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Despite Concerns About Blackmail, Flynn Heard C.I.A. Secrets
By MATT APUZZO, MATTHEW ROSENBERG and ADAM GOLDMANJUNE 20, 2017


Mike Pompeo, the C.I.A. director, center, at the Capitol to brief members of the House Intelligence Committee last month. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Senior officials across the government became convinced in January that the incoming national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, had become vulnerable to Russian blackmail.

At the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — agencies responsible for keeping American secrets safe from foreign spies — career officials agreed that Mr. Flynn represented an urgent problem.

Yet nearly every day for three weeks, the new C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo, sat in the Oval Office and briefed President Trump on the nation’s most sensitive intelligence — with Mr. Flynn listening. Mr. Pompeo has not said whether C.I.A. officials left him in the dark about their views of Mr. Flynn, but one administration official said Mr. Pompeo did not share any concerns about Mr. Flynn with the president.

The episode highlights another remarkable aspect of Mr. Flynn’s stormy 25-day tenure in the White House: He sat atop a national security apparatus that churned ahead, despite its own conclusion that he was at risk of being compromised by a hostile foreign power.

The concerns about Mr. Flynn’s vulnerabilities, born from misleading statements he made to White House officials about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, are at the heart of a legal and political storm that has engulfed the Trump administration. Many of Mr. Trump’s political problems, including the appointment of a special counsel and the controversy over the firing of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, can be ultimately traced to Mr. Flynn’s tumultuous tenure.

Time and again, the Trump administration looked the other way in the face of warning signs about Mr. Flynn. Mr. Trump entrusted him with the nation’s secrets despite knowing that he faced a Justice Department investigation over his undisclosed foreign lobbying. Even a personal warning from President Obama did not dissuade him.

Mr. Pompeo sidestepped questions from senators last month about his handling of the information about Mr. Flynn, declining to say whether he knew about his own agency’s concerns. “I can’t answer yes or no,” he said. “I regret that I’m unable to do so.” His words frustrated Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“Either Director Pompeo had no idea what people in the C.I.A. reportedly knew about Michael Flynn, or he knew about the Justice Department’s concerns and continued to discuss America’s secrets with a man vulnerable to blackmail,” Mr. Wyden said in a statement. “I believe Director Pompeo owes the public an explanation.”

After Mr. Pompeo’s Senate testimony, The New York Times asked officials at several agencies whether Mr. Pompeo had raised concerns about Mr. Flynn to the president and, if so, whether the president had ignored him. One administration official responded on the condition of anonymity that Mr. Pompeo, whether he knew of the concerns or not, had not told the president about them.

A C.I.A. spokesman declined to discuss any interactions between the president and Mr. Pompeo.

“Whether the C.I.A. director briefed the president on a specific intelligence issue during a specific time frame is not something we publicly comment on and we’re not about to start today,” said Dean Boyd, a C.I.A. spokesman.

Concerns across the government about Mr. Flynn were so great after Mr. Trump took office that six days after the inauguration, on Jan. 26, the acting attorney general, Sally Q. Yates, warned the White House that Mr. Flynn had been “compromised.”

Ms. Yates’s concerns focused on phone calls that Mr. Flynn had in late December with Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States. When the White House faced questions about whether the two men had discussed lifting American sanctions on Russia, Vice President Mike Pence told reporters that Mr. Flynn had assured him that sanctions were not discussed. Intelligence officials knew otherwise, based on routine intercepts of Mr. Kislyak’s conversations.

“That created a compromise situation,” Ms. Yates later told Congress, “a situation where the national security adviser essentially could be blackmailed by the Russians.”

Mr. Trump waited 18 days from that warning before firing Mr. Flynn, a period in which Mr. Pompeo continued to brief Mr. Flynn and the president. The White House has offered changing explanations for why the president waited until Feb. 13 — soon after Ms. Yates’s warning made national news — before firing Mr. Flynn.

White House officials have said they moved deliberately both out of respect for Mr. Flynn and because they were not sure how seriously they should take the concerns. They also said the president believed that Ms. Yates, an Obama administration holdover, had a political agenda. She was fired days later over her refusal to defend in court Mr. Trump’s ban on travel for people from several predominantly Muslim countries.

A warning from Mr. Pompeo might have persuaded the White House to take Ms. Yates’s concerns more seriously. Mr. Pompeo, a former congressman, is a Republican stalwart whom Mr. Trump has described as “brilliant and unrelenting.”

Mr. Pompeo was sworn in three days before Ms. Yates went to the White House. He testified last month that he did not know what was said in that meeting. By that time, C.I.A. officials had attended meetings with F.B.I. agents about Mr. Flynn and reviewed the transcripts of his conversations with the Russian ambassador, according to several current and former American security officials. Separately, intelligence agencies were aware that Russian operatives had discussed ways to use their relationship with Mr. Flynn to influence Mr. Trump.

Mr. Pompeo, who briefs the president nearly every day, had frequent opportunities to raise the issue with Mr. Trump.

The President’s Daily Brief is a rundown of what America’s spies consider the most pressing issues facing the United States. On any given day, it can include details of a terrorist plot being hatched overseas, an analysis of a foreign political crisis that threatens American interests or a look at foreign hackers who are trying to breach American government computer systems.

Each president takes the briefing differently. President Barack Obama was said to prefer reading it on a secure tablet. President George W. Bush liked his briefers to talk through the document they were presenting. Mr. Pompeo has described Mr. Trump as a voracious consumer of the briefing, who likes maps, charts, pictures, videos and “killer graphics.”

At an event last month at Westwood Country Club in Northern Virginia, Mr. Pompeo told retired C.I.A. officials that his briefings often run past their scheduled 30 minutes, according to one retired official in attendance. Mr. Pompeo said Mr. Trump is eager for information and asks many questions.

At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Pompeo assured senators that he would provide the president with unvarnished information, even when it would be viewed as unpleasant. “I can tell you that I have assured the president-elect that I’ll do that,” Mr. Pompeo said.

On Capitol Hill, Mr. Wyden questioned why Mr. Pompeo continued having discussions with Mr. Flynn despite the concerns of intelligence officials. “He was the national security adviser,” Mr. Pompeo said. “He was present for the daily brief on many occasions.”

Mr. Flynn had no love for the C.I.A., and the feeling was mutual. An Army general who had risen to lead the Defense Intelligence Agency, Mr. Flynn emerged in retirement as a C.I.A. critic, blaming the agency for his firing and what he called its failure to foresee the rise of the Islamic State. He insisted the Obama administration had politicized the agency, an assertion Mr. Pompeo later said he saw no evidence to support.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/us/p ... o-cia.html

NYT: Flynn Was Briefed On CIA Secrets For Weeks Despite Blackmail Concerns


By ALLEGRA KIRKLAND Published JUNE 21, 2017 10:12 AM
The head of the CIA continued to brief Michael Flynn on the nation’s most sensitive intelligence information until he was ousted as national security adviser, despite concerns from top government agencies, including the CIA itself, that Flynn was vulnerable to Russian blackmail, according to a New York Times report out Tuesday.

Trump administration officials were warned days after inauguration that Flynn was under federal investigation and had mislead White House officials about his contacts with Russian operatives. Yet Flynn still sat in on near-daily presidential briefings from CIA Director Mike Pompeo throughout his tenure in the White House, according to the Times.

While career officials at the CIA, Justice Department, FBI, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence reportedly expressed grave concerns about Flynn, Pompeo declined under oath to say if he was aware of those concerns.

“I can’t answer yes or no,” he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last month. “I regret that I’m unable to do so.”

One administration official who spoke to the Times said that if Pompeo was aware of Flynn’s compromised situation, he never shared any concerns about it with the President.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/f ... sed-russia

Is Michael Flynn Cooperating With the FBI?

Two Democratic senators think so. How sound is their case?

By Jeremy Stahl
U.S. National Security Adviser Michael Flynn walks along the West Wing colonnade at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 10, 2017.


With all the drama surrounding James Comey, it’s easy to forget that the Trump administration’s troubles started with Michael Flynn. It was Flynn who lied to Vice President Mike Pence and to FBI investigators about a meeting with the Russians, and it was the former national security adviser who the president was trying to protect when he—according to Comey’s sworn testimony—asked the ex-FBI director to “see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.” (Trump denies saying this.)

There’s every reason to believe Flynn continues to be a key figure—and perhaps the key figure—in Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia’s election meddling, the Trump campaign’s potential collusion in such, and other crimes that may have stemmed from those affairs. On Monday, two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee posited that Flynn was already cooperating with Mueller, potentially offering testimony that could incriminate Trump.

“If you draw conclusions as a prosecutor about what we can see from the Flynn investigation, all the signals are suggesting that he’s already cooperating with the FBI and may have been for some time,” Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. Later in the evening, Sen. Richard Blumenthal agreed with that assessment. “The likelihood of his cooperation is very high,” the Connecticut Democrat told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell. “Whether he will be truthful in cooperating, whether in fact he knows enough to justify some kind of agreement with the prosecutors, I think will be told by time.”

What exactly are the arguments that Flynn is cooperating, how sound are they, and what would it mean if Flynn did in fact decide to roll over? Whitehouse, a former U.S. attorney and state attorney general, laid out his case in great detail on Monday night. (Blumenthal, who also served as a U.S. attorney and state attorney general, was more succinct in his analysis.) Here is a point-by-point assessment of Whitehouse’s theory, one that criminal justice experts have told me is clearly speculative but also makes a great deal of sense.


Flynn was caught red-handed and faces stiff jail time.

“First of all, they had him dead to rights on a felony false statement,” Whitehouse told Blitzer. He was referring to the reporting that Flynn lied to federal investigators about what he discussed in his December meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Indeed, such a crime—as well as additional crimes Flynn may have committed—would carry a very stiff penalty, as Blumenthal noted:

He has pretty clearly lied to the FBI, lied to intelligence agencies on his disclosure form, the defense intelligence agency perhaps, and committed other serious falsehoods that put him in serious legal jeopardy. And as you may know, the penalty for violating the law prohibiting these false statements, which is 18 United States Code, 1001, is five years in prison for each violation.
Robert Weisberg, co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, told me it’s only logical that these potential penalties would induce Flynn to cooperate. “It makes a lot of sense to me that he’s singing,” Weisberg said. That cooperation, though, could be coming in fits and starts. “He may be singing in short arias as he is sort of dosing out his information,” Weisberg told me. “The dealmaking between him and DOJ could take many stages and is likely to have a lot of contingencies.”

Julie O’Sullivan, a Georgetown Law professor who worked for Comey in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and then briefly on the special counsel investigation into President Bill Clinton’s Whitewater dealings, agrees Flynn would at this point be in the very early stages of cooperation. “I really doubt that Mueller is in a position at this point to give him immunity,” O’Sullivan told me. “You never make decisions on immunity until you’re fairly far along in an investigation so that you know you’re not giving immunity to someone who really doesn’t deserve it.”

Flynn previously requested immunity in exchange for testifying before Congress. That was denied, most likely because Flynn hadn’t offered up any information. Prosecutors also tend to be cautious in granting immunity, O’Sullivan said, because “juries hate cooperators” who are perceived as willing to “say anything” to clear their names. One exception came in the inquiry that eventually led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment. “The one person who got immunity was Monica Lewinsky because there was only one semen-stained dress and she had it,” O’Sullivan said. “Without that there was no case.”

If and when Mueller believes Flynn has something to offer that would be worth either immunity or a plea deal, the lieutenant general would have to answer a series of questions to reach what lawyers call a “Queen for a Day” proffer agreement. That deal is named after a game show in which housewives would tell sob stories in exchange for prizes. “Criminal lawyers generally have a very dark sense of humor,” O’Sullivan said.

Flynn is behaving like cooperating witnesses behave.

Whitehouse told Blitzer that after Flynn was found to have failed to disclose work he did for Turkey on government documents, he went back and corrected this error. The senator says this is what a cooperating witness would be asked to do.

“Comey reported that one of the things the FBI does with cooperators is to get them to go back and clean up areas of noncompliance,” Whitehouse told Blitzer.

Comey indeed did testify that this was “long-standing practice” during a May hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee. And as the Daily Caller reported at the time of Flynn’s registration as an agent of Turkey, “It had been unclear exactly why Flynn decided to register, though his unusually detailed filing did suggest that he was compelled by government forces to disclose the work.”

Various subpoenas indicate Flynn might be cooperating.

It’s been reported by CNN, Reuters, and the New York Times that business associates of Flynn received subpoenas demanding “records, research, contracts, bank records, communications” connected to Flynn and his Flynn Intel Group. These subpoenas were sent out by Dana J. Boente, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and indicated that this information should be sent to Brandon Van Grack, the investigator reportedly heading the grand jury inquiry into Flynn. Some of these subpoenas were issued in the weeks just before Trump fired Comey.

“All the reporting on the Eastern District of Virginia subpoenas is [that they are] one hop away from Flynn,” Whitehouse said on CNN on Monday. “He’s like the hole in a donut of subpoenas.”

We reached out to Whitehouse’s office to ask what exactly the senator was suggesting here, but no one would speak on the record. Published reports regarding the Eastern District of Virginia subpoenas have not indicated whether Flynn himself has been subpoenaed. “The government’s never going to tell you what the grand jury has subpoenaed, and if [Flynn] doesn’t say what he’s produced or whether he’s gotten a subpoena you wouldn’t know,” O’Sullivan said.

Based on what we know now, it’s impossible to classify this prong of Whitehouse’s theory as anything but speculation.

Michael Flynn hasn’t been running his mouth.

“One of the more talkative people in Trumpland has gone absolutely dead silent, and that’s what prosecutors strongly encourage cooperating witnesses to do,” Whitehouse told Blitzer.

That could just mean, though, that Flynn has been advised by counsel to keep his mouth shut. “Silence by itself is the weakest inference to stand on,” Weisberg told me. “The Occam’s Razor to explain why he’s silent is that he has a lawyer.”

