Nader had represented Prince to Dmitriev as "designated by Steve [Bannon] to meet you! I know him and he is very very well connected and trusted by the New Team", while Prince "acknowledged that it was fair for Nader to think that Prince would pass information on to the Transition Team", although Bannon told investigators that Prince had not informed him of the Dmitriev meeting in advance. Prince testified to the House Intelligence Committee that "I didn't fly there to meet any Russian guy", although the Mueller report found that he and Nader made significant preparations to meet Dmitriev. Although Prince characterized a second meeting between him and Dmitriev in a hotel bar as a chance encounter of no consequence, the meeting was actually pre-arranged after Prince had learned from calls back home that Russia had moved an aircraft carrier off Libya and he wanted to convey that the United States would not accept any Russian involvement in Libya. House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff announced on April 30, 2019, that he was sending a criminal referral to the Justice Department alleging Prince had provided false testimony to the committee. United States Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd confirmed on February 4, 2020, that the Department of Justice was opening an investigation into Prince. Connections to Nicolas Maduro and Venezuela On December 30, 2019, it was reported that Prince had traveled to Venezuela to meet with a top aide of Nicolas Maduro. Prince has been referred to the United States Treasury Department for possible violations of sanctions against the Maduro government. Allegations of political infiltration operations The New York Times reported in March 2020 that in recent years Prince had recruited former intelligence agents to infiltrate "Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda." Prince's efforts were reportedly conducted to assist Project Veritas, a widely discredited conservative organization that was described as disseminating "coordinated disinformation" due to its repeated use of deceptively edited videos in attempts to discredit Democrats, the media, and liberal groups. Until mid-2018, Richard Seddon, a former British spy, headed the field operations for the plots and trained operatives in Wyoming at the Prince ranch. Prince also reportedly arranged for Project Veritas employees to receive intelligence training, which ended when the trainer quit because the group "wasn't capable of learning". Prince continued to support Project Veritas after the organization's failure to disclose