It has been a terrific week for what used to be called contempt of Congress, back when we had a Congress run by people less worthy of contempt. There was a time, and not so long ago, when, if someone had run the rap that Donald Trump, Jr. tried to run before the House Intelligence Committee the other day—that his conversation with his father were subject to attorney-client privilege, apparently because there was a lawyer somewhere within the 202 area code—that person would have left Capitol Hill in handcuffs. But this is the present Congress with the present Republican majorities running things, so Junior walked away to prevaricate another day.

The day before Junior’s appearance, a friendly member of Congress not unfamiliar with the shebeen gave me a heads-up. Wait until the transcript of Erik Prince’s testimony is released, this friendly person said. You won’t believe it. It was the considered opinion that Prince possibly was the most arrogant jackass ever to appear before a congressional committee. The transcript was released on Thursday and it will be hard to trust my pal again, considering how far he low-balled Prince’s attitude. The witness did everything except drop trou and moon the committee. There was a time, and not so long ago, when a person who treated a congressional committee like a group of not-very-competent valet parking attendants would have been introduced to institutional dining for a few months, But this is the present Congress with the present Republican majorities, so Prince looked up from the witness table and saw what he perceived to be a gathering of ambulatory doormats.

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As you may know, Prince got rich running Blackwater, a mercenary military contracting force that fell apart after going renegade in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. Prince went on to a lucrative career as a gun-and-spook for hire and moved his operation to the friendlier climes of Abu Dhabi. He got involved with the Trump campaign, so, naturally, given his profession, he became entangled in that campaign’s prolonged slow dance with connected Russian oligarchs and other international grifters. Most recently, he has been in the news when it was reported that he proposed to develop a private military and intelligence force that would operate under the direct supervision of the White House.

(Of course, Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, is presently the Secretary of Education, where she has been tasked to do to the public schools what her brother did for the country’s image in Iraq.)

Of interest to the House Intelligence Committee, of course, was Prince’s role as an alleged go-between, a bridge between the Trump campaign and Russian bankers, particularly a meeting with the chief executive of a state-run Russian investment bank over dinner in the Seychelles Islands, a meeting arranged by Prince’s influential friends in the United Arab Emirates. Prince met with Steve Bannon prior to this meeting, something that Democrats on the committee found piquant as well.



The meeting, Prince insisted was no big deal. But he was far more concerned about how the world had heard about it. (The Washington Post broke the story last April, claiming that Prince had met with the Russian to develop a backchannel between the Trump people and Moscow.) Barack Obama, he told the committee, lifting himself and his dudgeon on high, was trying to destroy him.

“What I would hope the intelligence committee is doing is questioning why Americans were caught up in waves of signals intelligence. Why on earth would the Washington Post be running an article on any meeting that a private citizen, me, was having in a foreign country? That's illegal. That is a political abuse of the intelligence infrastructure. And that is really dangerous, especially as this committee and the Congress thinks about reauthorizing very wide-ranging intelligence authorities to dig into private Americans' electronic communications of any sort; that's what I have an issue with."

That distraction dispensed with, Prince went on to describe the Seychelles meeting in generalized, foggy terms. It had nothing to do with no back-channeling. No, sir. They were just talking about bauxite, and about how Barack Obama had screwed things up so badly in the Middle East by not listening to the guidance provided by people like Erik Prince.

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But it was as the day ground on that Prince’s true contempt for civilian authority and the rule of law came to full flower. When Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro asked Prince about whether or not he had any moles in the New York Police Department who might have leaked to him what the New York FBI office was doing regarding Hillary Rodham Clinton’s emails, Prince reacted as though Castro had asked him for the nuclear launch codes.

Castro: So I guess why were you quoted in that story as saying someone in the NYPD was telling you stuff.

Prince: How is this germane to this fishing expedition?

But it was when he was being questioned for the second time by Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the committee, Prince emptied both barrels.

Prince: Now, listen, it’s 5:30. I haven’t been home in a week. I flew in this morning from Africa and I’ve had about enough of this. So, thank you.

Schiff: Are you refusing to testify any further, Mr. Prince?

Prince: I’d say the extent of your questions is so far outside the scope of what you’re actually looking for that I’m not here to indulge your fishing expedition any longer…Look, it’s not even the nature of the questioning. The fact is that I have been here for…three hours, actually. And I haven’t been home in a week. I came back from Africa, arrived this morning to indulge you here and I think I have indulged you enough. You have the document production you have asked for and there is nothing else to see or hear.

Schiff: Are you refusing to finish the hearing, Mr. Prince?

Prince: I’m refusing to waste anyone else’s time.

So the hearing left it that Prince flew halfway around the world to meet some people from the UAE and, lo and behold, there was this influential Russian banker there, too. Erik Prince lives a life of great coincidence, and you have no right to know what he’s up to, you groveling insect, with your Congress and everything.

Prince: OK, we will go to six o’clock and then we’ll be done.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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