsifications against him for a long time.
“This story was different”, Schwartz told the outlet. “The Intercept accused Erik Prince of being a criminal and a traitor based on dishonest and biased anonymous sources that it made no effort to corroborate”.
The complaint against The Intercept, the publication’s authors, and media group First Look Media, was filed on 19 Tuesday in a District Court in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
The lawsuit suggests that the defamation was made “with malice” and “as part of a long scheme by the Defendants to knowingly publish false, misleading, and defamatory statements about Mr. Prince in order to further the Defendants’ political agenda”.
Previously, the Intercept extensively reported on FBI probes into Prince’s alleged activities, including an investigation over claims that he lied to Congress about communication with a Russian bank official in relation to the 2016 presidential campaign, as well as his alleged plot to illegally convert crop-dusting aircraft into “attack” planes. While the FBI investigations against the Blackwater founder are still ongoing, Prince has denied all the accusations, while Moscow has described claims about its purported interference in US presidential election as baseless.
