Who's Who in Erik Prince's formerly top secret WhatsApp group chat

I've got their names and details of their exuberant, frequently deranged, discussions. The content would be comical if it wasn't so alarming.

Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, Hitler’s finance minister, with Der Führer. Von Krosigk, who was convicted at Nurember for financing the conconcentration camps, is the grandfather of a group chat member.

I have a long story out today in the New Republic about a private WhatsApp group chat created by Blackwater founder Erik Prince, whose members include prominent figures in the domestic and international far right, among them current and former government officials, members of congress, national security operatives, soldiers of fortune, weapons brokers, black bag operators, grifters, convicted criminals, activists, and journalists.  Some of those in the the group chat view it as a forum to exchange ideas and a vehicle to put their theories into action. “If we band together … we can damage the other side like no one has ever seen before!” Jeff Sloat, who worked with a U.S. Army psyops unit in Central America during the Reagan era, posted to the group. 

I’m going to be writing a lot more about the group chat here on Substack – warning: in about a week, some content is going to be available only to subscribers – and I’m slammed at the moment, so I’m going to keep this short. However, I have a lot more in my files than there was room to include in the New Republic that I’ll be revealing, including the names of about another 200 group chat members that weren’t included in today’s story – and some real doozies, there just wasn’t room to fit them all in the first piece.

There are about 400 people in the group chat’s cast of characters. Some of the ones I published today are:

—From the US, Tucker Carlson, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, Trump’s convicted-then-pardoned first national security adviser, Tennessee Congressman Mark Green of the House Freedom Caucus; noted crank Lara Logan, Vish Burra, who was director of operations for Congressman George Santos; Stuart Seldowitz, a national security adviser to Barack Obama who was arrested last November after harassing an Egyptian halal street cart vendor in New York City for two weeks, during which time he called him a “terrorist” and said, “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, it wasn’t enough.”

—From overseas, Sven von Storch, born to a German family that left for Chile after World War II, whose wife, Beatrix von Storch, is the granddaughter of Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, Adolf Hitler’s finance minister and the last de facto leader of the Third Reich, Romanian soldier of fortune Horatiu Potra, and several dozen Israelis, including a recently retired intelligence operative abd diplomat who during the group chat daydreamed about nuking Gaza. 

Sorry, I have to run, make sure to check out and share the New Republic story, and stay tuned, there’ll be much, much more here starting next week.