Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-17?

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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun May 21, 2017 7:35 am

First on CNN: Russian officials bragged they could use Flynn to influence Trump, sources say
By Gloria Borger, Pamela Brown, Jim Sciutto, Marshall Cohen and Eric Lichtblau, CNN
Updated 9:03 PM EDT, Fri May 19, 2017

(CNN) Russian officials bragged in conversations during the presidential campaign that they had cultivated a strong relationship with former Trump adviser retired Gen. Michael Flynn and believed they could use him to influence Donald Trump and his team, sources told CNN.

The conversations deeply concerned US intelligence officials, some of whom acted on their own to limit how much sensitive information they shared with Flynn, who was tapped to become Trump's national security adviser, current and former governments officials said.

"This was a five-alarm fire from early on," one former Obama administration official said, "the way the Russians were talking about him." Another former administration official said Flynn was viewed as a potential national security problem.


The conversations picked up by US intelligence officials indicated the Russians regarded Flynn as an ally, sources said. That relationship developed throughout 2016, months before Flynn was caught on an intercepted call in December speaking with Russia's ambassador in Washington, Sergey Kislyak. That call, and Flynn's changing story about it, ultimately led to his firing as Trump's first national security adviser.

View this interactive content on CNN.com
Officials cautioned, however, that the Russians might have exaggerated their sway with Trump's team during those conversations.

Flynn's lawyer declined to comment.

"We are confident that when these inquiries are complete there will be no evidence to support any collusion between the campaign and Russia," a White House official said in a statement. "... This matter is not going to distract the President or this administration from its work to bring back jobs and keep America safe."

Flynn has emerged as a central figure -- and Trump's biggest liability -- in the intensifying investigations into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. His financial ties to Turkish government interests, which paid him $530,000 in a lobbying deal that he failed to disclose during the campaign, are also under scrutiny by federal investigators.

One major concern for Obama administration officials was the subject of conversations between Flynn and Kislyak that took place shortly after President Barack Obama slapped new sanctions on Russia for meddling in the election. Sources tell CNN that Flynn told Kislyak that the Trump administration would look favorably on a decision by Russia to hold off on retaliating with its own sanctions. The next day, Putin said he wouldn't retaliate.

Sources say Flynn also told Kislyak that the incoming Trump administration would revisit US sanctions on Russia once in office. The US has applied sanctions on Russia since 2014 for its actions in Ukraine.

Flynn's calls with Kislyak in December have received the most attention, but his relationship with the Russian ambassador goes back four years.

He first met Kislyak in June 2013 during an official trip to Russia, according to The Washington Post. He led the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time and met his counterparts at the Russian military intelligence agency known as the GRU.

In December 2015, Flynn attended a gala honoring the Kremlin-run TV network RT. Documents released last month revealed that Flynn was paid $45,000 to attend the event, where he sat at the same table as Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Officials noticed an uptick in communication between Flynn and Kislyak shortly after Flynn's trip to Moscow in December 2015.


Trump angrily denied any collusion with Russia this week and denounced the newest investigation -- now in the hands of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III -- as "a witch hunt."

And he has remained steadfast in his loyalty to Flynn, even as the scrutiny surrounding his fired aide continues to weigh down his presidency. Trump urged then-FBI Director James Comey in February to drop the bureau's investigation into Flynn and "let this go," according to a memo Comey wrote at the time. The conversation, first reported by The New York Times earlier this week, has opened the President up to charges from critics of obstruction of justice.

Trump's obvious bond with Flynn, like his relationship with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and other top advisers, appears rooted in the fact that they supported his then-longshot presidential campaign last year at a time when most Republicans were ostracizing him.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/05/19/poli ... index.html



Michael Ledeen (the Niger Yellowcake Forged Documents guy)

FASTER, PLEASE!
The New McCarthyites
BY MICHAEL LEDEEN MAY 10, 2017
Image
UNITED STATES - APRIL 18: Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, prepares to testify at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in Dirksen Building titled "Current and Future Worldwide Threats," featuring testimony by he and James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call) (CQ Roll Call via AP Images)
Watching former acting attorney general Sally Yates and James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence, sliming away at General Mike Flynn took me back to reminiscences of Wisconsin’s infamous Senator Joe McCarthy and his lists of Communists. He used to brandish sheafs of paper, on which he claimed to have the names of enemy agents operating within the government. We rarely got any real names, but we were assured there were hundreds of them. Finally a brave Massachusetts attorney asked the senator “have you no shame?” -- and the air went out of the balloon.

No such brave soul was in action Monday as Yates and Clapper ruminated on the deeds of Mike Flynn, arguably the most creative and effective intelligence officer of his generation. Anyone who knows Flynn well will tell you that he is a rare man, a straight talker who tells his superiors exactly what he thinks, a 3-star general who has often preferred the input of junior officers and/or enlisted men and women to that of senior officers. These habits unsurprisingly annoyed his superiors, who were taken out of the decision-making loop. And, with the success of his methods, Flynn became a pariah to the intelligence establishment, perhaps above all to the CIA.

In short, as so often in life, his very success generated powerful enemies. You can safely assume that several of them first engineered Flynn’s purge as chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, then participated eagerly in his elimination as national security adviser.

The testimony of Yates and Clapper comes right out of the intelligence community’s primers, including the preposterous claim that Flynn had made himself super-vulnerable to recruitment by the Russians. How? In the period following his purge from DIA, Flynn had been paid for speeches, including one in Moscow. This is common among retired officials, yet in Flynn’s case it became inflated to a presumed matter of great significance. Maybe even some sort of crime. Maybe even treason. That was the implication of remarks from Yates and Clapper. Yet, when asked for any empirical reason why anyone should believe any of it, they retreated to McCarthy’s methods: sorry, cannot tell you ‘cause it’s classified.


That’s when some committee member was supposed to ask, “Have you no shame?” But none of them was up to it.

