{"id":180114,"date":"2017-07-15T18:03:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-15T23:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/07\/15\/betsy-devos-war-profiteer-and-zombies\/"},"modified":"2017-07-15T18:03:00","modified_gmt":"2017-07-15T23:03:00","slug":"betsy-devos-war-profiteer-and-zombies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/07\/15\/betsy-devos-war-profiteer-and-zombies\/","title":{"rendered":"Betsy Devos, War Profiteer \u2026\u2026\u2026 And Zombies"},"content":{"rendered":"
As you may be aware, Betsy Devos’ brother is Eric Prince, who runs the mercenary firm formerly known as Blackwater.<\/div>\n

What you may not know is that the Trump administration is talking with Prince about increasing the mercenary involvement in Afghanistan, and that Betsy DeVos has invested in another mercenary firm run by her son in law<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Department of Education Secretary and billionaire heiress Betsy DeVos invested in a defense contracting firm owned by her son-in-law at the same time her brother was helping the Trump administration craft a new Afghan war strategy \u2014 one that called on the military to use more private contractors.<\/span>

<\/span>Betsy DeVos invested between $100,000 and $250,000 in LexTM3, LLC<\/a> in May according to U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE) disclosure reviewed by the International Business Times. (Disclosure forms give only a range for the value of purchases.) LexTM3 is a defense contractor led by CEO and co-founder Nate Lowery, DeVos\u2019 son-in-law<\/a>. The company has received 70 contracts worth $1,425,248<\/a> from the Defense Department since the company formed from the merger of Lex Products Corp and TM3 Systems Inc. in September 2015<\/a>.<\/span>

<\/span>DeVos has invested repeatedly in LexTM3 since Donald Trump became president. Disclosure forms show she invested between $250,001 and $500,000 in LexTM3 in February<\/a> and in March, and between $100,001 and $250,000 in April.<\/a> This is all after she disclosed that she owned a total of between $1,000,001 and $5,000,000 worth of the company in an initial disclosure form submitted the day before Trump took office<\/a> in January. <\/span>

<\/span>But DeVos\u2019 most recent investment was filed with the OGE on May 30, the day before her brother Erik Prince published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal<\/i><\/a> calling for a new approach to the Afghan war and urging the U.S. military to use \u201ccheaper private solutions.\u201d <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s repulsive, but by the standards of the Trump family, members of the Trump administration, and her own family (Eric Prince and Nate Lowrey are renting out mercs for a living) she’s a piker.<\/p>\n

And zombies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As you may be aware, Betsy Devos’ brother is Eric Prince, who runs the mercenary firm formerly known as Blackwater. What you may not know is that the Trump administration is talking with Prince about increasing the mercenary involvement in Afghanistan, and that Betsy DeVos has invested in another mercenary firm run by her son …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[467,368,573,468,454],"class_list":["post-180114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-afghanistan","tag-corruption","tag-donald-trump","tag-mercenaries","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180114"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}