One final argument for why Flynn might be talking, which Whitehouse only hinted at, is that all of Trump’s alleged efforts to block the investigation indicate the former national security adviser might have an incriminating story to tell.

“Who knows what Trump has said to him, both during the campaign and during the early days of the presidency,” Whitehouse told Blitzer. “Apparently Trump has been in touch with him after his firing from the White House to tell him to ‘stay strong,’ which, in some circumstances, could be looked at as manipulation of a witness or obstruction of justice.”

Trump’s alleged efforts to block the investigation indicate Flynn might have an incriminating story to tell.
O’Sullivan sees better evidence for this theory in the other obstruction element the special counsel is reportedly investigating: Trump’s treatment of Comey. She says Trump’s request to clear the room before he allegedly asked Comey to drop the Flynn investigation is “really hard to explain away” if the president doesn’t have something to hide.

“When [Trump] asks everybody, including Comey’s boss, to leave the room and then he poses a question—as a prosecutor what I would invite a jury to assume from that is that he knew it was wrong to ask that question,” she said. “In every criminal case that I’ve been involved in, if you have something that indicates a consciousness of guilt or a consciousness that what you’re asking is improper, juries get that.”

The implication for O’Sullivan, then, is that Trump would only do something so “extraordinary” if he had something to gain from it—that is, halting an investigation that might reveal information he doesn’t want revealed. If Flynn has that kind of information, he’d likely have a strong incentive to offer it up as an inducement to decrease his own possible prison term.

Ultimately, this is all speculation: We don’t know if Flynn is cooperating yet, and we likely won’t know for a while. That said, Reuters reported on Monday that Mueller has brought on a veteran federal prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, who helped bring down both Enron and mob boss Vincent “the Chin” Gigante. Weissmann’s specialty in those investigations? Flipping witnesses.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... e_fbi.html

It’s time for Mike Pence to come clean
BY ROSS ROSENFELD, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 06/16/17 04:20 PM EDT

It’s time for Mike Pence to come clean
© Greg Nash
The key question after James Comey’s testimony is: What did Mike Pence know, and when did he know it?

Yes, the question the nation asked more than a generation ago during Watergate is the same question which needs to be asked in the latest White House scandal.

Let’s go through some key facts and dates:

Dec. 29, 2016: Flynn speaks with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about the sanctions recently placed on Russia by the Obama administration.

Dec. 30: Vladimir Putin announces that Russia will not take action in response to the sanctions.

Jan. 4, 2017: Flynn informs the Trump transition team, which Pence headed, that he is under investigation for failing to register as an agent of the Turkish government.

Jan. 12: The Washington Post reports that Flynn and Kislyak spoke the day before Putin’s announcement.

Jan. 14: Flynn and Pence speak about the situation. Pence claims that Flynn told him that the sanctions against Russia were not discussed with Kislyak.

Jan. 15: Pence goes on Face the Nation and states that Flynn did not discuss sanctions with the Russian ambassador – a statement that proved blatantly false.

Jan. 26: Sally Yates and an aide go to the White House to speak with Don McGahn, the White House counsel. They explain that Flynn has been compromised and that he needs to inform the President, Vice President, and others.

Jan. 27: McGahn asks Yates to return to the White House to further discuss the matter.

Jan. 30: Trump fires Yates after she refuses to enforce his travel ban.

Feb. 9: The Washington Post reports that Flynn discussed the sanctions with Kislyak. A spokesperson for Pence claims that the VP had been unaware.

Feb. 10: Donald Trump also claims that he was unaware that Flynn and Kislyak had discussed sanctions.

February 13th: It is reported that the White House knew about the nature of Flynn’s discussions with Kislyak for weeks.

Now we come to James Comey’s testimony. According to Comey, as far as he understood it, the Vice President was aware of the nature of Flynn’s discussion with Kislyak.

If you are to believe otherwise, you’d have to be willing to believe that somehow others in the White House knew, including the President, but not the Vice President, who was busy speaking on news outlets and saying the complete opposite.

You’d have to believe that McGahn, who, according to Sean Spicer, conducted an “exhaustive and extensive questioning of Flynn,” did not, for some reason, inform the Vice President. It would mean that either McGahn was not doing his job and Pence didn’t know, or Pence is not telling the truth and covering the White House.

Shouldn’t we ask McGahn in order to find out?

And why wouldn’t Trump stop Pence from repeating the inaccurate information?

And if Pence isn’t telling the truth, we again must ask why. Why would Pence continually mislead the public about his knowledge of Flynn’s interaction with Kislyak?

If you ask yourself that question, you can’t help but reach the conclusion that it could only be for nefarious purposes.

Comey also indicated that Attorney General Jeff Sessions potentially could not be trusted when it came to the Russia/Flynn situation.

Again: Why?

Then, when Comey himself refused to let the Russia matter drop, he was pressured by Trump and then suddenly and unceremoniously canned. Coincidence?

The question remains: What happened between Pence and McGahn and why was the Vice President continuing to make claims that the administration knew were false?

Can Mr. Pence answer that one?
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/t ... come-clean

VP Pence Will Be Caught In Flynnghazi Scandal’s Paper Trail Says Democratic Coalition


Will Vice President Mike Pence take the fall for hiring disgraced ex-General Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor?
“It’s really nonsense to think that Trump and Pence are not close with their NSA,” said Democratic Coalition co-founder Scott Dworkin on MSNBC’s Morning Joy (video below). “Pence is a hands on guy, he was leading the transition team himself.”
I think that Trump put him in a position where he can take the fall now.

On November 18th, 2016 the Democratic Coalition reported Flynn to the Department of Justice for failure to register his paid representation of Turkey as required under FARA.
That very same day, the House Oversight Committee’s ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) sent Pence a letter plainly stating that Flynn was hired by Turkey for political reasons — including to monitor the presidential transition.
The Democratic Coalition co-founder told MSNBC’s Morning Joy:
Mike Pence would have to be a straight up idiot to not realize that Flynn was going to register as a foreign agent, or the staff would have to be totally incompetent for him not to be aware of the situation.
Even though the Trump Transition was warned, they turned a blind eye when Gen. Flynn then lied on his application for Department of Defense security clearance.

Transition team Chair Mike Pence then appointed the unregistered Turkish agent to America’s most sensitive national security role anyhow.
If it wasn’t totally obvious that something had changed in Flynn, just recall that he was celebrating a Turkish coup attempt against autocratic leader Recep Erdogan in June, and then writing an op-ed advancing Turkey’s interests on election day in The Hill last November.
That was a major about face for Gen. Flynn, who made famous remarks that “fear of Muslims is rational” would seem otherwise to rule out supporting an Islamist leader in Turkey.

Mike Pence has flown under the radar during the Trump Administration’s failed first 100 days in Washington, D.C. and maintained a public profile as the least insane voice in the Republican regime.
But new reports about Gen. Michael Flynn’s foreign lobbying this week, revealed this week that there’s a major Russian tie with the cash he accepted.
The Siberia Energy Group’s owner has major ties to the Dutch company owned by a Turkish government official, who paid Flynn and caused him to register under FARA a month after being fired due to the media firestorm after his contacts with Russian Ambassador Kislyak were revealed.

Flynn also took money from Russia’s RT propaganda outlet for travel, and had a long dinner with Putin in Moscow for the tv station’s 10th anniversary, as well as a Russian airline that violated sanctions, and a Russian cybersecurity company with Kremlin ties.
“Mr. Flynn should be stripped of his military title, he should also be in jail right now,” Dworkin told the national news audience, “Anyone who helped cover it up, who helped push him through, they should be just as culpable as well.” He concluded:
I guarantee you that there will be a paper trail — an electronic trail — leading back to at least Mike Pence.
https://thesternfacts.com/vp-pence-will ... 9e3e3a19c1

Evidence Ties Israeli Firm To Turkish Businessman At Heart Of Flynn Scandal, Despite Denials
An Israeli energy firm says it “did not employ the services” of Turkish businessman Kamil Ekim Alptekin. But photos, emails, and other documents show a relationship lasting nearly a year.


Originally posted on June 26, 2017, at 2:52 p.m.
Updated on June 26, 2017, at 3:18 p.m.
Borzou Daragahi

Kamil Ekim Alptekin (center) stands with Namik Tan, former Turkish ambassador to Israel and the US, at an energy conference they attended last year as guests of Ratio Oil Exploration. Standing to their right is Aron Liel, a former Israeli envoy to Turkey who is unconnected to Ratio or Alptekin's business dealings.
Israel Energy and Business Convention
Kamil Ekim Alptekin (center) stands with Namik Tan, former Turkish ambassador to Israel and the US, at an energy conference they attended last year as guests of Ratio Oil Exploration. Standing to their right is Aron Liel, a former Israeli envoy to Turkey who is unconnected to Ratio or Alptekin's business dealings.
ISTANBUL — A Turkish businessman at the heart of a scandal swirling around the Trump White House had a nearly year-long commercial arrangement with an Israeli energy firm, despite its continued denials of any such deal, according to photographs and documents seen by BuzzFeed News.

BuzzFeed News last week published a letter showing that Turkish businessman Kamil Ekim Alptekin’s Netherlands-based firm, Inovo BV, was hired to serve as the Israel-based Ratio Oil Exploration company’s Turkey representative last year.

Alptekin told BuzzFeed News that the energy deal prompted him, in part, to hire a Washington firm led by Michael Flynn, the first national security adviser to President Donald Trump, and now the subject of congressional and federal investigations.

A Ratio spokesperson told the Daily Caller and others that the document was a forgery after BuzzFeed’s article appeared. Ratio officials, including Yossi Shazar, CEO Yuval Landau, and chairman of the board Ligad Rotlevy, as well as a consultant mentioned frequently in the communications, did not respond to numerous emails, phone calls and text messages from BuzzFeed News requesting comment. Orit Teicher, of the Israeli public relations and crisis-management firm Shalom Tel Aviv, told BuzzFeed News in a short email: “Ratio did not employ the services of Mr. Ekim Alptekin nor Inovo BV.” She declined to elaborate on the photographs or documents that suggest otherwise.

A detail of the badge that Alptekin can be seen wearing at the Israel Energy and Business Convention identifies him as affiliated with Ratio Oil Exploration, which is written in Hebrew.
Israel Energy and Business Convention
A detail of the badge that Alptekin can be seen wearing at the Israel Energy and Business Convention identifies him as affiliated with Ratio Oil Exploration, which is written in Hebrew.
Photos of Alptekin seen by BuzzFeed News show he attended an energy conference in Israel in November 2016 as a guest of Ratio. In one photo, Alptekin can be seen wearing a conference name tag showing his name and, in Hebrew, “Ratio Oil Exploration (1992) Partnership,” as his affiliation. Ratio was one of a dozen sponsors of the conference, according to its website.

Emails seen by BuzzFeed News also show that Ratio advisers and officials, including Shazar, helped organize Alptekin’s two-day trip to Israel.

“We are pleased to host you in Israel,” Shazar wrote to Alptekin and his business partner, the former Turkish ambassador to the US and Israel Namik Tan, in an email ahead of the 14th annual Israel Energy and Business Convention, where the CEO of Ratio spoke and hosted Alptekin and Tan, according to emails.

“Please send me the flight details in order to secure a proper pickup from the airport to the Ratio office,” Shazar wrote in an email seen by BuzzFeed News.

“The driver will be waiting for you at the arrival terminal to take you to the Ratio offices,” energy consultant Gina Cohen wrote in another email.

Photos of the conference reviewed by BuzzFeed News show Alptekin and Tan listening to speakers, seated at one point near Israel’s energy minister, Yuval Steinitz.

Afterward, according to the emails, Alptekin, Tan and Ratio officials attended dinner together.

“I would like to thank you for taking the time to meet with us last week in Israel,” Alptekin wrote Shazar and other company officials in a November 29 email.

BuzzFeed News has also confirmed:

The existence of dozens of emails between Alptekin and Ratio officials, dated from early 2016 to 2017.
Evidence of multiple Ratio money wire transfers into Inovo accounts in the Netherlands.
The existence of an April 13, 2016, contract between Inovo and Ratio.
The existence of a February 12, 2017, letter on Ratio letterhead terminating the deal.
There is no evidence or suggestion anywhere in the communications, or in previous reports, that Ratio knew that Alptekin was hiring Flynn.

It is unclear why Ratio has repeatedly denied what appears to be a straightforward business relationship with Alptekin, and instead publicly alleged the forgery of a document. The firm’s possible wariness at being tied to the Flynn matter underscores the far-reaching reverberations of the ongoing investigations into the retired four-star general, who stepped down after less than a month in the role of national security adviser after it was revealed that he had failed to reveal conversations with the Russian ambassador to the US. Flynn has also come under scrutiny for initially failing to register as a foreign lobbyist for Alptekin, who hired Flynn's consulting firm in August 2016.

Alptekin declined to publicly comment on the Ratio deal for this story, citing a confidentiality clause in the original contract. Ratio’s name was first mentioned in relation to the Flynn matter by Israeli journalist Nadav Eyal.

Alptekin said Ratio payments were one source of the funds he used to pay for the $530,000 Flynn deal in an interview published on April 7, 2017, by the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. Alptekin later told BuzzFeed News that less than $100,000 of the money paid to Flynn Advisory Group came from his Ratio dealings. According to records examined by BuzzFeed News, the amount appears closer to $50,000.

Ratio is one of three Israeli and American firms seeking to exploit the massive Leviathan subterranean gas reserve, that is worth billions, at the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/borzoudaragahi ... ty69XbYxy1

The ‘international man of mystery’ linked to Flynn’s lobbying deal

David Zaikin made Russian energy deals, advised Eastern European parties, brokered condos at Toronto’s Trump Tower, and teamed up with the man who hired Michael Flynn.