McCarthy would have loved it, since the demon of the piece was Russia. But there is at least one difference. McCarthy’s targets could always demand that they be permitted to testify to his committee, to refute charges made there. But Flynn is trapped in the “Scooter Libby trap.” If he were to make an error in his testimony, no matter how trivial, he could be prosecuted for the error. No decent lawyer would advise his client to step forward under such circumstances. Ergo, Flynn is locked in a Catch 22 box. He must stay silent while he’s slandered by his McCarthyite attackers, who have no evidence for their slimy accusations. No matter that the FBI has said it has no basis to move against Flynn, but Yates and Clapper—yes, the same Clapper who spoke falsely to Congress within our memory—ask us to take their word for it.
https://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/2017/ ... arthyites/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon May 22, 2017 9:55 am

Reports: Trump expressed regret over firing Michael Flynn
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/0 ... /22102976/

Michael Flynn to plead the Fifth and ignore Senate subpoena
Brad Reed
22 MAY 2017 AT 09:40 ET

Former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn plans to ignore the subpoena issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee and will cite his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

According to an Associated Press report, Flynn plans to officially invoke the Fifth Amendment sometime on Monday.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr said last week that Flynn had not yet complied with the Senate’s subpoena, and added that he didn’t expect Flynn to agree to testify under oath.

Flynn asked for immunity from the Senate in exchange for testifying, but so far the Senate has been unwilling to grant his request.

Trump fired Flynn after it was revealed that he lied both publicly and privately to Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of his contacts with Russian government officials. Trump had been warned about Flynn’s falsehoods by former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, but he didn’t fire Flynn until 18 days later when a report about his talks with Russian officials appeared in the Washington Post.

Since then, reports have revealed that Flynn was under federal investigation for his work lobbying on behalf of the Turkish government at the time he accepted the position as national security adviser. Flynn reportedly told the Trump transition team that he was under investigation for his work, but he was offered the job anyway.
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/michae ... -subpoena/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon May 22, 2017 12:47 pm

Michael Flynn triggers the beginning of the end of Donald Trump by pleading the Fifth Amendment
By Bill Palmer
Opinion
Updated: 11:41 am EDT Mon May 22, 2017 | 0

Well, that’s one way to avoid testifying. Facing a subpoena from the Senate Intelligence Committee in a Russia scandal which has already seen him unofficially admit his guilt by retroactively registering as a foreign agent, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is now planning to invoke the Fifth Amendment – and it’s a move which triggers the beginning of the end of Donald Trump.
This news from Michael Flynn isn’t necessarily surprising. But it’s still nonetheless a stunning blow to Trump’s hopes of surviving this. The Associated Press says Flynn will formally plead the Fifth later today (link), which means he’ll be officially admitting his guilt. It’s true that the aides of past Presidents and candidates have invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying, but that’s taken place in a radically different context, where one person violated the law. This is a whole other matter.
By invoking the Fifth, not only is Flynn admitting he’s guilty in the Russia scandal, he’s admitting the Russia scandal is a real thing. He’s acknowledging that the Trump campaign’s inappropriate relationship with the Russian government really did exist. And whatever Flynn’s intention today, he might as well be admitting that Donald Trump is also guilty – because this is a scandal that we know extends all the way to the top. The timing is also horrific for Trump, as he feebly attempts to use his first official overseas trip – which already isn’t going well by any measure – to take the focus off the exploding Russia scandal. So much for that.
By the way, pleading the Fifth Amendment means you’re setting yourself up to be charged with the crime in question. So Michael Flynn isn’t suddenly off the hook. Look for the legal process to accelerate against him now that he’s hunkering down. And let’s see if he’s still silent about what he knows about Trump once he realizes he’s going to prison if he doesn’t start talking. If Trump thinks Flynn pleading the Fifth is good news for himself, he’s mistaken.
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/fif ... rump/2995/


Michael Flynn’s Lawyers Cite ‘Public Frenzy Against Him’

Susan Walsh/AP
By Associated Press Published MAY 22, 2017 9:40 AM
8424Views
Attorneys for Michael Flynn say that a daily “escalating public frenzy against him” and the Justice Department’s appointment of a special counsel have created a legally dangerous environment for him to cooperate with a Senate investigation.

That’s according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press that was written on behalf of the former national security adviser under President Donald Trump. The letter, sent Monday by Flynn’s legal team to the Senate Intelligence Committee, lays out the case for Flynn to invoke his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination and his decision not to produce documents in response to a congressional subpoena.

The letter says that the current context of the Senate’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election threatens that “any testimony he provides could be used against him.”

Flynn’s decision comes less than two weeks after the committee issued a subpoena for Flynn’s documents as part of the panel’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.

Legal experts have said Flynn was unlikely to turn over the personal documents without immunity because he would be waiving some of his constitutional protections by doing so. Flynn has previously sought immunity from “unfair prosecution” to cooperate with the committee.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/micha ... e-subpoena


The Flynn Scandal Explodes: What This Means and How It Happened
A timeline of all the bizarre twists and turns.

DANIEL SCHULMAN AND HANNAH LEVINTOVAMAY 18, 2017 3:06 PM

On Wednesday, not one but two bombshells exploded concerning Michael Flynn, the national security adviser President Donald Trump was compelled to fire after only 22 days on the job. The New York Times reported that on January 4—weeks before the inauguration—Flynn informed Trump's transition team that he was under Justice Department investigation for his undisclosed lobbying work on behalf of Turkish interests. And McClatchy revealed that six days later, Flynn attended a meeting with Susan Rice, President Barack Obama's national security adviser, and asked her to delay a planned US-Kurdish military operation against a top ISIS target, an action that Turkey, which had opposed joint US-Kurdish operations, would not have supported.

Together these two stories present a stunning scenario: Trump's team allowed a lobbyist for foreign interests who was under federal investigation to become the president's top national security aide and to participate in decision-making related to his lobbying.

The story gets worse. It was 16 days after Flynn's meeting with Rice that Sally Yates, then the acting attorney general, informed the Trump White House that Flynn had lied about conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak regarding the sanctions Obama imposed on Moscow for its covert intervention in the 2016 campaign. Yates also warned Don McGahn, the White House counsel, that Flynn was now vulnerable to Russian blackmail. Still, the White House kept Flynn in the job for another 18 days. It was only after the extent of Flynn's contacts with Kislyak was publicly exposed by a Washington Post story that Trump fired him. (On Thursday morning, Yahoo News reported that on April 25, Flynn told a group of friends that Trump had recently sent him a message: Stay strong.)

Flynn, who has offered to testify before Congress if granted immunity from prosecution, has emerged as central figure in the Russia scandal enveloping the Trump administration. The retired lieutenant general who led "lock her up" chants during the presidential campaign is currently under investigation on several fronts. The Justice Department is probing his Turkish lobbying, and the FBI is investigating his contacts with Russian officials during the presidential campaign and transition period. The Senate intelligence committee recently subpoenaed Flynn for records of his Russian contacts.

