Prince spent the transition period “providing advice to Trump’s inner circle, including his top national security adviser, Michael Flynn.”86 Bloomberg explains Prince’s assistance of the PTT by noting that “Trump was weakest in the area where the stakes were highest—foreign affairs. Among those his aides turned to was Prince.”87 Even so, it will be clear from the beginning of Prince’s advising of the Trump campaign in 2015 that neither Trump, Prince, nor anyone on the Trump team wants Prince’s involvement in the development of Trump’s foreign policy to be discovered; it is for this reason, Bloomberg notes, that after Election Day Prince always “entered Trump Tower through the back, like others who wanted to avoid the media spotlight, and huddled with members of the president-elect’s team to discuss intelligence and security issues.”88 The result: Prince, according to several sources familiar with his activities in November and December 2016, was “very much a presence” at Trump Tower during the post-election months.89 Despite this, a Prince spokesman in London will issue a prepared statement in response to the Bloomberg report, declaring that “Erik had no role on the transition team”—a statement that is technically true, as Trump never gave the longtime mercenary any formal PTT role.90 In his statement to Bloomberg, Prince also appears to accuse deep-state operatives in the intelligence community of illicitly monitoring his activities—an accusation that Trump will soon echo with respect to his own communications inside Trump Tower.91
Despite his public claims to the contrary, “over a two to three month period around the election,” writes Bloomberg, Prince was himself telling “several people that … his role was significant.”92 As for the transition period in particular, “current and former U.S. officials” say that “while Prince refrained from playing a direct role in the Trump transition, his name surfaced so frequently in internal discussions that he seemed to function as an outside adviser whose opinions were valued on a range of issues.”93
Bloomberg reports that the topics on which Erik Prince secretly advised the president-elect included, among others, terrorism, counterintelligence, and potential government appointees.94 While Prince’s meetings with the PTT usually began with Prince entering Trump Tower through its private back entrance, on occasion they occurred elsewhere; Bloomberg details one meeting between Prince and two PTT members on the Acela Express train from New York City to Washington.95 This “meeting” was attended by both Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s third and final campaign manager, and Kevin Harrington, a future member of Trump’s National Security Council.96 One of Bloomberg’s sources, a person close to Prince, tells the media outlet that “the discussions [Prince had with the campaign] were intended to remain private.”97
Prince was also in contact with Trump and his inner circle prior to the transition, however, and not just at various social-cum-political events attended by both Trump and Prince, such as Robert Mercer’s “Heroes and Villains” party or Trump’s election-night victory party.98 Despite telling Congress under oath that he “played no official or, really, unofficial role” on the Trump campaign, Prince also concedes that he donated to Trump, attended multiple Trump fundraisers (including some Trump attended), and, most importantly, wrote policy papers “on different foreign policy positions and … kicked them up into the adviser-sphere on what should be done on Middle Eastern or African counterterrorism issues.”99 Given that Prince had, in the early 2010s, all but run the United Arab Emirates’ military operations, and that his boss MBZ had participated in George Nader’s secret fall 2015 summit on the Red Sea—indeed, to put a finer point on it, that MBZ did business with Erik Prince via a $529 million contract to “help bring in foreign fighters [to the UAE] to help assemble an internal paramilitary force capable of carrying out secret operations and protecting Emirati installations”—Prince’s admission that he advised Trump on “Middle Eastern counterterrorism issues” prior to Election Day means that he was simultaneously a counterterrorism adviser to the UAE and to Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election.100 This suggests that Trump and his inner circle had more pre-election interlocutors connected to members of the Red Sea Conspiracy than just Nader and Emirati ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba; Prince had access to Trump through his top advisers—including, according to Prince’s concession to Congress, Bannon and Flynn—for the whole of the presidential campaign.101
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In March 2015, the Obama administration declines to enforce its “ambitious” conditions on the release of military aid to Egypt, sending several weapons systems to el-Sisi in Cairo after pleas from “Egypt’s regional allies—Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United