By ISAAC ARNSDORF 06/27/2017 05:09 AM EDT
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn is pictured.
The source of Michael Flynn's lobbying income is of interest to Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian efforts to influence the election. | Getty

More than two years ago, two men started visiting Washington to push Turkey’s agenda in the capital. They dined with dignitaries and enlisted prominent lobbying firms from both sides of the aisle.

It was an unremarkable Washington story, except for one thing: The last lobbyist one of the men hired was Gen. Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s campaign adviser at the time, who was later fired as national security adviser for lying about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador.


Flynn’s client, a Turkish businessman named Ekim Alptekin, has gained attention as federal investigators examine Flynn’s apparent failures to disclose foreign contacts. But so far, the other man in the pro-Turkey efforts has largely avoided public notice, making him an intriguing figure in the mystery surrounding foreign influence in Washington.

The man, Dmitri “David” Zaikin, is not registered as a foreign lobbyist and has no apparent connection to Turkey.

What he does have, a ProPublica-POLITICO examination found, is a long track record of partnering with powerful Russian businesspeople and government officials, mostly involving energy and mining deals. More recently, Zaikin has done political work in Eastern Europe, advising parties in Albania and Macedonia that have drifted toward the Kremlin.

Zaikin also has business connections to Trump. Working at a real estate agency in Toronto in the 2000s, Zaikin brokered sales in one of the city’s new high-rises: the Trump International Hotel and Tower. Perhaps coincidentally, Zaikin was also close with a Russian woman who was the exclusive agent for one of Trump’s Florida developments and who was branded “Trump’s Russian hand’’ by a glossy Russian magazine.

Zaikin has not been accused of any wrongdoing. Alptekin and Zaikin have denied knowing each other and say Zaikin had nothing to do with Flynn’s lobbying deal.

By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.
As previously reported in POLITICO, three people with direct knowledge said Alptekin and Zaikin collaborated on Turkish lobbying, jointly steering the work.

Zaikin referred questions to his lawyer, who declined to comment. Flynn’s lawyer didn’t answer requests for comment. The White House referred questions to Trump’s outside lawyer, whose spokesman also did not respond to a request for comment.

Zaikin says he was born in 1967 in Kharkiv, Ukraine. In an earlier email to Politico, he wrote that his family long faced anti-Semitic persecution in their homeland and that they fled the collapsing USSR for Canada in 1990.

“Mr. Zaikin reserves nothing but contempt for the Soviet government, and whatever vestiges of it may still exist,” his lawyer, Tara Plochocki of the firm Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss, wrote to POLITICO.

But Zaikin gave a different account to Geoffrey P. Cowley, a British engineer who was his business partner from 2010 until they split in 2016. Cowley said he never heard Zaikin claim his family was persecuted, nor had he heard Zaikin criticize the former Soviet Union.

“That might be the official line,” Cowley said.

Instead, according to Cowley, Zaikin had said his father was in the Soviet military or diplomatic corps.

“When he was with me, whoever I wanted to see, David would pick up the telephone and I got to see him,” Cowley said, naming officials in Albania, Serbia and Guinea as examples. “That doesn’t happen with some Jewish refugee out of Ukraine who doesn’t know anybody.”

Settling in Toronto, Zaikin was active in the community of Jews from the former Soviet Union. He soon became a real estate agent, eventually with an upscale brokerage. He marketed properties to Russian buyers. He married a woman from St. Petersburg and had three children.

In 2002, Zaikin started a side gig. He became chairman of Siberian Energy Group, which was incorporated in Nevada and was listed over-the-counter on NASDAQ. The company’s archived website notes Zaikin’s “extensive ties to Russia’s business community, as well as to federal and regional government authorities.”

Zaikin worked to help the governor of the western Siberian province of Kurgan attract Western investors for energy exploration and infrastructure, according to Tim Peara, whom Zaikin hired to help raise money in the United Kingdom.

“He did the government of Kurgan a lot of favors in terms of helping to raise money for them,” Peara said. The governor reported directly to President Vladimir Putin, according to a company press release.

The region’s prospects didn’t pan out: Zaikin’s company never pumped a single barrel of oil or cubic foot of gas, according to disclosures filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The SEC repeatedly queried the company about its financial dealings, specifically about its payments to Russian executives and consultants in shares and options whose values were opaque or shifting.

“We note that although you describe various transactions utilizing common stock of the company, it is not clear from your disclosures how the value of such stock for each transaction was determined,” SEC officials wrote in one letter.

In 2006, Siberian Energy Group used shares worth $2.7 million to buy a Russian company, Kondaneftegaz. Less than two years later, Zaikin’s company sold significant stakes in Kondaneftegaz to two Russian investors for just $10 each. Kondaneftegaz had actually been awarded two additional drilling licenses before those sales, according to SEC reports.

Zaikin previously told POLITICO that he was “not involved” in that transaction, though his signature appears on the purchase and sale agreements filed with the SEC.

Zaikin obtained Siberian Energy Group’s licenses at auctions that weren’t publicized and were attended only by people who had government connections, according to a contractor for the company. Zaikin’s lawyer refused to comment on this.

“David was on the inside track,” said Jordan Silverstein, who worked for a firm doing investor relations for Siberian Energy Group. “He seemed like an international man of mystery.”

Zaikin’s business career continued to involve both Russian oil work and Toronto real estate dealings. In 2005, Zaikin told the Globe and Mail newspaper about a new development he was promoting: the Trump International Hotel and Tower. The newspaper reported that Zaikin called his “top five international clients” and four agreed to buy.

“When this project was announced I instantly became a strong believer that it would be a significant winner,” Zaikin told the newspaper. “I have stayed at Trump Hotels and seen how other similar projects went in New York, Chicago and Las Vegas.”

Not long after, Zaikin and several colleagues from Siberian Energy Group became directors or shareholders of a mining company called RAM Resources, later First Iron Group, according to corporate filings. First Iron’s board included the deputy chairman of Russian state bank VEB, who had also been Putin’s deputy chief of staff. The company was registered in the British isle of Jersey, a haven for offshore companies.

Other investors in the company were themselves offshore firms, based in the Cayman Islands, Cyprus, the British Virgin Islands and elsewhere.

According to Zaikin’s partner Cowley, who served on the company’s board, the venture was ultimately controlled by Alisher Usmanov, an Uzbek-born Russian iron oligarch. Usmanov’s representatives did not respond to a request for comment.

Cowley, an experienced mining executive who had worked for other Russian oligarchs, said he was impressed by Zaikin’s global political connections.

A consulting firm that Zaikin and Cowley started advertised Zaikin as having “a network of contacts with senior executives and top government officials and Presidents in Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Ethiopia, Albania, Sierra Leone, Mali, Liberia, Moldova, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, [and] Romania.”

By 2011, Zaikin had moved to London. He set up several companies registered at his home address. One of them, EM Infrastructure Ltd., lists two names on a U.K. incorporation document: Neither is Zaikin’s. One belongs to his wife, a jewelry designer, and the other name is a Viktor Grabarouk, whose address is listed as Zaikin’s home and whose birth date is listed as one day after Zaikin’s own.

A search of corporate records and the comprehensive British phone book showed no references to a Viktor Grabarouk.

A few years later, Zaikin’s career took yet another turn. After working in residential real estate and the Russian energy sector, Zaikin became an adviser to the ruling parties in Turkey, Albania and Macedonia. He also began working with those parties to set up lobbying in the United States.

Zaikin told Cowley he wanted to be “working with the staffs of senators and high-profile people in the States,” Cowley recalled. The two stopped working together as Zaikin focused more on politics.

Starting around 2015, Zaikin helped run pro-Turkish nonprofit groups to lobby U.S. lawmakers, according to an American consultant who worked with him, John Moreira. Alptekin, the Turkish businessman who later hired Flynn, told Politico he worked with the main group Zaikin helped set up.

In August 2016, Alptekin signed a contract with Flynn for $600,000 to urge the U.S. to turn over Fethullah Gülen, a cleric now in Pennsylvania whom Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accuses of trying to topple him.

The contract refers to Alptekin as “Capt. Ekim Alptekin.” Alptekin said he’s not a captain and he doesn’t know why the contract calls him one.

Flynn was paid by a Dutch consulting firm that Alptekin owned called Inovo, according to Flynn’s Justice Department disclosures. But records show Inovo had no significant business activity in the three years before the Flynn deal. In fact, the company was in debt for more than 125,000 euros in the months before paying Flynn. Alptekin acknowledged in an interview that Inovo lacked sufficient funds and said he used his own money to pay Flynn.

Flynn’s firm ultimately repaid $80,000 to Inovo. Alptekin has said it was a refund. Flynn’s filing with the Justice Department called the payment a “consultancy fee.”

Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian efforts to influence the election, is interested in the source of Flynn's lobbying income, according to a person familiar with the probe. Mueller's spokesman declined to comment.

While working on Turkey, Zaikin also facilitated lobbying and political consulting deals for the Macedonian political party VMRO-DPMNE, according to four people with direct knowledge of the activities. He did the same for Albania’s Socialist Movement for Integration, known as LSI, according to four people familiar with the arrangements. Zaikin introduced leaders of both parties to American lobbyists and campaign advisers, the people said.

VMRO, like Turkey, historically aligns with the West but has recently cozied up to the Kremlin. VMRO for months refused to leave power despite failing to win enough seats in a December election to form a parliamentary majority. The standoff put the party at odds with the U.S. State Department, whereas it has received forceful backing from the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Albania’s LSI and its leader, Ilir Meta, are avowedly pro-Western but have sometimes clashed with the State Department over the U.S.’ push to reform the country’s criminal justice system.

Around the same time Zaikin started getting more involved in Eastern European and American politics, he and his wife repeatedly met with a friend named Elena Baronoff, who worked with the Trump Organization to sell condos in Florida.

On social media, Zaikin and Baronoff discussed plans to meet and posted photos of themselves dining out in London. In October 2013, Zaikin posted back-to-back photos of himself and Baronoff with the chef of a French restaurant in the posh Mayfair neighborhood. Two weeks later, he tweeted a photo of his wife and Baronoff hugging with the comment, “It was warm like in Miami.”

On another apparent visit, in July 2014, Baronoff posted to Instagram a photo of herself and Zaikin’s wife, Yana, on a London sidewalk and then a photo of the lobby of a five-star hotel captioned, “with love to Yana and David Zaikin.”

Baronoff was born in Russia, earned degrees in journalism and mass communication, and served as an official “cultural attaché in public diplomacy” for the Russian government at an unspecified time, she said in interviews and bios. In 1989, she moved to Iowa, then Florida.

Starting with little means, Baronoff became a travel agent and later a real estate agent. She wrote on LinkedIn that her diplomatic training was key to her success in “marketing and building the brand of high-end luxury condominiums under the Trump brand.”

By 2004, Baronoff was Trump’s on-site director of customer relations for the Trump Grande near Miami. She was photographed with Trump and his daughter Ivanka and celebrated on the cover story of The Women’s City magazine as “Donald Trump’s Russian hand.”

As the exclusive agent for the Trump Grande development, Baronoff sold 44 units to Russian buyers, according to an analysis by Reuters. An undated photo surfaced on Twitter showing Baronoff in Moscow with Trump’s children Ivanka, Eric and Don Jr.

Last month, Trump released a letter from his lawyers saying any of his firm’s transactions with Russians were “immaterial,” though Donald Trump Jr. said in 2008 that the company was seeing “a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Baronoff fell ill while traveling to Turkey in 2014 and was diagnosed with leukemia. She died in 2015. Following her burial, her family received visitors at the Trump International Beach Resort.

Her son, George Baronov, said his mother worked for Trump after first doing business with Trump’s partner in Florida. “She was the in-house broker,” Baronov said. “She did a lot of marketing and advertising and traveling around the world.” The Moscow trip with Trump’s children was in 2003 or 2004, he said.

Two years before she died, Baronoff worked on a $28 million Manhattan real estate deal with Turkish President Erdogan’s son and son-in-law, according to hacked emails published by WikiLeaks. The emails also showed the son and son-in-law receiving updates about Zaikin’s lobbying efforts. In September 2016, as Flynn later disclosed, Alptekin arranged a meeting between the same son-in-law and Flynn himself.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/2 ... ent-239974

Consulting Firm Distances Itself From Flynn’s Partner On Turkey Lobbying

By ALLEGRA KIRKLAND Published JULY 7, 2017 1:58 PM

As the special counsel’s investigation tasked in part with probing ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn’s Turkey lobbying work grinds away, a Washington, D.C. consulting firm is establishing some distance from Flynn’s former lobbying partner.

Jefferson Waterman International (JWI) has taken down its bio page for Robert Kelley, who served as general counsel for Flynn’s now-defunct consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group, and was registered during the 2016 campaign as a lobbyist for the firm’s controversial contract with Turkish businessman Ekim Alptekin. Flynn retroactively registered as a foreign agent for that contract, acknowledging that his company’s work may have “principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.” Alptekin told BuzzFeed last year that he worked primarily with Kelley, however.

Contacted by TPM this week, several employees at JWI expressed uncertainty about why the webpage listing Kelley as a “counselor” with the firm was removed or about whether he still worked there. Responses ranged from “I don’t believe that Bob Kelley’s ever worked at the firm” to “I don’t know where he is.”

Kelley’s since-deleted bio for JWI, accessed via the Internet Archive

Charles Waterman, the firm’s CEO, clarified Thursday that Kelley is not paid for his work for JWI and is “not an exclusive consultant” for the firm. He added that Kelley’s work with Flynn Intel Group was done “on his own,” and that Kelley’s bio page was taken down because JWI “decided it was probably the better thing to do.”

“He’s still a consultant—a loose consultant, let’s call it that,” Waterman told TPM.

“There’s no reason to sever ties but no reason to strengthen them, either,” he added with a low laugh.

Waterman said his firm had not been contacted in relation to the federal probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, which includes Flynn Intel Group’s lobbying work. Reached by phone Friday at his home, where he is recovering from knee surgery, Kelley told TPM that he had not been contacted by the special counsel’s team, either.