The latest Flynn revelations are a tremendous blow for a White House already reeling from the Trump-Russia scandal, the news that Trump disclosed highly sensitive top-secret information to Russian officials in the Oval Office, Trump's firing of FBI director James Comey, and the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. The Flynn affair, which has the potential to derail Trump's presidency, is full of twists and turns, and it seems like there's more to come. Here's how it has unfolded so far.

April 30, 2014: Flynn announces his retirement form the military about a year earlier then expected. He has reportedly been forced out as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency by the Obama administration. Flynn subsequently forms the Flynn Intel Group.

October 8, 2014: The counsel's office of the Defense Intelligence Agency responds to an inquiry from Flynn about ethics restrictions that will apply to him after his Army retirement. The office explains in a letter that he can not receive foreign government payments without prior approval, due to the Constitution's emoluments clause. "If you are ever in a position where you would receive an emolument from a foreign government or from an entity that might be controlled by a foreign government, be sure to obtain advance approval from the Army prior to acceptance," the letter states.

December 10, 2015: Flynn travels to Moscow to attend the 10th anniversary dinner of Russia Today, a media outlet owned by the Russian government. Flynn is paid more than $30,000 to speak at the event and is seated next to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

February 2016: Flynn begins advising the Trump campaign.

July 18, 2016: During his speech at the Republican National Convention, Flynn eggs on the chanting crowd, saying, "Lock her up, that's right. Yep, that's right: Lock her up!"

August 9, 2016: Flynn and his company, the Flynn Intel Group, ink a $600,000 contract with Inovo BV, a company owned by Ekim Alptekin, a Turkish businessman and ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to the New York Times, the contract calls for Flynn's company to "run an influence campaign aimed at discrediting Fethullah Gulen, an reclusive cleric who lives in Pennsylvania and whom Mr. Erdogan has accused of orchestrating a failed [July 2016] coup in Turkey."

August 17, 2016: Trump receives his first classified intelligence briefing as the GOP nominee for president. He brings Flynn with him to the meeting, which includes discussion of the intelligence community's assessment that Russia was interfering in the US election.

November 8, 2016: On Election Day, Flynn publishes an op-ed in the Hill that calls Gulen "a shady Islamic mullah" and "a radical Islamist."

November 10, 2016: During a meeting at Trump Tower with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Flynn says he wants the national security adviser post in the new administration, NBC News reports. Kushner and Trump indicate that "President-elect Trump would certainly approve of that request to reward Flynn's loyalty," according to NBC. That day, Trump meets with Obama in the Oval Office, where Obama warns him against hiring Flynn.

November 11, 2016: The Daily Caller reveals Flynn's contract with Inovo BV.

November 2016: "Days after" seeing the Daily Caller story, according to the New York Times, Trump campaign lawyer William McGinley holds a conference call with members of Flynn Intel Group to gather more information about its foreign business dealings.

November 17, 2016: Trump names Flynn as his national security adviser.

November 30, 2016: The Justice Department notifies Flynn in a letter that it is investigating his Turkish lobbying work.

December 2016: Flynn and Kushner meet with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at Trump Tower. Kislyak was not caught on tape entering the building, suggesting that he may have been brought in through a back entrance.

December 29, 2016: Obama announces sanctions against Russia in response to that country's interference in the US presidential election. The measure includes the ejection of 35 Russian diplomats from the United States; the closure of Cold War-era Russian compounds in New York and Maryland; and sanctions against the GRU and the FSB (Russian intelligence agencies), four employees of those agencies, and three companies that worked with the GRU. Flynn holds five phone calls with Kislyak that day, during which they at some point discuss US sanctions against Russia. (White House press secretary Sean Spicer later claims falsely that they held just one call, in which they merely discussed "logistical information.")

January 2017: The FBI begins investigating Flynn's December phone conversations with Kislyak.

January 4, 2017: Flynn tells McGahn, who at the time was the transition team's top lawyer, that he is under investigation for failing to disclose his work as a lobbyist for Turkey during the campaign.

January 6, 2017: Flynn's attorney and transition team lawyers hold another discussion about the investigation involving Flynn.

January 10: According to McClatchy, Obama's national security adviser, Susan Rice, informs Flynn of the Pentagon's plan to use Syrian Kurdish forces to retake the Islamic State's de facto capital, Raqqa. Flynn asks Rice to delay the operation, a position that "conformed to the wishes of Turkey."

January 15, 2017: In an appearance on CBS' Face the Nation, Vice President-elect Mike Pence says Flynn told him that he did not discuss US sanctions during his conversations with Kislyak.

January 23, 2017: Spicer holds his first White House press briefing. He insists that Flynn's conversations with Kislyak included no discussion of US sanctions.

January 24, 2017: The FBI interviews Flynn about his phone conversations with Kislyak. Flynn reportedly denies having discussed US sanctions on Russia.

January 26, 2017: Yates, the acting attorney general, informs McGahn—who by then was the White House counsel—that Flynn had discussed US sanctions on Russia with the Kislyak, despite Flynn's claims to the contrary. Yates also warns McGahn that as a result, Flynn could be vulnerable to Russian blackmail. McGahn subsequently informs Trump of Yates' report.

January 27, 2017: Yates and McGahn meet again at the White House.

January: Michael Cohen, Trump's personal attorney, meets at a Manhattan hotel with Felix Sater and a pro-Putin Ukrainian lawmaker to discuss a potential peace plan for Ukraine and Russia, according to the New York Times. The Times reports that Cohen delivered this plan to Flynn. Cohen confirms he met with Sater and the Ukrainian lawmaker but denies that they discussed a Ukraine-Russia peace plan or that he delivered such a plan to Flynn or the White House.

February 1, 2017: In a letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis, the ranking Democrats on six House committees demand an investigation into Flynn's connections to RT.

February 8, 2017: In an interview with the Washington Post, Flynn denies discussing US sanctions with Kislyak.

February 9, 2017: A spokesman for Flynn softens the national security adviser's denial, telling the Washington Post that "while he had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn't be certain that the topic never came up."

February 10, 2017: Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump says he is not aware of reports that Flynn has discussed US sanctions with Kislyak. He has in fact been aware of Flynn's contacts with Kislyak since late January. His transition team has known Flynn was under Justice Department investigation for more than a month.

