“I do believe that there is very strong evidence that he willingly misled the committee," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said about Erik Prince. | Presley Ann/Getty Images Legal Schiff makes criminal referral to DOJ for Erik Prince

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Tuesday made a criminal referral to the Justice Department for Erik Prince based on evidence that “strongly indicates” the Trump ally lied to Congress.

In a letter to Attorney General William Barr, Schiff claimed Prince, the billionaire founder of a military contracting firm, intentionally misled the House Intelligence Committee and impaired their probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.


Schiff wrote the publication of the Mueller report shed light on discrepancies between Prince's interview with the special counsel and his testimony before the committee in November 2017, when he denied he was attempting to establish a back channel between Russia and Trump during the president’s transition.

“Mr. Prince’s false statements hindered the Committee’s ability to fully understand and examine foreign efforts to undermine our political process and national security, develop appropriate legislative and policy remedies to counter future malign influence operations targeting campaigns and presidential transitions, and inform the American public, as appropriate,“ Schiff wrote in the letter.

Schiff highlighted six instances in which information revealed about Prince in the Mueller report diverged from his testimony before the committee. He homed in on Prince's meeting with a Russian banker who is reportedly close to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles islands in January 2017, an encounter Prince later told congressional officials took place purely by chance.

“We know from the Mueller report now that this was not a chance meeting,” Schiff said in an interview with Washington Post reporter Bob Costa earlier Tuesday.

Playbook PM Sign up for our must-read newsletter on what's driving the afternoon in Washington. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

In the interview, he added that the Justice Department will need to consider if the case is prosecutable because Prince’s testimony to Mueller’s team was made under a proffer agreement, the terms of which are not public.

“If the evidence that his testimony was false, was given to the Justice Department by Prince under the condition it not be used against him, then being able to prove the case may be problematic,” Schiff said.

Prince’s lawyer, Matthew L. Schwartz, said in a statement that there’s no new evidence and that Prince cooperated fully with Mueller’s probe.

“There is nothing new here for the Department of Justice to consider, nor is there any reason to question the Special Counsel’s decision to credit Mr. Prince and rely on him in drafting its report,” he said.

Prince told Schiff's committee in late 2017 that he had no "official or, really, unofficial role" with the Trump campaign. He said he wrote unsolicited policy papers that he forwarded to Trump adviser Steve Bannon, attended some fundraisers and contributed to Trump's campaign.

"So there was no other formal communications or contact with the campaign?" asked then-Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.)

"Correct," Prince replied.

But a succession of news reports indicated that Prince's relationship with the campaign was deeper than he let on. According to a New York Times report last May, Prince helped facilitate meetings for high-level Trump campaign staff.

Prince also drew scrutiny after a Washington Post report in January 2017 over his trip to the Seychelles. The story indicated Prince had traveled to the islands to help set up a backchannel between Trump's team and the Kremlin. In the Seychelles, Prince met with top officials of the U.A.E. as well as a high-level Kremlin connected Russian named Kirill Dmitriev.

Though Prince told lawmakers his encounter with Dmitriev was random and unplanned, Mueller's report described a planned encounter in which Prince sought to convey a more cooperative demeanor from the incoming Trump administration.

Schiff in his letter to Barr pointed out that Prince told the House Oversight Committee he had just one meeting with Dmitriev in the Seychelles, when Mueller's report said he had two. The special counsel report also said the second meeting was organized by Prince to discuss Russia's involvement in Libya, though Prince told members of Congress he only discussed trade matters, oil and commodity prices, and the threat of Islamic terrorism.



Prince also misled the House Oversight Committee by lying about his contact with Bannon about the Seychelles meetings, which he was attending as a representative of the Trump campaign, Schiff wrote. Prince briefed Bannon on his conversations with Dmitriev and told the Russian banker he would report back to Bannon, who would instruct someone from the campaign to reach out if he was interested in any further discussions.



Schiff also went after Prince for in his congressional testimony failing to mention George Nader, a business associate who worked for the United Arab Emirates’ royal court and set up the Seychelles meeting with Dmitriev. Schiff wrote that Congress could have requested documents and testimony from Nader and other potential witnesses had they not been misled.

Members of the House Intelligence Committee, in a bipartisan move, voted in February to send dozens of witness interview transcripts from its Russia investigation to Mueller.

The special counsel prosecuted Trump associate Roger Stone and the president's former personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen for lying to Congress. The committee’s Democrats have long suggested that others close to the president — including his son, Donald Trump Jr. — might have lied during their testimonies on Capitol Hill.

Schiff in the interview Tuesday declined to say whether he would refer Trump Jr. or Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and top adviser, to the Justice Department for potential perjury.

Democrats have pushed for access to an underacted version of the report and its underlying evidence for, among other reasons, the ability to determine whether witnesses lied to Congress.

“We have reached the point of ripeness with Erik Prince’s testimony that we feel it appropriate to refer it,” Schiff said.