Kelley described himself as being “full-time” at JWI.

“I’ll be back next week,” he said.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/jeffers ... lley-flynn

Michael Flynn consulting again: report
BY JOSH DELK - 07/21/17 04:09 PM EDT 47

Michael Flynn consulting again: report
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn has set up a new consulting firm called Resilient Patriot, LLC, and is "moving on with his life" according to one of his brothers.

Joe Flynn said the family is beginning a fund to pay for the legal bills accruing from the ongoing probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. "Mike's not a millionaire, not even close," his brother told The Associated Press.

"The situation has put him in a tough spot financially," he said. "This is going to cost him a lot of money."

Michael Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, was fired by President Trump after he misled senior White House officials about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. and is now under investigation for his involvement in a number of foreign contracts and payments.
Flynn, an early supporter of the Trump campaign, did consulting work after the Obama administration forced him to retire in 2014, including work for a Turkish-owned business.

Flynn's siblings say they are working to set up a website for the fund, and that they are consulting with a lawyer in doing so.

Joe Flynn said that his brother is not wealthy and relies on funds from his Army pension.

In the Resilient Patriot firm, Michael Flynn will advise private equity firms, his brother said.

Joe Flynn added that he doesn't think his brother is "worried about going to jail or anything like that."
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ys-brother

Top Dem Wants Info On Flynn’s Foreign Contacts From Ex-Business Partner

By ALLEGRA KIRKLAND Published AUGUST 3, 2017 11:03 AM


The House Oversight Committee wants to review any information that ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn’s former business partner may have about the retired lieutenant general’s foreign contacts.

In a Thursday letter, the top Democrat on the committee requested that Bijan Kian turn over “all documents and communications” related to Flynn’s work-related “foreign person contacts,” “professional work relationships with foreign businesses” and foreign travel.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) wants all of that information by Aug. 16 as part of the committee’s probe into the lobbying work that Kian and Flynn’s intelligence consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group, did for foreign clients. One major project carried out during the campaign was later determined to principally benefit the government of Turkey.

Both Flynn and Kian retroactively registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) for that project, which Kian reportedly spearheaded.

As Cummings notes in his letter, Kian, who served as a personal reference for Flynn when he filed for a security clearance reinvestigation in early 2016, told FBI investigators at the time that Flynn “did not have foreign government connections.”

The chairman of the committee, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), did not co-sign Cummings’ letter.

Federal investigators are also interested in the role Kian played in the lobbying work, Reuters reported in June. The Iranian-American businessman was responsible for securing and managing the day-to-day details of this project on behalf of Ekim Alptekin, a Turkish businessman. Flynn Intel Group received $530,000 for this contract, which brought Flynn under the scrutiny of Justice Department officials concerned that he did not properly file under FARA.

Flynn was ultimately asked to resign from the Trump administration for his failure to properly disclose his contacts with Russian officials during the campaign, as well as payments he received from Russian companies and Alptekin.

Kian has not spoken out since the investigation into Flynn became public.

Read Cummings’ letter below:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/ ... n-contacts

The Deeper Story on Cohen-Watnick

By JOSH MARSHALL Published AUGUST 2, 2017 6:41 PM
0Views
With the big news this evening that Gen. H.R. McMaster was finally allowed to fire Flynn protege Ezra Cohen-Watnick, let me refer you back to what I explained back in April: Cohen-Watnick likely had dirty hands in the Russia cover-up. Specifically, his ‘review’ of intelligence which led to the ‘un-masking’ charade was likely an effort to monitor and perhaps interfere with the on-going Russia probe.

Here are two paragraphs from that April post …

As even Lake concedes, Rice’s alleged actions – if the report is accurate – were almost certainly legal. Most national security experts say they were not only legal but entirely proper. Moreover, the kind of snooping around that Cohen-Watnick was apparently doing could very plausibly be interpreted as an attempt to monitor or interfere with the on-going counter-intelligence probe of Trump associates’ ties to Russia. The White House Counsel’s job is to protect and look after the legal interests of the President. A good lawyer would likely want to shut that kind of freelancing down right away, especially if what Cohen-Watnick had found didn’t amount to anything that helped the President or the White House.

The paragraph above also says Cohen-Watnick was “conducting the review.” But what review was that? It’s not clear this ‘review’ was authorized by anyone and it’s fairly implausible that he just stumbled on this stuff in the first place ‘in the normal course of business’, as he and the White House claim. His review apparently began in February. So if it was authorized it was likely okayed by Mike Flynn – another red flag.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the ... re-1074757

Michael Flynn admits consulting for data firm suspected of conspiring with Russia to rig election for Donald Trump
By Bill Palmer
Updated: 6:52 pm EDT Thu Aug 3, 2017
Home » Opinion

On a day when the Trump-Russia scandal is already exploding with word of grand juries and subpoenas in relation to Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with Russia, a whole different avenue in the scandal is also suddenly coming full circle. Michael Flynn is now admitting he worked for a data analytics run by Steve Bannon and funded by major Trump donors Robert and Rebekah Mercer, which is suspected of having conspired with the Russian government to rig the election in Donald Trump’s favor.

Amid his ongoing troubles with the Foreign Agent Registration Act in relation to secret payouts he took from intermediaries for the governments of Russia and Turkey, Michael Flynn has updated his financial disclosure to reveal that he was hired as a consultant by Cambridge Analytica during the election, according to a new Associated Press report (link). Flynn claims he ultimately didn’t take any money from the company. But it now connects the dots between two major aspects of alleged Trump-Russia collusion which had up to now been seen as separate scandals.

It’s long been suspected, though never proven, that Cambridge Analytica was using voter data during the election that had been stolen by Russian government hackers. Part of the reason this has long been a dead-end is that it was never clear how the Cambridge Analytica players, Bannon and the Mercers, would have been communicating and conspiring with Russia to obtain this stolen voter data.


But now Michael Flynn is admitting that Cambridge Analytica hired him during the election. There is no realistic above-board reason for them to have done so. And of course Flynn’s connections to Russia and the Kremlin, ranging from payouts to phone calls to ideological alliances, have long been documented. It makes logical sense that CA would have hired Flynn to be its go-between with Russia. Moreover, Flynn’s sudden willingness to admit this link strongly suggests that he’s giving the Feds whatever information they want, as he tries to keep himself out of prison.
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/mic ... tion/4164/

APNewsBreak: Flynn details tie to data firm, transition pay


WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, is revealing a brief advisory role with a firm related to a controversial data analysis company that aided the Trump campaign, The Associated Press has learned.

The disclosure of Flynn’s link to Cambridge Analytica will come in an amended public financial filing in which the retired U.S. Army lieutenant general also discloses income that includes payments from the Trump transition team, according to a person close to Flynn who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity Thursday to describe details of the filing to be made to the White House.


The amended disclosure shows that just before the end of the campaign, Flynn entered into a consulting agreement with SCL Group, a Virginia-based company related to Cambridge Analytica, the data mining and analysis firm that worked with Trump’s campaign.

The person said Flynn didn’t perform work or accept payment as part of the agreement with SCL Group. The details of Flynn’s role with SCL weren’t specified, the person said, noting that Flynn terminated his involvement shortly after Trump won the presidency.

Cambridge Analytica was heavily funded by the family of Robert Mercer, a hedge fund manager who also backed the campaign and other conservative candidates and causes. Cambridge Analytica also worked for the successful pro-Brexit campaign in 2016 to pull Britain out of the European Union. Trump administration chief strategist Steve Bannon was a vice president of Cambridge Analytica before he joined the Trump campaign.

Democratic lawmakers and Trump critics have seized on Cambridge Analytica’s role as they’ve pushed congressional investigators to scrutinize the Trump campaign’s data operation as part of probes into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

Flynn’s previous filing, submitted to the White House and Office of Government Ethics in March, listed some $1.3 million in earnings, including between $50,000 and $100,000 from his consulting company, Flynn Intel Group Inc.

Flynn’s amended filing comes some six months after he was ousted from the White House for misleading the vice president about conversations he had with the former Russian ambassador to the U.S. It also comes as Special Counsel Robert Mueller and congressional committees are scrutinizing Flynn’s business deals and foreign connections.


The person close to Flynn said he is disclosing the information in an amended filing to make sure the “public record is accurate and transparent.” The person noted that Flynn and his legal team have spent months piecing together the information necessary for the filing without the assistance of the White House counsel’s office or the Office of Government Ethics.

In the filing, Flynn reports earning about $28,000 from the Trump presidential transition and more than $5,000 as a consultant to an aborted plan to build nuclear power plants across the Middle East. The consulting connection with a group of companies involved in the power plant proposal had been disclosed in Flynn’s previous filing, but it had not indicated that he had received payment.

Flynn’s new filing also provided more details about his consulting work for NJK Holding Corporation, a firm headed by Iranian-American multi-millionaire Nasser Kazeminy. The filing shows that Flynn was paid more than $140,000 for his roles as adviser and consultant to Minneapolis-based NJK.

Flynn also served as vice chairman at GreenZone Systems, a tech firm funded by NJK and headed by Bijan Kian, who was Flynn’s business partner in Flynn Intel Group, a consulting firm that was active last year but is now defunct. Flynn Intel is now under scrutiny by federal authorities and congressional investigators for its role in research and lobbying work for a Turkish businessman tied to the government of Turkey.

In a statement to the AP, NJK said Flynn “played an advisory role to NJK Holding relative to its investment interests in security.” The firm added that in his roles with NJK and GreenZone, Flynn “provided his counsel and guidance on public sector business opportunities for secure communications technology within the U.S. Department of Defense” and with other agencies.

NJK said Kian has no current involvement with NJK or GreenZone.

Earlier Thursday, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asked Kian for documents detailing Flynn’s foreign business contacts and travel. Flynn listed Kian as a personal reference in 2016 during his effort to renew his military security clearance. Kian told military investigators that Flynn had several foreign business contacts, but Flynn did not provide any of those contacts to investigators, Cummings said.

Mueller Seeks White House Documents on Flynn
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG, MATT APUZZO and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDTAUG. 4,

An inquiry is examining whether Michael T. Flynn was secretly paid by the Turkish government. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times
Investigators working for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, recently asked the White House for documents related to former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, and have questioned witnesses about whether he was secretly paid by the Turkish government during the final months of the presidential campaign, according to people close to the investigation.

Though not a formal subpoena, the document request is the first known instance of Mr. Mueller’s team asking the White House to hand over records.

In interviews with potential witnesses in recent weeks, prosecutors and F.B.I. agents have spent hours poring over the details of Mr. Flynn’s business dealings with a Turkish-American businessman who worked last year with Mr. Flynn and his consulting business, the Flynn Intel Group.

The company was paid $530,000 to run a campaign to discredit an opponent of the Turkish government who has been accused of orchestrating last year’s failed coup in the country.

Investigators want to know if the Turkish government was behind those payments — and if the Flynn Intel Group made kickbacks to the businessman, Ekim Alptekin, for helping conceal the source of the money.

The line of questioning shows that Mr. Mueller’s inquiry has expanded into a full-fledged examination of Mr. Flynn’s financial dealings, beyond the relatively narrow question of whether he failed to register as a foreign agent or lied about his conversations and business arrangements with Russian officials.

Mr. Flynn lasted only 24 days as national security adviser, but his legal troubles now lie at the center of a political storm that has engulfed the Trump administration. For months, prosecutors have used multiple grand juries to issue subpoenas for documents related to Mr. Flynn.

President Trump has publicly said Mr. Mueller should confine his investigation to the narrow issue of Russia’s attempts to disrupt last year’s presidential campaign, not conduct an expansive inquiry into the finances of Mr. Trump or his associates.

Mr. Flynn declined to comment. Ty Cobb, special counsel to Mr. Trump, said, “We’ve said before we’re collaborating with the special counsel on an ongoing basis.”

“It’s full cooperation mode as far as we are concerned,” he said.

After Mr. Flynn’s dismissal, Mr. Trump tried to get James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, to drop the investigation, Mr. Comey said.

Mr. Mueller is investigating whether Mr. Trump committed obstruction of justice in pressing for an end to the Flynn inquiry. The president fired Mr. Comey on May 9.

Investigators are also examining the flow of money into and out of the Flynn Intel Group — a consulting firm Mr. Flynn founded after being forced out as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency — according to several potential witnesses who have been interviewed by prosecutors and F.B.I. agents.

Taking money from Turkey or any foreign government is not illegal. But failing to register as a foreign agent is a felony, and trying to hide the source of the money by routing it through a private company or some other entity, and then paying kickbacks to the middleman, could lead to numerous criminal charges, including fraud.

Prosecutors have also asked during interviews about Mr. Flynn’s speaking engagements for Russian companies, for which he was paid more than $65,000 in 2015, and about his company’s clients — including work it may have done with the Japanese government.

They have also asked about the White Canvas Group, a data-mining company that was reportedly paid $200,000 by the Trump campaign for unspecified services. The Flynn Intel Group shared office space with White Canvas Group, which was founded by a former special operations officer who was a friend of Mr. Flynn’s.

Mr. Flynn has now had to file three versions of his financial-disclosure forms. His first version did not disclose payments from Russia-linked companies. He added those payments to an amended version of the forms he submitted in March. This week he filed a new version, adding that he briefly had a contract with SCL Group, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining firm that worked with the Trump campaign.

The new forms list at least $1.8 million in income, up from roughly the $1.4 million he had previously reported. It is unclear how much of that money was related to work Mr. Flynn did on Turkey issues.

Mr. Flynn’s campaign to discredit the opponent of the Turkish government, Fethullah Gulen, began on Aug. 9 when his firm signed a $600,000 deal with Inovo BV, a Dutch company owned by Mr. Alptekin, a Turkish-American businessman.

Mr. Gulen, a reclusive cleric, lives in rural Pennsylvania.