February 13, 2017: Flynn resigns following reports that Yates warned the White House that Flynn had misled senior members of the administration, including Pence, about whether he discussed US sanctions with Kislyak.

February 14, 2017: In an Oval Office meeting with Comey, Trump asks the FBI director to drop the bureau's investigation of Flynn. "I hope you can let this go," Trump says, according to a two-page memo of the conversation reportedly drafted by Comey.

February 15, 2017: During a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump does not answer a question about potential connections between his campaign and Russia during the election. He blames Flynn's ouster on leaks. This is a different position than the one taken by the White House previously: that Flynn was asked to resign because he misled Pence about his communication with the Russian ambassador.

March 7, 2017: Flynn retroactively registers as a foreign agent in connection with his Turkish lobbying work.

March 30, 2017: The Wall Street Journal reports that Flynn has told the FBI and the congressional committees investigating ties between the Trump campaign and Russia that he will agree to be interviewed in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Flynn's attorney says in a subsequent statement that the retired general "certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit."

March 31, 2017: Trump tweets that Flynn "should ask for immunity in that this is a witch hunt (excuse for big election loss), by media & Dems, of historic proportion!" But NBC reports that the Senate intelligence committee has denied Flynn's request for immunity, telling Flynn's lawyer the request was "wildly preliminary" and currently "not on the table."

April 4, 2017: The Pentagon launches an investigation into Flynn for accepting payments from a foreign government without prior approval, in potential violation of the Constitution's emoluments clause.

April 25, 2017: Leaders of the House Oversight Committee tell reporters that Flynn may have broken the law by failing to disclose the $34,000 payment he received for speaking at the 2015 RT gala. "As a former military officer, you simply cannot take money from Russia, Turkey or anybody else," committee chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) says. "And it appears as if he did take that money. It was inappropriate. And there are repercussions for the violation of law." The same day, Trump apparently reached out of Flynn. "I just got a message from the president to stay strong," Flynn tells a group of loyalists during a gathering at a restaurant in Northern Virginia, according to a later report from Yahoo News.

May 8, 2017: Ahead of a Senate hearing, where Yates will testify about her warnings to the Trump administration over Flynn, Trump appears to blame his hiring of Flynn on his predecessor: "General Flynn was given the highest security clearance by the Obama Administration - but the Fake News seldom likes talking about that," Trump tweets.

May 9, 2017: Trump fires Comey. CNN reports that day that the US attorney's office in Alexandria, Virginia, has issued grand jury subpoenas to Flynn associates.

May 10, 2017: The Senate intelligence committee subpoenas Flynn for documents concerning his communications with Russian officials.

May 16, 2017: The New York Times reports that Trump pressured Comey to end the bureau's investigation into Flynn, according to the then-FBI director's notes of their meeting.

May 17, 2017: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appoints former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the Trump-Russia investigation.

May 18, 2017: Trump tweets:

Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrump
This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!
6:52 AM - 18 May 2017
36,119 36,119 Retweets 119,851 119,851 likes

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... line-trump
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby Cordelia » Mon May 22, 2017 6:15 pm

seemslikeadream » Mon May 22, 2017 3:47 pm wrote:
Michael Flynn triggers the beginning of the end of Donald Trump by pleading the Fifth Amendment
By Bill Palmer
Opinion
Updated: 11:41 am EDT Mon May 22, 2017 | 0

Well, that’s one way to avoid testifying. Facing a subpoena from the Senate Intelligence Committee in a Russia scandal which has already seen him unofficially admit his guilt by retroactively registering as a foreign agent, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is now planning to invoke the Fifth Amendment – and it’s a move which triggers the beginning of the end of Donald Trump.
This news from Michael Flynn isn’t necessarily surprising. But it’s still nonetheless a stunning blow to Trump’s hopes of surviving this. The Associated Press says Flynn will formally plead the Fifth later today (link), which means he’ll be officially admitting his guilt. It’s true that the aides of past Presidents and candidates have invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying, but that’s taken place in a radically different context, where one person violated the law. This is a whole other matter.
By invoking the Fifth, not only is Flynn admitting he’s guilty in the Russia scandal, he’s admitting the Russia scandal is a real thing. He’s acknowledging that the Trump campaign’s inappropriate relationship with the Russian government really did exist. And whatever Flynn’s intention today, he might as well be admitting that Donald Trump is also guilty – because this is a scandal that we know extends all the way to the top. The timing is also horrific for Trump, as he feebly attempts to use his first official overseas trip – which already isn’t going well by any measure – to take the focus off the exploding Russia scandal. So much for that.
By the way, pleading the Fifth Amendment means you’re setting yourself up to be charged with the crime in question. So Michael Flynn isn’t suddenly off the hook. Look for the legal process to accelerate against him now that he’s hunkering down. And let’s see if he’s still silent about what he knows about Trump once he realizes he’s going to prison if he doesn’t start talking. If Trump thinks Flynn pleading the Fifth is good news for himself, he’s mistaken.
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/fif ... rump/2995/



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERm_WNxGs1U
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue May 23, 2017 11:58 am

Flynn’s Lobbying Client Chastises America In Speech At Trump Hotel

CHUCK ROSS
Reporter
10:10 AM 05/23/2017

Michael Flynn’s Turkish lobbying client is reportedly the subject of a federal grand jury subpoena, but that didn’t stop him from showing up at a conference at Trump International Hotel on Monday and blasting the U.S. government’s policies towards Turkey.

Speaking at an annual conference co-hosted by the American Turkish Council (ATC) and Turkey-U.S. Business Council (TAIK), Ekim Alptekin criticized the U.S. for allying with the Kurdish rebel group YPG in the fight against ISIS in Syria.

He also called on the U.S. to “stop tolerating” Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish Muslim cleric living in exile in Pennsylvania.

Turkey considers both YPG and Gulen’s network of followers to be terrorist organizations. The U.S. has supplied some small arms to YPG, which American forces consider to be one of the most efficient groups fighting ISIS. (RELATED: Trump Hotel To Host Conference For Michael Flynn’s Lobbying Client)

Gulen has been living in the U.S. as a legal permanent resident since 1999, much to the chagrin of Turkey’s president and former Gulen ally, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“If the United States is sincere then it needs to stop tolerating Fethullah Gulen’s presence in the United States. It needs to stop accepting it, stop excusing it, and stop ignoring it,” Alptekin seethed in his speech, which he gave as chairman of TAIK.

