How Ex-SEAL on Child Rescue Mission Became Island Kingpin
Source: Daily Beast
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN
How Ex-SEAL on Child Rescue Mission Became Island Kingpin
A mercenary tied to a Trump-friendly nonprofit got rights in 2019 to take over the controversial development of a Haitian island.
William Bredderman
Senior Researcher
Updated Feb. 17, 2024 2:54AM EST / Published Feb. 16, 2024 11:05PM EST
When a former Navy SEAL with ties to a raft of Trumpworld figures landed in Haiti nearly a decade ago, his putative mission was to lead raid and rescue operations that would recover a missing American child. But by his own account, he did little work in that direction—and The Daily Beast has discovered he instead fell into the Caribbean state’s thorny politics, and into an unbelievable business deal: control of a paradisiacal island that Port-au-Prince seized from its inhabitants.
Since Dave Lopez left the elite special ops force, his résumé has featured a stint with Erik Prince’s mercenary firm Blackwater, the launch of an anti-vaxx supplement company, and multiple ventures with former Trump Customs and Immigration Services chief Ken Cuccinelli. But the gig that sent him to Haiti, that entangled him with Port-au-Prince’s powerbrokers, and positioned him to win the rights to build what his team vows will be the struggling country’s answer to Disney World, was his role at Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.).
O.U.R. and its founder, Tim Ballard, became nationally famous last summer with the release of its fictionalized cinematic origin story Sound of Freedom—and then infamous in the fall, as Ballard faced claims of sexual predation and of self-enrichment at the expense of his organization’s donors. Ballard has cast these allegations as a “smear campaign” designed to besmirch his name and extort cash.
But in years past, Ballard and O.U.R. had enjoyed a level of celebrity on the political right, where their mission of disrupting alleged child-trafficking networks resonated with a fringe inflamed with conspiracy theories about elite pedophiles dominating the world.
Experts on exploitation warned that the group’s flashy tactics, which included filmed sweeps of supposed underage sex dens, served the self-styled saviors more than the victims. ...
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Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-ex-seal-on-child-rescue-mission-became-island-kingpin
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Note: The article at the link is a very long, but interesting read.
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