The contract with Mr. Alptekin was brought in by Bijan R. Kian, an Iranian-American businessman who was one Mr. Flynn’s business partners. Mr. Kian, who served until 2011 as a director of the Export-Import Bank, a United States federal agency, is also under scrutiny, according to witnesses questioned by Mr. Mueller’s investigators. A lawyer for Mr. Kian declined to comment.

Inovo ultimately paid the Flynn Intel Group only $530,000 and received little more than slapdash research and a comically inept attempt to make an anti-Gulen video, which was never completed. The entire enterprise would probably have gone unnoticed if Mr. Flynn had not written an opinion piece advocating improved relations between Turkey and the United States and calling Mr. Gulen “a shady Islamic mullah.”

The opinion piece appeared on Election Day. Soon after, The Daily Caller revealed that the Flynn Intel Group had a contract with Inovo, prompting the Justice Department look into Mr. Flynn’s relationship with Mr. Alptekin.

The authorities quickly determined that Mr. Flynn had not registered as a foreign agent, as required by law. In March, he retroactively registered with the Justice Department.

Mr. Mueller’s investigators have asked repeatedly about two payments of $40,000 each that the Flynn Intel Group made to Inovo, said witnesses who have been interviewed in the case.

The investigators have indicated that they suspect that the payments were kickbacks, and in one interview pointed to the suspicious timing of the transfers. The first payment back to Inovo was made on Sept. 13, four days after the Dutch company made it first payout under the contract, sending $200,000 to the Flynn Intel Group.

On Oct. 11, Inovo paid the Flynn Intel Group an additional $185,000. Then, six days later, Flynn Intel Group sent $40,000 to Inovo.

Mr. Alptekin said that both payments were refunds for work that the Flynn Intel Group had not completed.

“Ekim maintains that all payments and refunds were for unfulfilled work, and that they were legal, ethical and above board,” said Molly Toomey, a spokeswoman for Mr. Alptekin. She described the reimbursements as “a business decision.”

Another focus for investigators is the repeatedly changing explanation Mr. Alptekin has offered for why he hired Mr. Flynn. In March, he told a reporter that Mr. Flynn had been hired “to produce geopolitical analysis on Turkey and the region” for an Israeli energy company. But in an interview with The New York Times in June, he said he wanted a credible American firm to help discredit Mr. Gulen, whom the President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has blamed for the coup attempt.

“Like many Americans rolling up their sleeves in 9/11 to do something, I decided to do something,” Mr. Alptekin said.

He scoffed at the suggestion that he was a front for the Turkish government. Inovo, he noted, was registered in the Netherlands, where it is difficult to mask the ownership of a company. A clear paper trail linked the payments between his company and the Flynn Intel Group, he said.

“If we were trying to hide,” he said, “you’d think we’d be good at it.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/us/p ... urkey.html

Report: Mueller probing whether Flynn played a role in pursuit of Clinton emails
BY MELANIE ZANONA - 08/25/17 06:06 PM EDT

Report: Mueller probing whether Flynn played a role in pursuit of Clinton emails
© Getty Images
Special counsel Robert Mueller is looking into whether former national security adviser and Trump campaign aide Michael Flynn played any role in an effort to get Hillary Clinton’s emails from Russian hackers, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Mueller, who was appointed by the Justice Department to probe Russian efforts to meddle in last year’s election, is also beginning to subpoena witnesses for grand jury testimony, according to NBC News.

Then-candidate Donald Trump publicly asked for Moscow to release any of Clinton’s emails it had during the 2016 campaign.

Republican activist Peter W. Smith, who allegedly led an operation hoping to obtain Clinton’s deleted emails, portrayed Flynn as “an ally in those efforts and implied that other senior Trump campaign officials were coordinating with him” in correspondence and conversations with colleagues, according to the Journal. Flynn’s consulting firm and his son were also reportedly mentioned in the same correspondence.

Smith said he made contact with five different groups of hackers who claimed to have obtained Clinton’s emails, two of which Smith believed were Russian groups.

The Democratic presidential nominee faced months of criticism for the private "homebrew" email server she maintained while secretary of State, and emails allegedly deleted from that server were the subject of intense speculation.

Now federal investigators working for Mueller are examining whether Flynn, who was a senior Trump campaign adviser at the time, or his son were involved in any way in the pursuit of the emails. They are also working to determine whether Smith or anyone else paid hackers for Clinton’s emails, according to the report.

Lawyers for Flynn and his son both declined to comment to the Journal, as did a spokesperson for the special counsel.

Flynn resigned as national security adviser earlier this year after the news broke that he had misled Vice President Pence — as well as the public — about the subjects discussed in his meetings with Russian officials.

The report notes that the inquiries suggest that Smith’s pursuit of the emails may be significant to the broader probe, which is examining any possible collusion between members of Trump's campaign or administration and Moscow.

Mueller was authorized to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated” with the Trump campaign.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... in-pursuit

Flynn is in a lot of trouble over a nuclear power deal he kept secret
Flynn pushed trillion-dollar Russian-Saudi nuclear energy scheme while at White House.
JOE ROMM
SEP 14, 2017, 4:37 PM

Retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn kept pushing a massive nuclear power deal involving Saudi Arabia and Russia even after he (briefly) became president Donald Trump’s national security advisor, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Also on Wednesday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released letters from executives confirming that Flynn traveled to the Mideast in 2015 “to meet with foreign leaders about a proposal to partner with Russia in a scheme to build nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia.” Flynn was advising the executives on the deal.

The Committee’s ranking Democratic member, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (MD) and Rep. Eliot L. Engel (NY), the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, have now sent a letter to those executives telling them their responses are being passed on to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to the Russian government.

“Based on your responses, it appears that General Flynn violated federal law by omitting this trip and these foreign contacts from his security clearance renewal application in 2016 and concealing them from security clearance investigators who interviewed him as part of the background check process,” the letter says. Cummings and Engel said the responses also raise the question of whether Flynn kept pursuing this scheme even after he became national security advisor, “without disclosing his foreign travel or contacts.” The two House members indicated they are seeking more information.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Flynn did in fact keep promoting the Saudi nuke scheme after he joined the Trump administration, “according to former security-council staffers and others familiar with the effort.” The Journal quotes a former staffer saying that Flynn’s moves were “highly abnormal” and “not the way things were supposed to go.”

Putting aside Flynn’s alleged activity, the dimensions of the proposed scheme are mind-boggling. A must-read June article in Newsweek — which spurred Cummings and Engel to investigate Flynn’s business partners — explains that the goal was to build and run dozens of nuclear plants in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East.

The Russians would provide the nuclear fuel and take back the spent-fuel waste, an end-to-end operation designed to ensure nothing got diverted towards a nuclear weapons program. “It was always part of the project that Russia’s involvement… would tilt Russia away from Iran,” wrote the chief economist of ACU, one of the lead companies, in an email obtained by Newsweek.

Also, the scheme would “revive the U.S. nuclear industry,” while costing American taxpayers nothing, Newsweek explained. How? A memo by ACU (also obtained by Newsweek) explains it would be “funded entirely by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries.”

A project insider told Newsweek it would cost the Saudis “close to a trillion dollars.”

That figure may seem improbably high, and unsurprisingly the Saudis do not appear to have been sold on the deal, but the fact is nuclear power plants are really expensive, as we’ve reported.

Just last week, the Washington Post reported that, after two years of negotiations, Russia had finalized a deal to build Egypt’s first nuclear power plant. The 4-reactor plant will cost a whopping $30 billion — but Russia will loan Egypt 85 percent of the money. That is vastly more expensive than new natural gas plants or even new solar and wind, which are winning power contracts around the world for a fraction of that cost, without subsidies.

Here in the United States, two South Carolina utilities abandoned construction of two nuclear plants last month after spending some $9 billion, in part because the latest projections gave at least a three-year delay and a total cost of $25 billion.

So nuclear power plants are very expensive to buy — and they aren’t cheap to operate either. As we’ve reported, over half of existing US nukes are “bleeding cash,” according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance

But this hasn’t slowed down the Saudis. Reuters reported Thursday that “Saudi Arabia is expected to launch a tender process for its first nuclear reactors as early as next month.”

Reuters quotes a “South Korea-based industry source with direct knowledge of the matter” that the Saudis would issue a Request for Information for two plants next month “to five potential bidders – South Korea, China, France, Russia and Japan.” The government is considering as many as 17 reactors.

Somebody is going to make a great deal of money building plants, fueling them, operating them, and then dealing with the waste.

In the meantime, someone might suggest solar power to the Saudis. It’s a lot cheaper.
https://thinkprogress.org/flynn-pushed- ... a6ca259ca/

HOW HAS FLYNN DODGED SUBPOENAS TO TESTIFY ON THE RUSSIA CONNECTION?
BY KATE BRANNEN AND ANDY WRIGHT ON 9/14/17 AT 10:26 AM

Kellyanne Conway Responds To Questions About Michael Flynn's Resignation
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OPINION
This article first appeared on Just Security.

CNN reported Tuesday that retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, has twice declined to comply with a subpoena to appear as a witness before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

He first did so in May, and has more recently refused a second request from the committee, asserting his Fifth Amendment rights.

The House Intelligence Committee has also subpoenaed him.

In March, Flynn offered to testify before both committees in exchange for immunity from prosecution but neither committee took him up on the offer.

More news about Flynn came Wednesday morning: House Democrats say they have evidence that he failed to disclose a trip he took to the Middle East to help broker a $100 billion deal between Saudi Arabia and Russia’s nuclear power agency when he reapplied for his security clearance in 2015, according to CNN.

Meanwhile, at the White House, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the president’s spokeswoman, has accused former FBI Director James Comey of various misdeeds each time she’s taken the podium this week.

On Monday, she said he’d given “false testimony” and accused him of “leaking privileged information to journalists.” When asked by a reporter if she was saying that Comey had perjured himself when testifying before Congress, she said, “I think that’s something, probably, for [the Justice Department] to look at, not me. I’m not an attorney.”

On Tuesday, she repeated the allegation that Comey leaked “privileged government information,” and took it a step further saying, “His actions were improper and likely could have been illegal,” but later she said, “But I’m not here to ever direct DOJ into actions that they should take.”

To try to make sense of the latest news, I turned to Just Security’s Andy Wright, my go-to expert on congressional investigations.

Q. How is Flynn able to refuse these congressional subpoenas?

A. Broadly speaking, Flynn may be able to resist a subpoena compelling him to offer testimony that is the subject of Flynn’s valid assertion of a Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

It is clear that Flynn faces significant criminal exposure, especially for alleged false statements to FBI agents who interviewed him about the nature of his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition. Congress, like a court, has the ability to issue a subpoena to compel testimony.

Also, like a court or a grand jury, Flynn may assert the Fifth Amendment in the face of compelled testimony in front of Congress. At that point, Congress can either grant use immunity under its statutory authorities, 18 USC 6002 and 18 USC 6005. No congressional committee has done so, so unless Flynn has waived privilege, evidence of which I have not seen, Congress cannot compel his testimony.

The distinction between a committee’s subpoena and a “request” for testimony is legally significant. Based on the media reporting I’ve seen to date, I can’t tell whether there was a second subpoena issued or whether the first subpoena is still driving the committee demands.

For more information on assertions of the Fifth in front of Congress, see pp. 25-36 of Congressional Due Process. For more information on immunity grants, see pp. 31-32 of the Congressional Oversight Manual.

Q. Are there any further steps the Senate Intelligence Committee can take to compel him to testify?

A. First, Congress could offer him immunity. However, doing so could frustrate the parallel criminal investigation because it would require prosecutors to demonstrate they did not rely on any immunized testimony, even for leads derived therefrom, in any subsequent prosecution. The statutes require consultation with the Department of Justice, which here would be chiefly the Special Counsel.

Second, if the committee chair and colleagues rule that Flynn has waived privilege, they could seek to hold him in contempt of Congress. I have yet to see facts sufficient to support a ruling of waiver.

The committee could insist that Flynn appear in order to assert the Fifth in person under oath, however I am of the general view that such a requirement is designed more for public shaming than to serve a legal purpose when counsel has represented Flynn’s intent to assert.

Q. Why hasn’t the Senate Intelligence Committee held him in contempt yet?

A. The committee has not held Flynn in contempt because Flynn is acting within his constitutional right to remain silent when in legal jeopardy.

Q. Refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena doesn’t look great. What do you think Flynn’s strategy is? What’s his cost-benefit analysis here?

A. There are lots of reasons to try to avoid asserting the Fifth Amendment in highly scrutinized and politicized cases such as the Russia investigations. While the privilege is designed to protect both the guilty and the innocent from prosecutorial overreach, it comes with great reputational damage in fact.

In my best judgment as an observer, two things are informing Flynn’s strategy: (1) he faces a clear and present likelihood of indictment for at least a False Statements felony under 18 USC 1001. and (2) Flynn has already had his lawyer publicly signal his intent to assert the Fifth. Reputational damage has already been priced into Flynn’s defense team’s calculations. At this point, the whole game for Flynn is avoiding conviction and jail time.

Q. Does Special Counsel Robert Mueller have tools to compel testimony not available to congressional investigators?

A. Like Congress, Mueller can offer immunity. Unlike Congress, however, a prosecutor also use charging decisions as leverage for testimony and or plea bargains. For example, let’s say Mueller’s grand jury had probable cause to indict Flynn for, say, a Logan Act violation, three FARA criminal offenses, and two False Statement offenses.

Mueller could offer to proceed with only a single felony count of False Statements in return for a guilty plea and a favorable sentencing recommendation predicated on substantial assistance to the government, including testimony before Congress and the Grand Jury.

Another interesting idea: During Watergate, Judge John Sirica used sentencing to leverage congressional testimony from several figures who were convicted in criminal trials but had used the Fifth Amendment as a shield against Congress.

There is some doubt about whether that methodology is viable today, both in the context of the federal sentencing guidelines and more recent Fifth Amendment waiver cases, but it is worthy of contemplation.