“Today, the United States has chosen the YPG, a Marxist terrorist group, over a NATO ally to help defend the very values the YPG opposes,” he also said.

Alptekin addressed the elephant in the room in his remarks: his controversial association with Flynn and his consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group.

Alptekin and Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, signed a $600,000 contract in August that called for Flynn Intel Group to research and investigate Gulen to help aid the Turkish government’s effort to gain his extradition. (RELATED: As Foreign Agent For Turkey, Flynn Agreed To Form ‘Investigative Lab,’ Make ‘Criminal Referrals’)

In the contract, Flynn agreed to use an “investigative laboratory” consisting of former FBI agents to potentially make criminal referrals against Gulen.

The relationship, which was first reported by The Daily Caller on Nov. 11 after Flynn wrote an anti-Gulen op-ed in The Hill, is the subject of federal grand jury subpoenas for Flynn and Alptekin, according to The New York Times.

Flynn retroactively disclosed details of the contract in a March 7 filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The retired lieutenant general disclosed that Alptekin arranged a Sept. 19 meeting with two Turkish government officials. Flynn was advising the Trump campaign at that time.

Alptekin, a former U.S. congressional staffer, said that his goal in hiring Flynn “was to commission independent research and to establish objective facts” regarding Gulen in order to help the Turkish-American business relationship.


Fethullah Gulen is pictured at his residence in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania September 26, 2013. REUTERS

“One of these problems is religious extremism. And Fethullah Gulen and his followers represent one of the most dangerous forms that it takes,” Alptekin asserted.

While the Turkish government has accused Gulen of engaging in terrorism, including masterminding a failed coup attempt last July, the U.S. government appears to not have accepted that assessment.

Alptekin has made numerous conflicting claims to reporters about his contract with Flynn. He’s downplayed how much he paid Flynn and has also claimed that he hired Flynn on behalf of an Israeli oil company. That firm has told an Israeli news outlet that it did not commission any lobbying work through Alptekin.

Alptekin’s admonition of the U.S. government was not matched with a similar scolding of Turkish government policy by his counterpart on the American Turkish Council, retired Gen. James Jones.

Jones, the chairman of ATC and President Obama’s first national security adviser, offered no critique of the Turkish government, though there is certainly much to scrutinize.

Instead, he meekly thanked Alptekin for his “thought provoking remarks,” which, he told the conference attendees, “we all should pay a great deal of attention to.”

Jones, a Democrat, ignored an incident from last week in which bodyguards working for Erdogan attacked a group of peaceful protesters outside of the Turkish embassy in Washington, D.C.

Video emerged appearing to show Erdogan ordering his thugs to attack the protesters. Dozens of Erdogan supporters and bodyguards were seen descending upon the protesters as Erdogan watched calmly from his Mercedes-Benz.

Jones also made no mention of Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian policies at home. The Islamist leader has arrested tens of thousands of political opponents. And last month he grabbed more executive power through a referendum that has been flagged by international watchdogs for widespread voting irregularities.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/23/flynn ... ump-hotel/
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed May 24, 2017 3:22 pm

AMY DAVIDSON
MICHAEL FLYNN AND THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S LOBBYIST SECRETS
By Amy Davidson May 23, 2017
If ever there was a case illustrating why a history of lobbying and other conflicts might matter, it is the case of Michael Flynn, the Trump Administration’s former national-security adviser.

This week, there have already been reminders of how much the upholding of government ethics relies on access to open information—and of how little Donald Trump’s Administration cares about either. Some of those reminders have come in the case of Michael Flynn, the President’s first national-security adviser. Others have come in the Administration’s clumsy attempt to tell Walter Shaub, the head of the Office of Government Ethics, not to do his job. The Administration had said loudly that it would not allow lobbyists to take positions relating to their “particular” lobbying-market niche. It also said, more quietly, that it could issue waivers. And it had, in total silence, issued an unknown number of waivers, as evidenced by lobbyists popping up, without other explanation, at various agencies. (When the Obama Administration issued such waivers, it not only said so but indicated why, in writing.) Shaub had asked various agencies to send him, by June 1st, a list of those waivers, a “data call” of the sort that he is explicitly authorized to make. The White House doesn’t seem to have liked that.

The President’s designated messenger was Mick Mulvaney, the head of the Office of Management and Budget. Mulvaney, in a letter to Shaub that the Times obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (a reminder that openness takes work), said that agencies had asked the White House about the data call, and that he was giving them some “guidance.” His instructions amounted to letting the agencies know that White House lawyers might have a problem with them giving out information, and a “request” to Shaub that he “stay the data call”—that is, that he just stop asking. The Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department needed to figure out the “potential legal questions” that the request raised, Mulvaney wrote. But there are no legal questions—other than, perhaps, those that might arise from whatever the waivers revealed.

Shaub said no to Mulvaney’s request. In a ten-page reply, he said that he did not do so lightly but because he did not know how to comply in a way that would not be a renunciation of his office’s history and its mandate. He included footnotes and citations regarding his legal authority, for Mulvaney’s “edification.” Mulvaney had complained about the “uniqueness” of Shaub’s data call, but Shaub made it clear that it was Mulvaney’s action that was highly unusual.

And if ever there were a case illustrating why a history of lobbying and other conflicts—factors that the waivers are meant to at least acknowledge—might matter, it is the case of Michael Flynn. He has been implicated in the investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election and its possible connections to the Trump campaign, but there are also questions regarding money that his firm took from Turkish interests as an unacknowledged lobbyist for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s regime. (Flynn registered as a foreign lobbyist only after the fact.) According to another report this week, Flynn withheld information about his Russian contacts from the Obama Administration, in which he had served as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, before being pushed out when his security clearances were being renewed. Flynn is reportedly planning to invoke the Fifth Amendment when he is called to testify, which is his right, and one of the few legitimate and reasonable uses of silence in this story. But his former colleagues in the Administration should not suppose that his potential invocation of the Fifth magically extends to their offices, in terms of a refusal to, for example, produce documents that Congress or investigators might require. And some of those documents may be significant. Among the most disturbing Flynn stories have been those indicating that the Trump transition team knew about Flynn’s conflicts—and even that he was under federal investigation—but signed him up anyway. That is not just stonewalling; it is incompetence. It is of a piece with the entire Trump operation—one can’t talk about the lack of disclosure without noting that the public still hasn’t seen the President’s tax returns. For that matter, the congressional Republicans tried to start their spree of legislating, with the support of a President of the same party, by sidelining its ethical overseer.

