Dear Commons Community,

In following the Russian/Trump connection news, Eric Prince’s name came up over the weekend as a possible contact person. As reported by Business Insider:

“Days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Blackwater founder Erik Prince met with a Russian close to President Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles islands to create a communication back-channel between Trump and Russia, according to The Washington Post.
Officials with the United Arab Emirates brokered the January 11 meeting in the hopes of helping to encourage Russia to distance itself from Iran, a major Kremlin ally. The Trump administration has often expressed its skepticism of Iran, and Trump often derided the US nuclear deal with Iran on the campaign trail.
A former intelligence official in the Obama administration who met with Trump transition officials told the Post that “separating Russia from Iran was a common theme” on Trump’s team. The Trump administration sees Iran as a threat to the US, and both Iran and Russia have been working to expand their power in the Middle East in recent years.
Prince reportedly approached Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, after Zayed met with Trump transition officials in New York in December. That meeting included former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and current Trump administration advisers Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner.”

I have blogged about Prince and Blackwater in the past. It is a company that reflects the questionable side of the military industrial complex. However, the part of this story that caught my eye is that Prince is Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ brother. There is nothing wrong with having a brother ( I had two), but Prince is a questionable character. To be so close to DeVos makes me shudder a bit.

 
Trump’s  swamp continues to get bigger and bigger!

Tony