Q. If Flynn did indeed take this trip and fail to disclose it on his security clearance form, is that significant?

A. An undisclosed effort to help broker a deal for Russian government entities is a huge revelation in the context of the Russia investigations. It could be significant legally as it relates to FARA, False Statements, or Espionage Act investigations. The legal significance for each would turn on the nature of Flynn’s role in the deal and his mental state about the failure to disclose.

Q. At this point, is it safe to say that Flynn has some serious criminal liability?

A. Flynn is in significant legal jeopardy of criminal prosecution.

Q. What is Huckabee Sanders talking about when she says Comey “leaked privileged information”? Was the information “privileged”? Even if it can be argued that it was, is this a crime?

A. What Comey did appears to me to be no worse than former officials, like Robert Gates, disclosing Oval Office conversations in their books. I have been critical of that practice, but I do not believe it is illegal.

Presidential communications with senior advisers are presumptively amenable to an assertion of executive privilege by the president. In addition, the Executive Branch has significant confidentiality interests in open criminal investigation files, which have also at times been shielded by presidential assertions of executive privilege.

There are a couple of problems for the Huckabee Sanders argument here, however. First, it is not clear that Comey’s conversations with President Trump, as reported, constituted advice in any traditional sense. In fact, it may have been evidence of criminal conduct by the president.

Second, President Trump has not asserted executive privilege over those memos or Comey’s testimony. The act of the president’s assertion of privilege itself has significance because it means the president thinks the threat posed by the information to the institution of the executive branch is worth internalizing the political costs of appearing to try to hide something.

President Trump has not done so. Instead, his staff is trying to complain about leaks without onboarding the costs.

I do not see Comey facing any criminal liability for disclosures of unclassified material, even if it were the potential subject of an assertion of executive privilege. He may have violated a Department of Justice policy or regulation, but I would have to defer to subject matter experts on that.

Finally, like just about every single lawyer in America, I would strongly advise the White House staff to stop pundit-like commentary from the podium about an ongoing criminal investigation touching on the president and his associates. It is only worsening matters for the White House and the presidency as institutions.

Q. Is there any evidence that Comey gave “false testimony”? If he did, what are the consequences?

A. Any time two witness provide divergent and irreconcilable sworn testimony as to a material event, either one could be accused of perjury, which is a felony.

A prosecutor would need to come to the judgment that one of the actors is lying and there is sufficient evidence to mount a successful prosecution. The evidence would consist of the statements, documents, indications of motive, timelines, context, character, and so forth.

Here, Comey has had a consistent story about his interactions with President Trump, one that he reportedly told to senior FBI officials in real time, and one that he documented with memoranda in real time, all of which occurred prior to his termination by the president.

On the president’s side, there have been inconsistent, post-hoc rationales offered. What we haven’t seen, and Mueller will, is what other relevant witnesses say about these matters both on the White House staff and in the front office of the FBI. As to character, Comey has been accused of sanctimony but his truthfulness has not really come into question in the past. President Trump, however, has a long history of exaggeration and dishonesty.

As for honesty, the Trump White House is made of glass and Huckabee Sanders ought not throw stones.

Q. Is it appropriate for the White House spokeswoman to be suggesting what the Department of Justice should be “looking into”?

A. No. It is wholly inappropriate for the White House to exert pressure as to investigative targets from the podium. We need evenhanded administration of justice.

That means that the president’s constitutional duty to “take care that laws be faithfully executed” means that his White House staff should not politically interfere in criminal investigations, especially when it is self-serving to a president under investigation.

I am currently 25 pages into a draft law review article called Justice Department Independence and White House Control that explains why in great detail.

Q. Are any of her comments relevant to Mueller’s obstruction of justice investigation?

A. Only at the margins. To the extent Huckabee Sanders makes representations about the truthfulness of the president’s account of events, Mueller may want to explore the basis of her knowledge.
http://www.newsweek.com/how-has-flynn-d ... ion-664850

Trump Advisers Secretly Met With Jordan’s King While One Was Pushing A Huge Nuclear Power Deal
Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner, and Steve Bannon met with King Abdullah II while Flynn was reportedly pressing for a controversial, for-profit deal to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East.

Posted on September 15, 2017, at 1:12 p.m.
By Jason Leopold (BuzzFeed News Reporter) Chris McDaniel (BuzzFeed News Reporter) Anthony Cormier (BuzzFeed News Reporter)

In the days leading up to Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, when his soon-to-be national security adviser Michael Flynn was reportedly pushing a multibillion-dollar deal to build nuclear reactors in Jordan and other Middle East nations, Flynn and two other top Trump advisers held a secret meeting with the king of Jordan.

The meeting — details of which have never been reported — is the latest in a series of secret, high-stakes contacts between Trump advisers and foreign governments that have raised concerns about how, in particular, Flynn and senior adviser Jared Kushner handled their personal business interests as they entered key positions of power. And the nuclear project raised additional security concerns about expanding nuclear technology in a tinderbox region of the world. One expert compared it to providing “a nuclear weapons starter kit.”

On the morning of Jan. 5, Flynn, Kushner, and former chief strategist Steve Bannon greeted King Abdullah II at the Four Seasons hotel in lower Manhattan, then took off in a fleet of SUVs and a sedan to a different location.

People close to the three Trump advisers say that the nuclear deal was not discussed. But a federal official with access to a document created by a law enforcement agency about the meeting said that the nuclear proposal, known as the Marshall Plan, was one of the topics the group talked about.

The Wall Street Journal reported that while Flynn’s White House disclosure forms state that he stopped working on the deal in December 2016, he in fact continued to push it even after he entered the White House. Flynn’s lawyer declined to comment on the claims in the Journal story.

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The plan, for which Flynn was reportedly paid as a consultant, initially envisioned that the reactors would be built by US companies and security would be provided by the Russian state-owned firm Rosoboron, an arms exporter currently facing US sanctions. As the plan evolved, Russian involvement reportedly lessened, and it is not known whether Russia or its companies featured in the meeting with the Jordanian king. This week, Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee said they would turn over documents about the nuclear plan to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, contending that Flynn may have violated federal law by not disclosing foreign trips and meetings.

While it is not unusual for an incoming administration to meet with foreign dignitaries during the transition, Trump surrogates have repeatedly failed to acknowledge these contacts. Attorney General Jeff Sessions at first said he did not discuss campaign matters with Russian officials, only to later acknowledge at least two conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The United Arab Emirates set up a meeting between a military contractor close to the Trump administration and a Russian close to President Vladimir Putin. And this week, CNN reported that Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, visited with Flynn, Kushner, and Bannon without alerting the American government beforehand.

The meeting with the king of Jordan had extremely high stakes: a discussion with the head of a key American ally that might have included plans about spreading nuclear power to one of the world's least stable regions, possibly with the help of one of America's main geopolitical enemies, Russia. The revelation of the meeting comes as Abdullah plans to visit the United States next week and speak with Trump.

An eyewitness who saw the trio of Trump’s advisers that morning in the bar of the Four Seasons, and had a brief exchange with Bannon, said at least half a dozen other people were with them. It is not clear who they were. BuzzFeed News reached out to attorneys and spokespeople for Flynn, Kushner, and Bannon, as well as White House special counsel Ty Cobb and Bannon himself. None of them would comment on the record.

The only known public acknowledgement that Abdullah had left his country is a short note on his website saying: “His Majesty King Abdullah on Saturday arrived back home after a private visit abroad.”

Officials at the Jordanian embassy did not return multiple calls seeking comment.

Kushner initially failed to disclose any meetings with foreign officials on his security clearance form. He later amended the document to include more than 100 foreign contacts, including Abdullah.

In a statement sent to congressional committees in July, Kushner wrote that an assistant inadvertently had sent the security clearance form before it was finished and that Kushner “made every effort to provide the FBI with whatever information is needed to investigate my background.”

Flynn applied for a new security clearance in January 2016, and lawmakers said he failed to note “even a single foreign government official he had contact with in the seven years prior to submitting his security clearance application.” It is not known what foreign contacts Bannon noted on his clearance forms because the White House has not released them.

Three individuals — one close to Flynn, a second close to Kushner, and a third close to Bannon — denied that the nuclear deal came up in the meeting with the Jordanian king. But the source familiar with the law enforcement document said participants talked about Israeli-Palestinian relations, intelligence sharing between America and Jordan on Syria, ISIS — and the nuclear proposal.

The nuclear project may have been the most controversial subject. Newsweek first reported that Flynn tried to broker the deal, which promised “up to $200 billion in U.S. nuclear export opportunities” and “a new expanded security relationship." Politico reported that he was paid at least $25,000 by one of the American companies involved in the project, the now-defunct X-Co Dynamics/Iron Bridge Group. Representatives of that company did not respond to messages requesting comment.

Donald Trump with Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon
Drew Angerer / Getty Images
Donald Trump with Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon
Nuclear plants were to be built in Jordan, Saudia Arabia, and three other countries in the region. In April of last year, the head of Jordan’s design and development bureau, Maj. Gen. Omar Al Khaldi, was copied on emails saying the plan was designed to solidify the region “under a security construct” that would be led “by two superpowers.” The emails were released by the Democratic lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee.

In order for such a nuclear plan to move forward, Congress would have to ratify a deal similar to ones signed in recent years with India and the United Arab Emirates. Known as a “123 Agreement” — named for a section of the United States Atomic Energy Act — it requires countries sharing American nuclear technology and fuel to take steps to prevent them from being used in weapons.

The US has similar agreements in place with two other Arab nations, Egypt and Morocco.

Proponents have said the plan could bring new security to the region, by bringing disparate countries together in a shared project under American guidance. But critics believe the deal could provide nations that do not currently have nuclear weapons with the raw materials to make them.

“Any proposal to introduce dozens of nuclear reactors to the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, raises many proliferation red flags,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the nonpartisan Arms Control Association. “The Saudis do not need nuclear power and them gaining access could lead to dangerous consequences down the road.”

“The reason there is concern is that nuclear energy capacity is like giving a country a nuclear weapons starter kit,” said Alexandra Bell, senior policy director at the nonprofit Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

In the original proposal, American companies would have joined a consortium including the Saudi government and Russia to build 40 nuclear power plants in the region. The deal ultimately fizzled.

Shortly after Trump took office, the White House publicly announced a visit by Abdullah. The February visit included meetings with John Kelly, then the secretary of Homeland Security, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. In a statement summarizing Trump’s meeting with Abdullah, the White House said, “President Trump underscored that the United States is committed to strengthening the security and economic partnership with Jordan.”
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonleopold/t ... .hfQov3qvb

UNDER THE KNIFE
Michael Flynn Prepping for a $1 Million Legal Tab

Trump’s beleaguered ex-national security adviser set up a fund to help pay his legal bills. Sources told The Daily Beast he plans to spend at least seven figures.

BETSY WOODRUFF
LACHLAN MARKAY
SAM STEIN
09.18.17 1:23 PM ET
Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn plans to spend more than a million dollars on his legal defense, a source familiar with the situation told The Daily Beast on Monday. But because of the structure of the fund he has set up to pay for it, the public won’t know who is footing the bills.
The retired Army lieutenant general is facing legal scrutiny as part of an ongoing federal probe into alleged Russian government meddling in the 2016 presidential election. He’s now searching for ways to pay the resulting legal bills, including through a crowdsourcing effort he announced on Twitter on Monday morning.
“We deeply appreciate the support of family and friends across this nation who have touched our lives,” Flynn wrote.
Flynn is dealing with a multitude of potentially complex legal problems stemming from the Russia investigation, which has expanded to examine the private business activities of a number of current and former Trump aides and associates, including Flynn’s advocacy on behalf of a Turkish government-linked company last year. He belatedly disclosed that work under a federal law governing domestic lobbying and public relations on behalf of foreign governments and political parties.
According to the source, the legal defense fund Flynn established is legally structured as a trust—not a corporation, nonprofit, or political organization. Because Flynn is no longer in government service, he is not legally required to disclose the sources of funds placed in the trust, and Flynn does not plan to do so, the source said.
The legal defense fund’s website says it will not accept contributions from foreign nationals, but there are few legal boundaries to its fundraising practices, and the lack of disclosure will make it difficult to determine whether the fund is abiding by its stated donor restrictions. The source also said that the fund will not accept contributions from, or made at the behest of, the Trump Organization or the Trump presidential campaign, though Flynn’s attorney, Covington & Burling’s Robert Kelner, declined to speak on the record about that practice or other fundraising restrictions.
Without the assistance of foreign nationals or Trump-allied companies or individuals, Flynn will have a harder time scrambling for the cash. His large public profile should help with that. Other, lesser known aides, are less fortunate.

Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official who has been questioned by the House Intelligence Committee regarding Russia, told The Daily Beast it’s very safe to estimate that Flynn’s legal expenses will exceed $1 million. He said he interviewed numerous Washington attorneys who specialize in Congressional probes to represent him, and they all billed at least $1200 per hour.
Caputo said anyone testifying before a Congressional committee under these circumstances would need to practice, or “moot,” their hearing at least once. That practice session would take at least four hours, and would likely involve at least two attorneys, both of whom would bill $1200 or more for each hour. So just to do the bare minimum level of practice for one Congressional committee hearing, someone could expect to spend $10,000. Someone in Flynn’s situation could expect to face multiple committee hearings, and to have multiple practice sessions with multiple lawyers present for each hearing. The legal bills pile up fast.
On top of that, Caputo said people facing questions from Mueller’s team can expect exponentially higher bills. They will likely have lengthy question-and-answer sessions with members of the special counsel’s team, and have to answer document requests that could be complex and time-consuming.
“Somebody who’s a target can count on spending more than a million bucks,” Caputo said, “because they’ll be in the House and Senate jackpot and they’ll be in front of the Special Counsel.”
As of August 1, Caputo said he’s spent $30,000 on legal fees and other associated expenses—and that was just to take questions from one Congressional committee. He said he hasn’t heard from Mueller’s team. Caputo left the Trump campaign in June 2016, and isn’t facing questions about potential obstruction of justice related to the Comey firing.