But there is something distinctly dangerous about a government that thinks that what it can hide and lie about does not, for practical purposes, exist—that if no one knows about it, it’s not a problem, even internally. People in government, even under the best Administrations, tend to care less about things that are bad if they think that no one will ever find out about them. There is an impulse to hide, rather than to fix. But the Trump Administration seems to have stopped caring at all. The alarming possibility is that the White House doesn’t just think that when something is out of sight it is out of the public’s mind but that it then vanishes from the minds of the President and his aides, as well.

The White House’s evident indifference raises the question of whether, prior to Shaub’s inquiry, anyone there was even keeping track of how many waivers were being granted, and where, and at what cost, or if they were just left out for the taking, like office-party doughnuts. It is, at any rate, a good guess that the Shaub-Mulvaney conflict prefigures any number of fights to come. Some will end up in court, and may have to be resolved by a reëxamination, by the Supreme Court, of the meaning of executive privilege.

Non-disclosure can also involve a false assertion that there is no information to disclose. The Washington Post reported that President Trump asked the heads of intelligence agencies to publicly deny that there was anything to the Russian investigation. (They apparently demurred.) By his own admission, Trump fired James Comey because that inquiry annoyed him. And then there are the Administration’s arguments, in support of its travel ban, that the courts should allow the White House to pretend that the ban has nothing to do with Muslims. But this kind of thing never works for long, or at least it shouldn’t, in a democracy.

Trump and his circle may prefer a different model. On Monday, Wilbur Ross, the Secretary of Commerce, appeared on CNBC, discussing the President’s visit to Saudi Arabia. He found it “fascinating” that there was not “a single hint of a protester anywhere there during the whole time we were there.” So much more pleasant than here! And, really, blind nonsense: Saudi Arabia is a repressive regime that silences dissent, with a reputation for corruption that has fuelled discontent and provided fodder for extremists. (Secrets come out, in one form or the other.) Becky Quick, the interviewer, suggested as much to Ross. He agreed that “in theory” fear may have been a factor, “but, boy, there was certainly no sign of it,” he said. “The mood was genuinely good.” Perhaps the mood was helped by the giant portraits of Trump projected on buildings around Riyadh, among the golden hotels and palaces.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-david ... st-secrets


House Intelligence Committee to Subpoena Flynn, Schiff Says
By EMMARIE HUETTEMANMAY 24, 2017

Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, at Trump Tower in Manhattan in December. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The House Intelligence Committee will issue subpoenas to Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s first national security adviser, the committee’s senior Democrat said on Wednesday, escalating Mr. Flynn’s troubles with Congress.

Representative Adam B. Schiff of California said Mr. Flynn had declined the panel’s request for documents and an interview as part of its investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election.

“Those subpoenas will be designed to maximize our chance of getting the information that we need,” Mr. Schiff told reporters during a newsmaker breakfast hosted by The Christian Science Monitor. “And I think we need to use whatever compulsory methods are necessary to get the information that he possesses.”

Mr. Schiff said he hoped the committee would issue the subpoenas this week, before Congress leaves for a one-week recess. It was unclear whether the subpoenas would seek documents or Mr. Flynn’s testimony, or both.

The subpoenas could not be issued without at least some support from Republicans, who make up the majority of the committee. A spokeswoman for Representative K. Michael Conaway of Texas, the Republican leading the investigation, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Conaway has repeatedly refused to comment on the details of the investigation while it is continuing.

Representative Adam B. Schiff, the Democratic ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, during a hearing on Tuesday. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times
The announcement comes mere hours after the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee issued subpoenas Tuesday afternoon to Mr. Flynn’s two firms, seeking information that could shed light on his work lobbying on behalf of Turkish interests last year, among other connections.

On Monday, Mr. Flynn, in a letter from his legal team, rejected a subpoena for documents from the Senate committee, citing the Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination. He also declined the Senate committee’s invitation for an interview.

Mr. Flynn’s rejection of the Senate’s subpoena puts him at risk of being held in contempt of Congress, a rarely invoked process that, should lawmakers choose to pursue it, could result in a criminal citation.

The Flynn Intel Group was paid more than $500,000 to represent Turkey in a dispute with the United States government, while Mr. Flynn was advising the Trump campaign. He belatedly registered as a foreign agent for that work after being forced out of the Trump administration for misrepresenting his communications with the Russian ambassador to Vice President Mike Pence.

Mr. Flynn’s legal troubles have only mounted in recent days. On Monday, it was revealed that he had misled Pentagon investigators about his foreign contacts and sources of income while seeking a renewed security clearance in February 2016. Among those payments that he did not disclose was a $45,000 fee from a Russian state-backed news organization for a speech he gave in Moscow two months before, a trip during which he was photographed at a gala sitting next to the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin.

It is a felony to lie to federal officials, punishable by up to five years in prison.

As recently as his Monday letter to the Senate committee, Mr. Flynn has reiterated his offer to testify in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the Republican chairman of the Senate committee, has dismissed that option.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/24/us/p ... ittee.html



POLITICS 05/22/2017 05:35 pm ET | Updated 1 day ago
Michael Flynn Lied During Security Clearance Interview, Top Dem Says
According to a document obtained by Democrats on the House oversight committee, Flynn misled Pentagon investigators.
By Laura Barrón-López

WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn appears to have lied to Pentagon officials about payments he received from Russians when he was interviewed in 2016 for a renewal of his security clearance, according to a document obtained by the top Democrat on the House oversight committee.

In a letter released Monday evening by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the congressman details a document that reveals Flynn told investigators he was paid by “U.S. companies” when he traveled to Russia and dined with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“[T]he Oversight Committee has in our possession documents that appear to indicate that General Flynn lied to the investigators who interviewed him in 2016 as part of his security clearance renewal,” Cummings wrote in the letter sent to committee chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). “Specifically, the Committee has obtained a Report of Investigation dated March 14, 2016, showing that General Flynn told security clearance investigators that he was paid by ‘U.S. companies’ when he traveled to Moscow in December 2015 to dine at a gala with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The actual source of the funds for General Flynn’s trip was not a U.S. company, but the Russian media propaganda arm, RT.”

Cummings urged Chaffetz to subpoena the White House for documents it has related to Flynn.

Cummings’ letter comes just hours after Flynn officially announced he would not comply with a subpoena issued by senators investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

When Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) learned of the document obtained by Cummings from reporters Monday night, her eyes widened.

“He lied?” she said. “I want the document!”

Feinstein then turned to one of her senior aides and said: “I’m looking at you ― produce!”

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), like many Republicans in recent weeks, repeated a familiar refrain, saying that if the latest bombshell about Flynn is true, it’s “obviously a matter of great concern.”

“This whole centipede as I’ve predicted to you on time, after time, after time ― and it’s so boring ― but another shoe dropped and I guarantee there will be more shoes to drop before this is over,” he said, making a snoring sound before getting on an elevator.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mic ... 485cb424f6


Report: Michael Flynn Will Invoke Fifth Amendment, Refuse to Comply With Senate Subpoena

By Ben Mathis-Lilley

Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn will invoke the Fifth Amendment in refusing a Senate committee's document subpoena, the Associated Press is reporting:


The Fifth Amendment protects an individual's right not to give testimony that may implicate him or her in a crime. Flynn's potentially improper financial connections to Russia and Turkey are reportedly the subject of the ongoing federal investigation that was led by the FBI and will now be supervised by special counsel Robert Mueller. The Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting its own investigation of the matter, had specifically requested documents related to Flynn's interactions with Russia. It's not yet known how the Senate plans to respond to Flynn's refusal; Slate discussed the options it might have in this situation in a post last week.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... _says.html
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed May 24, 2017 8:49 pm

Top Russian Officials Discussed How to Influence Trump Aides Last Summer
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG, ADAM GOLDMAN and MATT APUZZOMAY 24, 2017

Paul Manafort, then the Trump campaign chairman, at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July. Credit Win McNamee/Getty Images
WASHINGTON — American spies collected information last summer revealing that senior Russian intelligence and political officials were discussing how to exert influence over Donald J. Trump through his advisers, according to three current and former American officials familiar with the intelligence.

The conversations focused on Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign chairman at the time, and Michael T. Flynn, a retired general who was advising Mr. Trump, the officials said. Both men had indirect ties to Russian officials, who appeared confident that each could be used to help shape Mr. Trump’s opinions on Russia.

Some Russians boasted about how well they knew Mr. Flynn. Others discussed leveraging their ties to Viktor F. Yanukovych, the deposed president of Ukraine living in exile in Russia, who at one time had worked closely with Mr. Manafort.

The intelligence was among the clues — which also included information about direct communications between Mr. Trump’s advisers and Russian officials — that American officials received last year as they began investigating Russian attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of Mr. Trump’s associates were assisting Moscow in the effort. Details of the conversations, some of which have not been previously reported, add to an increasing understanding of the alarm inside the American government last year about the Russian disruption campaign.


The information collected last summer was considered credible enough for intelligence agencies to pass to the F.B.I., which during that period opened a counterintelligence investigation that is continuing. It is unclear, however, whether Russian officials actually tried to directly influence Mr. Manafort and Mr. Flynn. Both have denied any collusion with the Russian government on the campaign to disrupt the election.

John O. Brennan, the former director of the C.I.A., testified Tuesday about a tense period last year when he came to believe that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was trying to steer the outcome of the election. He said he saw intelligence suggesting that Russia wanted to use Trump campaign officials, wittingly or not, to help in that effort. He spoke vaguely about contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials, without giving names, saying they “raised questions in my mind about whether Russia was able to gain the cooperation of those individuals.”

Whether the Russians worked directly with any Trump advisers is one of the central questions that federal investigators, now led by Robert S. Mueller III, the newly appointed special counsel, are seeking to answer. President Trump, for his part, has dismissed talk of Russian interference in the election as “fake news,” insisting there was no contact between his campaign and Russian officials.

“If there ever was any effort by Russians to influence me, I was unaware, and they would have failed,” Mr. Manafort said in a statement. “I did not collude with the Russians to influence the elections.”

The White House, F.B.I. and C.I.A. declined to comment. Mr. Flynn’s lawyer did not respond to an email seeking comment.

The current and former officials agreed to discuss the intelligence only on the condition of anonymity because much of it remains highly classified, and they could be prosecuted for disclosing it.

Last week, CNN reported about intercepted phone calls during which Russian officials were bragging about ties to Mr. Flynn and discussing ways to wield influence over him.

In his congressional testimony, Mr. Brennan discussed the broad outlines of the intelligence, and his disclosures backed up the accounts of the information provided by the current and former officials.

“I was convinced in the summer that the Russians were trying to interfere in the election. And they were very aggressive,” Mr. Brennan said. Still, he said, even at the end of the Obama administration he had “unresolved questions in my mind as to whether or not the Russians had been successful in getting U.S. persons, involved in the campaign or not, to work on their behalf again either in a witting or unwitting fashion.”

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Mr. Brennan’s testimony offered the fullest public account to date of how American intelligence agencies first came to fear that Mr. Trump’s campaign might be aiding Russia’s attack on the election.

By early summer, American intelligence officials already were fairly certain that it was Russian hackers who had stolen tens of thousands of emails from the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. That in itself was not viewed as particularly extraordinary by the Americans — foreign spies had hacked previous campaigns, and the United States does the same in elections around the world, officials said. The view on the inside was that collecting information, even through hacking, is what spies do.

But the concerns began to grow when intelligence began trickling in about Russian officials weighing whether they should release stolen emails and other information to shape American opinion — to, in essence, weaponize the materials stolen by hackers.

An unclassified report by American intelligence agencies released in January stated that Mr. Putin “ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election.”

Before taking the helm of the Trump campaign last May, Mr. Manafort worked for more than a decade for Russian-leaning political organizations and people in Ukraine, including Mr. Yanukovych, the former president. Mr. Yanukovych was a close ally of Mr. Putin.

Mr. Manafort’s links to Ukraine led to his departure from the Trump campaign in August, after his name surfaced in secret ledgers showing millions in undisclosed payments from Mr. Yanukovych’s political party.