“The fact of the matter is, if somebody like myself––who left the campaign in June––is enduring these dramatic expenses, you can imagine what’s happening to people who stayed with the president through the campaign until today,” he said.
Aides from past administration’s have faced daunting bills as well, even when they’re not the ones under direct scrutiny. Matt Schlapp, who served in the George W. Bush administration’s political affairs shop, said he ended up dolling out six-figures to white collar lawyers for help on a wide variety of testimonies he had to give to investigators. The financial burden was heavy. So was the psychological one.
“You have to scan all your emails, which is a frightening experience because it hits you how many you send in the course of a day,” he recalled. “You don’t sleep very well. You worry about hurting your friends…. It is generally a very stressful situation. But if you’re going to a grand jury or a House and Senate oversight hearing, this is not a time for your B-level traffic attorney. You have to go with the real deal because you’re looking at your whole career in front of you.”
Stan Brand, a longtime D.C. Attorney estimates that he had represented “half a dozen or more” White House aides who found themselves under legal jeopardy, including a young communications aide who went on to great things in television.
“On a saturday in March [1993], Bob Fisk, who was the independent counsel, laid a subpoena on the White House and dozens of people. It was shell shock. And so they all had to run off and get lawyers and George [Stephanopoulos] got me,” Brand recalled. “He said he was bright eyed and bushy-tailed coming to the White House and somehow he was now hiring a criminal defense lawyer.”
Brand moderated his fees to help Stephanopoulos with the cost. But it still added up to over $100,000. “And that was chicken feed compared to others,” Brand said. “And in those days, because of the independent counsel statute, you could seek reimbursement if you weren’t charged. But that was hard. You didn’t get all of it and some people didn’t get it.”
Flynn isn’t operating under that same statute. What he spends he is very unlikely to get back. He also benefits from not being a government employee right now, which Brand notes would make his legal benefactors subject to bribery statutes.
While Flynn has hired a top lawyer, his family is taking the lead in setting up the trust. His sister, Barbara Redgate, is listed as its trustee, and his brother, Joe Flynn, registered an alternate domain name for the trust’s website. Joe Flynn referred questions to Kelner.
Flynn’s son, Michael Flynn Jr., is also facing legal scrutiny as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. The elder Flynn’s legal defense fund is currently focused solely on his expenses, but it was not immediately clear whether the funds might be used to support the younger Flynn’s expenses as well at some point in the future.
Barry Coburn, Flynn Jr.’s attorney, declined to comment.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/michael-fl ... ia=desktop

MIKE FLYNN’S NUCLEAR SIDE-HUSTLE GETS EVEN SHADIER
Two weeks before the inauguration, Flynn reportedly met the king of Jordan while pushing a deal to build nuclear reactors . . . in Jordan.

Remember Mike Flynn? The ex-national security adviser who was forced to resign after he forgot to mention some conversations he’d had with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak? Whose unfair persecution at the hands of James Comey was allegedly one of the reasons Donald Trump fired his own F.B.I. director? Who received $600,000 in a lobbying deal from a Turkish man with business ties to Russia, and who subsequently blocked a plan to attack ISIS that the Turkish government opposed, all without ever registering a foreign agent or disclosing his lobbying deals? He’s back in the news today, and if you were hoping it was for something fun like Flynn announcing that he is joining the next season of Dancing with the Stars, you will be disappointed.

BuzzFeed News reports that two weeks before Donald Trump was inaugurated, Flynn and soon-to-be White House advisers Steve Bannon and Jared Kusher had a secret morning meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, during the same period in which Flynn was pushing “a multibillion-dollar deal to build nuclear reactors in Jordan and other Middle East nations.” (Like 100 other foreign contacts he initially failed to disclose, Kushner’s initial security clearance form failed to mention this particular meeting.) According to BuzzFeed, topics discussed included “Israeli-Palestinian relations, intelligence sharing between America and Jordan on Syria, ISIS,” and a nuclear project called the Marshal Plan, a $200 billion project which initially involved U.S. companies building reactors in Jordan and other Middle East nations, with security handled by a Russian state-owned firm called Rosoboron, which, incidentally, is currently facing the possibility of U.S. sanctions.

People close to the three Trump advisers say that the nuclear deal was not discussed. But a federal official with access to a document created by a law enforcement agency about the meeting said that the nuclear proposal, known as the Marshall Plan, was one of the topics the group talked about.

According to Politico, Flynn was paid at least $25,000 in his capacity as a consultant on the plan by one of the American companies involved. According to the Wall Street Journal, Flynn’s disclosure forms “indicate that [his] year-and-a-half work on the project ended in December 2016, but Mr. Flynn in fact remained involved in the project once he joined the Trump administration in January, discussing the plan and directing his National Security Council staff to meet with the companies involved, the former staffers said.” (Flynn’s lawyer declined to comment to the Journal, as did the White House.)
If this all sounds like the type of thing that’s going to keep you up at night, you’re not alone. “Any proposal to introduce dozens of nuclear reactors to the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, raises many proliferation red flags,” the Arms Control Association’s Daryl Kimball told BuzzFeed. “The Saudis do not need nuclear power and them gaining access could lead to dangerous consequences down the road.” Giving a country nuclear energy capacity, as the Marshall Plan would, “is like giving a country a nuclear weapons starter kit,” the nonprofit Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation’s Alexandra Bell said.

On the bright side, Flynn, Bannon, and Kushner are completely transparent, highly qualified people who we can definitely trust with national security.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/09 ... en-shadier

Robert Mueller Subpoenas an Associate of the Man Who Hired Michael Flynn as a Lobbyist
The special counsel wanted to question a Turkish businessman with interests in Turkey, Russia and the U.S. — and ties to people with criminal records.
by Isaac Arnsdorf Sept. 29, 4:42 p.m. EDT
The special prosecutor investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election has subpoenaed an associate of Gen. Michael Flynn’s Turkish lobbying client. The subpoena, a copy of which was obtained by ProPublica, ordered Sezgin Baran Korkmaz to testify before a grand jury in Washington on Sept. 22.

“The grand jury is conducting an investigation of possible violations of federal criminal laws involving the Foreign Agents Registration Act, among other offenses,” a letter accompanying the subpoena stated. The letter is signed by Robert Mueller and Zainab Ahmad, a senior assistant special counsel who specializes in prosecuting terrorism. Korkmaz did not respond to requests for comment.


Michael Flynn, then national security adviser, in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 10 (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
There are no indications of direct links between Korkmaz and Flynn, who briefly served as Donald Trump’s national security adviser. But Korkmaz, 39, is a close ally of Ekim Alptekin, the 40-year-old Turkish businessman who hired Flynn to lobby for Turkish interests shortly before the election. Korkmaz, a Turkish national, said in a radio interview in May that he started as a dishwasher at age 13 and is now bringing hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. to Turkey. His company invests in a range of industries in Turkey, the Middle East, the U.S. and Russia, and he has invested in several projects that involve people accused or convicted of crimes.

It’s not clear why prosecutors wanted Korkmaz to testify. But one possible explanation is his connection to Alptekin. Investigators are interested in the ultimate source of the money that Alptekin’s company paid to Flynn’s firm, according to a person familiar with the probe. (Representatives for Alptekin, Flynn and Mueller all declined to comment.)

Korkmaz and Alptekin are involved in a trade group together and have overlapping business interests. Korkmaz’s company, SBK Holding, is a member of the Turkey-U.S. Business Council, which is chaired by Alptekin. SBK was one of two platinum sponsors of the council’s conference in May 2017 at the Trump hotel in Washington. Both Alptekin and Korkmaz gave keynote speeches at the conference. In his remarks, Korkmaz credited Alptekin for helping him succeed in business. “Where I am now is due to the support of Mr. Ekim,” he said in Turkish.

The two men both attended a meeting at the Harvard Club in Manhattan in September 2016, according to a pro-government newspaper columnist who was present. That meeting occurred during the same week in which Flynn met with two Turkish ministers, also in New York, a gathering arranged by Alptekin. At that meeting, they discussed potential plans for the U.S. to hand over Fetullah Gulen, a controversial cleric and opponent of Turkey’s president who lives in Pennsylvania, to Turkey, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Alptekin defended his work with Flynn in his speech at the business council in May. “As many of you have read in the media, I hired the Flynn Intel Group in 2016 before the election with a mandate to help me understand where the Turkish-American relationship is and where it’s going and what the obstacles to the relationship are,” Alptekin said. “My aim was to commission independent research and to establish objective facts” to help businesses understand what he views as the threat from Gulen, whom Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suspects of trying to topple him.


Turkish businessman Ekim Alptekin gives opening remarks during a conference on U.S.-Turkey relations in Washington, D.C., in May. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
The discovery of the lobbying deal with Alptekin, which ultimately generated about $450,000 for Flynn’s firm, helped put Flynn in legal jeopardy because he didn’t initially report his work as a foreign agent to the Justice Department.

As for Korkmaz, his business interests are diverse. SBK has “major investments” in the Russian energy sector, a September 2016 announcement by a Turkish government agency said. The company’s website shows operations in Russia but doesn’t specify what they are.

The company backed a bid, which was ultimately unsuccessful, for a high-profile infrastructure project in Russia several years ago. In 2014, SBK pursued a major project that was a top priority for President Vladimir Putin at the time. After annexing Crimea, Putin wanted a bridge built over the Kerch Strait to connect Crimea to Russia. SBK signed an agreement to supply $850 million in financing to build the bridge. But the deal went to a company led by Putin’s childhood best friend.

Some of Korkmaz’s colleagues and investing partners have come under scrutiny — or worse — by criminal authorities. The U.S. sister company of Korkmaz’s operation, known as SBK Holdings USA, is led by Levon Termendzhyan, a Russian fuel trader with a long rap sheet, according to court records. Termendzhyan has been charged with, but found not guilty of, tax fraud and armed assault. He was convicted of battery in 2013.

In an ongoing lawsuit in California Superior Court in Los Angeles, a former SBK Holdings USA employee claimed in a sworn declaration this year that he was told by two people interviewed by Department of Homeland Security investigators that the agents are probing Termendzhyan for money laundering, tax evasion and stolen petroleum. SBK Holdings USA’s lawyer called those accusations “irrelevant and preposterous” in a court filing. (The lawyer declined to comment for this article.) SBK Holdings USA accuses the former employee of embezzling, which he denies.


The ‘International Man of Mystery’ Linked to Flynn’s Lobbying Deal
Dmitri “David” Zaikin made Russian energy deals with powerful officials, advised Eastern European parties drifting toward Russia, brokered condos at Toronto’s Trump Tower, and teamed up with the guy who hired Michael Flynn.
Since 2013, Korkmaz’s SBK has managed $500 million of investments in Turkey from another of Termendzhyan’s companies and from a third American company called Washakie Renewable Energy. The latter is part of a conglomerate controlled by the Kingston Group, a fundamentalist Mormon clan.

In 2011, Utah’s then-attorney general called the Kingstons an “organized crime family.” Washakie paid a $3 million fine in 2015 to settle allegations that its biofuels plant collected federal subsidies while failing to produce. In February 2016, federal agents with the Internal Revenue Service, Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Homeland Security raided some of the family’s company offices. The investigation has not resulted in any charges.

In a radio interview, Korkmaz said he convinced the Kingstons to invest in Turkey, and Alptekin is on the board of a Kingston entity that invests in Turkey. Kingston Group did not respond to requests for comment.
https://www.propublica.org/article/robe ... n-lobbyist

Mueller Subpoenas Biz Associate Of Flynn’s Turkish Lobbying Client


By ALLEGRA KIRKLAND Published SEPTEMBER 29, 2017 5:46 PM

Special counsel Robert Mueller issued a subpoena compelling a business associate of ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn’s Turkish lobbying client to testify before a grand jury earlier this month, ProPublica reported Friday.

Sezgin Baran Korkmaz, a Turkish equity investor, was ordered to appear on Sept. 22 before the grand jury in Washington, D.C., according to the report.

“The grand jury is conducting an investigation of possible violations of federal criminal laws involving the Foreign Agents Registration Act, among other offenses,” read a letter accompanying the subpoena, which was obtained by ProPublica.

Korkmaz is reportedly a close ally of Ekim Alptekin, the Turkish businessman who entered into a $600,000 contract with Flynn Intel Group, Flynn’s now-defunct lobbying firm, to lobby for Turkish interests late in the 2016 campaign. The firm belatedly registered with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) for that work, conceding that it “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.”

Korkmaz did not return ProPublica’s requests for comment. But an unnamed source close to the investigation told the publication that Korkmaz’s relationship with Alptekin could be the reason he was asked to testify, as Mueller’s team wants to suss out the original source of the money behind the lobbying effort.

That campaign involved researching and producing negative PR materials about exiled Turkish cleric Fetullah Gulen, who Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claims coordinated a failed coup against him in summer 2016. Flynn’s failure to register under FARA for that work is one of several areas of interest for Mueller’s investigators. They’re also looking into Flynn’s failure to disclose both meetings with Russian officials and funds he received from Russia-linked firms.

Korkmaz apparently has his own business interests in Russia. His company, SBK Holding, has “major investments” in the Russia energy sector, according to ProPublica. The publication also noted that some of Korkmaz’s previous colleagues and investing partners have been investigated for criminal activity by U.S. authorities.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/ ... hael-flynn

Flynn ally sought help from 'dark web' in covert Clinton email investigation
Barbara Ledeen, a staffer on the committee looking into Trump’s Russia ties and a friend of Mike Flynn, tried to launch her own investigation into Clinton’s emails
Michael Flynn, middle, is a central figure in the FBI’s investigation into whether the Kremlin worked with the Trump campaign to sway the US election.
Michael Flynn, middle, is a central figure in the FBI’s investigation into whether the Kremlin worked with the Trump campaign to sway the US election. Photograph: Carlos Barria/Reuters

Stephanie Kirchgaessner
Friday 13 October 2017 05.30 EDT Last modified on Friday 13 October 2017 09.38 EDT
A close associate of Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn arranged a covert investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state, and through intermediaries turned to a person with knowledge of the “dark web” for help.


Flynn, a retired three-star general who led chants of “lock her up” at last year’s Republican national convention, is a central figure in the FBI’s investigation into whether the Kremlin worked with the Trump campaign to sway the US election.

Flynn is personally and ideologically linked to Barbara Ledeen, a longtime conservative activist who works for the Republican senator Chuck Grassley on the Senate judiciary committee – which is now investigating alleged links between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Ledeen’s husband, Michael Ledeen, is also a confidant of Flynn, and co-authored a book with him last year.

Flynn was forced to resign in February after just 24 days on the job as Trump’s chief intelligence official in the White House, when it emerged that he had lied to Vice-President Mike Pence about conversations he had with the then Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak.

According to interview notes released by the FBI last year, Ledeen decided in 2015 to launch her own investigation into Clinton’s use of the server. At the time, she was a staffer on the Senate judiciary committee.

According to the FBI files, Ledeen wanted to determine whether the emails had been hacked by a “foreign power”, because the incident angered her as a citizen and because she wanted to know whether such a hack would put her children, who served in the military, in danger.

Clinton’s use of a private server was steeped in controversy throughout her unsuccessful presidential bid, but Ledeen’s concerns proved to be unfounded. A federal investigation found no evidence that the emails on Clinton’s private server were ever compromised.

Ledeen’s name was redacted on the FBI documents describing the investigation, which were released last year in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. But a person who reviewed the unredacted documents confirmed to the Guardian that Barbara Ledeen was the subject. Her involvement was also confirmed by the Senate judiciary committee in response to the Guardian’s questions.

According to the FBI notes, Ledeen wanted to pursue her own investigation in 2015 into whether or not Clinton’s emails had been compromised but could not finance the work.

She sought out the help of an unnamed defense contractor and also turned to Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House, for help. According to the FBI notes, Gingrich “wanted to speak to others about the project” and asked Judicial Watch, the conservative activist group, for financial assistance.

Judicial Watch allegedly turned to another, unnamed, contractor who was familiar with the “deep web and dark web”, according to the FBI files. The parties were concerned about what they would do if they came across any emails that contained classified information. According to the FBI investigation, the project was later halted.

The incident and web of relationships is important for two reasons.

First, because Ledeen is the second person with ties to Flynn who allegedly sought to investigate Clinton’s use of a private server in an unofficial capacity.

In June, a former British intelligence official named Matt Tait said that he had been approached by a longtime Republican operative called Peter Smith, who had a history of seeking damaging material about the Clinton family and was known for his close ties to Gingrich.

Smith was convinced that Clinton’s private server had been hacked by a foreign power, probably Russians, Tait said.

Smith, who died at the age of 81 10 days after giving his own account to the Wall Street Journal, told the newspaper he had operated independently of the Trump campaign.

He allegedly told Tait that he had been approached by a person on the “dark web” who claimed to have a copy of emails from Clinton’s server and wanted help validating their authenticity.

According to Tait’s account, Smith claimed to be working with Flynn, who at the time was serving as a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Ledeen’s involvement is also important because she works on the Senate judiciary committee, which is conducting an investigation into the Trump campaign. Her family’s relationship with Flynn raises questions about whether Ledeen could be wielding influence over the investigation.

Grassley’s spokesman said that Ledeen’s 2015 inquiry had not been authorised by the judiciary committee and that the committee had only learned of it after it had been completed.

“She was instructed not to do any further follow-up once the committee learned of her involvement,” the spokesman said.

Congressional investigators do not have the power of the FBI and federal prosecutors to bring criminal indictments, but they can compel witnesses to testify publicly and under oath, and can potentially play an important role in setting the groundwork for impeachment proceedings against the president.

Grassley has several important decisions to weigh in how his investigation will proceed, including whether to call the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, to testify publicly about a 2016 meeting he attended with Russians.

A Grassley spokesman told the Guardian that Barbara Ledeen was a part-time staffer on the judiciary committee judicial nominations unit. He said Ledeen was “in no way” connected to the investigations team and “would not have access to any of its materials”.

“Senator Grassley has no relationship with Barbara’s husband and wouldn’t recognise him if he saw him,” the spokesman added.

Ledeen and her husband have been influential – and controversial – players in conservative circles in Washington for decades.

Michael Ledeen, Barbara’s husband, is a historian and former Reagan administration official who helped to develop the secret programme to sell US arms to Iran in the late 1980s, in what is known as the Iran-Contra affair.

Neither Barbara nor Michael Ledeen responded to requests for comment. Michael Ledeen’s daughter, Simone Ledeen, formerly worked with Flynn in Afghanistan.

An attorney for Flynn did not respond to a request for comment.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... a-dark-web

US Senate presses ex-Trump aide Michael Flynn's son for documents in Russia probe, source says

Oct 17 (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the son of President Donald Trump's former national security adviser to provide documents and testimony as part of the panel's probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, a source familiar with the congressional matter told Reuters.

Michael G. Flynn was a close aide to his father, former U.S. Army general Michael Flynn, 58, who was fired by Trump three weeks into his White House job in February as he came under scrutiny for his foreign contacts.

The son managed his father's schedule and accompanied him on trips while working at Flynn Intel Group consultancy, including one to Moscow in 2015 for an event where the elder Flynn sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russia has repeatedly denied the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies that Moscow interfered in the presidential campaign to help Republican Trump by hacking Democratic Party emails and spreading propaganda online.
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/1 ... /23246805/

Papadopoulos And Flynn Client Both Tied To Israeli Energy Consortium
Both George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn’s client, Turkish businessman Kamil Ekim Alptekin, are tied to Israeli gas dealings and attended energy conferences in Tel Aviv last year.

Posted on November 3, 2017, at 1:42 p.m.
Borzou Daragahi

ISTANBUL — The former Trump adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators examining Russian influence in the 2016 Trump campaign attended conferences that included the same energy firm that was a source of funding for a controversial lobbying contract with former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

George Papadopoulos, an adviser to the Trump campaign now cooperating with special investigator Robert Mueller’s team, worked for years in the oil and energy business, focusing on cultivating deals emerging from the Leviathan gas field along the eastern Mediterranean.

Last year, while serving as a Trump foreign policy adviser, Papadopoulos appeared on an Israeli energy conference panel that included Yigal Landau, CEO of Ratio Oil Exploration, one of several Israeli and US firms that are part of the consortium exploiting Leviathan.

Documents obtained and reviewed by BuzzFeed News earlier this year showed Ratio had a business relationship with Kamil Ekim Alptekin. The Dutch-Turkish businessman has been subpoenaed by Mueller’s investigators in connection to his hiring of the lobbying and of Flynn’s consulting firm.

Alptekin attended a November 2016 energy conference in Tel Aviv as a guest of Ratio, but a source close to Alptekin denied he had any ties to Papadopoulos, and described both men’s connection to the Leviathan project as coincidental.

The connection may add to the growing picture of Papadopoulos, who has become a subject of scrutiny since his plea deal was unsealed on Monday. Although The Daily Caller reported that former Trump campaign official Sam Clovis approved of his joining the Trump camp in March 2016 — he also appears in a photo of the March 2016 meeting with Trump, Clovis and now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions among others — it remains unclear how he was brought into the Trump camp’s orbit.

Alptekin told BuzzFeed News he hired the now-defunct Flynn Intelligence Group in part to advise him on the Ratio contract, but later clarified that he also asked Flynn to research the activities of the movement led by Fethullah Gulen, a US-based Islamic scholar wanted by the Turkish government for his alleged role in a 2016 coup attempt. A Ratio spokesperson earlier this year denied ties to Alptekin, despite the existence of numerous documents, emails, photographs and bank statements showing a business relationship. Ratio did not respond to an email sent Thursday to its spokesperson and two other executives for comment.

The Leviathan field, one of the largest gas finds worldwide, has attracted enormous interest within the energy sector.

"We want to see Israeli partnerships with European countries, especially from the Mediterranean, such as Greece, Cyprus and Turkey,” Papadopoulos said during his panel at the energy conference, held on April 4, 2016 at the Hilton Hotel in Tel Aviv, according to a report by Israel Defense.

While there is no evidence of a connection between the panel and the energy deal, Alptekin’s firm Inovo and Ratio signed a consulting deal on April 13 last year, according to documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News.

Significant energy finds such as Leviathan often draw the attention of ambitious businessmen such as the 30-year-old Papadopoulos and Alptekin, a well-connected 39-year-old whose primary business has been aerospace and real estate.

In another possible coincidence, both Alptekin and Josef Mifsud, a London-based Maltese scholar who has acknowledged that he is the unnamed “overseas professor” in the Papadopoulos case, are among several hundred international relations specialists and players who are members of the European Council of Foreign Relations, a mainstream think tank with offices in seven countries. According to the plea deal, Papadopoulos sought to reach out to sources in Moscow after the UK-based professor informed him in April 2016 that the Russians had incriminating material that could be used to damage the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton.

The source with knowledge of Alptekin’s affairs said the businessman had never communicated with Mifsud.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/borzoudaragahi ... .kc32k2V50

RED LETTERS
Michael Flynn Followed Russian Troll Accounts, Pushed Their Messages in Days Before Election

Trump’s notoriously Kremlin-friendly national security adviser amplified Russian messages right when they mattered most—in the days leading up to Nov. 8, 2016.

BEN COLLINS
KEVIN POULSEN
11.01.17 8:34 PM ET
Former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn followed five Twitter accounts based out of the Russian-backed “troll factory” in St. Petersburg—and pushed their messages at least three times in the month before the 2016 election.
Over 2,750 troll accounts based out of the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency were made public by House investigators on Wednesday. The accounts, some of which had previously been identified by The Daily Beast as Russian-generated, were pulled from Twitter due to their ties to the troll factory over the past three months.
The Daily Beast had previously discovered Flynn, Donald Trump Jr., Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, and Trump campaign digital director Brad Parscale retweeted Ten_GOP several times in the month before the election.
The news that Flynn also pushed Russian propaganda comes at an unwelcome time for the former three-star general and head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Flynn is one of the people under investigation by Robert Mueller’s widespread probe into Russian influence in the 2016 campaign.
During Flynn’s brief tenure as President Trump’s top national security aide, Flynn pushed for cooperation between the Russian and American military that would have been, at best, borderline illegal. Flynn ultimately resigned amidst reports that he had undisclosed meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kisylak during the campaign.
Of course, Flynn wasn't necessarily hostile to Russian agitprop. In December of 2015, he traveled to Moscow for a gala celebrating Russia Today, the Kremlin’s propaganda network. At Flynn’s side for dinner: Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Flynn followed the accounts Jenn_Abrams, LauraBaeley, Pamela_Moore13, SouthLoneStar, and Ten_GOP. Baeley, Abrams and Moore falsely claimed they were female American Trump supporters. SouthLoneStar claimed it was an account by a “Proud Texan and American Patriot” who featured “Islam is against Western culture” in its Twitter bio.


Just three days before the 2016 election, Flynn posted that a Ten_GOP tweet “needs to be RT'd (retweeted) frequently,” tagging Trump campaign social media director Dan Scavino, his son Mike Flynn Jr., and far-right agitator Mike Cernovich.

A day before the election, Flynn cited Ten_GOP again, saying “@realdonaldtrump & @mike_pence will be our next POTUS & VPOTUS.”

The Ten_GOP tweets were two of just 25 tweets by Trump’s future national security adviser in the two days before the election.

When Flynn quote-tweeted Pamela_Moore13 in October, it was one of his three total tweets from that day.

“Let's take our country back from the hands of those who care less about you & I and more about power & money,” his tweet reads.

“Moore” claimed she lived in Texas and said she was “pro-God” and “anti-racism,” but often posted xenophobic rants.
“Today's Marseille, France: Hospitals are so overrun by Muslims gimmigrants that local French can no longer get care,” the account tweeted in August, just weeks before it was shut down by Twitter.
Attempts to reach Flynn to comment for this story were not successful.
Since Twitter has suspended the Kremlin-connected accounts and deleted their posts, including a record of all retweets, only tweets where Flynn comments on the troll account’s posts—or “quote tweets” them—remain. Unlike Trump Jr., Conway, Parscale and Flynn Jr., Flynn Sr.’s deleted tweets are not saved by the political tweet archive service Polititweet.
Flynn’s son, Michael Flynn Jr., was an even more ardent consumer of Russian troll content, retweeting the propaganda accounts 47 times in all, according to data in the Polititweet archive. Ten_GOP, an account he retweeted 37 times, benefited the most, with five retweets defending General Flynn, one purporting to debunk Russian election interference, and another pushing misinformation about a Twin Falls, Idaho assault case that Russia was then using to inflame anti-refugee sentiment in the US. The troll account Pamela_Moore13 got eight retweets, and Jenn_Abrams and rightnpr (“Right and Proud”) each enjoyed a single retweet from the junior Flynn, who also favored the Russian account USA_Gunslinger (“Gunslinger Girl” from “Wisconsin”) with a personal reply on election day.
Flynn Jr. could be subpoenaed by the Senate Intelligence Committee after ignoring requests to hand over documents to investigators about the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The general’s son was active in the spread of Hillary Clinton-related conspiracy theories stemming from the DNC and John Podesta hacks that were distributed by Wikileaks, including the so-called “Pizzagate” conspiracy.
The elder Flynn also tweeted about the Pizzagate, which falsely claims that Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman John Podesta were running a pedophile ring out of the basement of a pizza shop that has no basement, in the days before the election.
“U decide - NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc...MUST READ!” he tweeted, linking to an entirely fabricated news article on a website called TruePundit six days before polls opened.
He later deleted the tweet.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/michael-f ... e-election