Russia views Ukraine as a buffer against the eastward expansion of NATO, and has supported separatists in their yearslong fight against the struggling democratic government in Kiev.

Mr. Flynn’s ties to Russian officials stretch back to his time at the Defense Intelligence Agency, which he led from 2012 to 2014. There, he began pressing for the United States to cultivate Russia as an ally in the fight against Islamist militants, and even spent a day in Moscow at the headquarters of the G.R.U., the Russian military intelligence service, in 2013.

He continued to insist that Russia could be an ally even after Moscow’s seizure of Crimea the following year, and Obama administration officials have said that contributed to their decision to push him out of the D.I.A.

But in private life, Mr. Flynn cultivated even closer ties to Russia. In 2015, he earned more than $65,000 from companies linked to Russia, including a cargo airline implicated in a bribery scheme involving Russian officials at the United Nations, and an American branch of a cybersecurity firm believed to have ties to Russia’s intelligence services.

The biggest payment, though, came from RT, the Kremlin-financed news network. It paid Mr. Flynn $45,000 to give a speech in Moscow, where he also attended the network’s lavish anniversary dinner. There, he was photographed sitting next to Mr. Putin.

A senior lawmaker said on Monday that Mr. Flynn misled Pentagon investigators about how he was paid for the Moscow trip. He also failed to disclose the source of that income on a security form he was required to complete before joining the White House, according to congressional investigators.

American officials have also said there were multiple telephone calls between Mr. Flynn and Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States, on Dec. 29, beginning shortly after Mr. Kislyak was summoned to the State Department and informed that, in retaliation for Russian election meddling, the United States was expelling 35 people suspected of being Russian intelligence operatives and imposing other sanctions.

American intelligence agencies routinely tap the phones of Russian diplomats, and transcripts of the calls showed that Mr. Flynn urged the Russians not to respond, saying relations would improve once Mr. Trump was in office, officials have said.

But after misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of the calls, Mr. Flynn was fired as national security adviser after a tumultuous 25 days in office.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/24/us/p ... flynn.html
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri May 26, 2017 6:48 am

This Turkish Businessman Is At The Heart Of Mike Flynn’s Foreign Entanglements

By ALLEGRA KIRKLAND Published MAY 26, 2017 6:00 AM

Ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn has kept out of sight as the federal investigation into his foreign ties ramps up. He’s eschewed public appearances and communicated almost exclusively through his team of lawyers since he was forced out of the Trump administration in February.

Flynn’s former lobbying client, however, is speaking out about their relationship.

In a speech Monday before the 36th Annual Conference on U.S.-Turkey Relations, Turkish businessman Kamil Ekim Alptekin directly addressed the $530,000 he paid to Flynn’s consulting firm in the heat of the 2016 election. He denied there was anything untoward about their work.

“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 told the room, according to news reports.

The speech was delivered in the presidential ballroom of the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.—a stone’s throw from the White House.

According to the New York Times, Alptekin, who frequently tweets favorable stories about the Trump administration, has been swept up in Flynn’s legal troubles, as federal investigators have issued subpoenas for Alptekin’s records, research, contracts, bank records and other communications related to his work with Flynn Intel Group.

There is no indication that Alptekin himself is a target of investigation. He told ABC News in an interview this week that he “cannot comment” on whether he he’s been questioned or subpoenaed by U.S. authorities.

The exact nature of the work Flynn did for Alptekin is key to unraveling the complex web of foreign entanglements that brought the onetime national security adviser under both federal and congressional scrutiny. Since the failed coup attempt against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last July, the powerful businessman has been leading the effort to rehabilitate the image of Turkey and its increasingly authoritarian leader in the U.S.

“In the United States his name definitely did come up, amid the circle of people who kind of keep an eye on these things,” Scheherazade Rehman, professor of international business at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, said of Alptekin. “Clearly it’s a totally legitimate operation in terms of following all the lobbying rules that we have, but the lobbying is pretty intense. They’ve stepped it up. There’s no question that after the coup, they have seriously stepped it up.”

Erdogan has cracked down on dissent, jailing journalists and protesters en masse, since the move to oust him from power. Most recently, he eked out a victory in an April referendum that granted him vast constitutional powers. Though President Donald Trump congratulated Erdogan on that win, international monitors reported that the voting was rife with fraud.

Representatives for Alptekin agreed Thursday to pass along emailed questions, but TPM did not receive a response. A host of Washington, D.C.-based groups and individuals associated with Alptekin, who appears to be a significant power player in the capital, also declined or did not respond to requests for comment.

Alptekin had worked on Capitol Hill as a congressional fellow in 2003, and he currently serves as chairman of the Turkey-US Business Council and representative for Turkey on the board of the U.S.-based Nowruz Commission, a nonprofit public diplomacy organization. He has significant business interests in the international real estate and defense industries through his companies EA Property Development, EA Aerospace and ATH Defense and Security Solutions.

As Politico reported, Alptekin has also worked closely with Ukraine-born businessman Dmitri “David” Zaikan to coordinate Turkish lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C., and both men have negotiated business deals with Vladimir Putin’s government (The two men denied knowing each other). Alptekin has criticized Russia’s recent imposition on the borders of other sovereign nations, however, accusing the Kremlin of “trying to adopt a political stance imitating the Soviet Union.”

What brought Alptekin to Flynn was his role in yet another business: Inovo BV, a Dutch-based company Alptekin owns.

In August, one month after Turkey’s failed coup, Inovo BV hired Flynn Intel Group to perform research and disseminate negative information about Fetullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric who Erdogan believes orchestrated the effort to unseat him from the Pennsylvania compound where Gulen lives in exile.

As part of its work with Inovo BV, Flynn Intel Group registered as a domestic lobbying entity and Flynn reportedly met with senior Turkish government officials about bypassing the U.S. extradition process to forcibly transport Gulen to Turkey—all while serving as a senior campaign adviser to Trump and sitting in on classified national security briefings. Flynn also published a fiery op-ed in The Hill on Election Day condemning the United States for harboring a “radical cleric” like Gulen, which tipped the Justice Department off to the potentially troubling nature of his lobbying.

After Flynn left office for lying to Vice President Mike Pence and others about his contacts with Russian officials, he retroactively registered with DOJ as a foreign agent for his work for Alptekin.

According to the Wall Street Journal, federal investigators are now looking into whether Flynn’s sizable contract “played any role in his decisions as the president’s adviser,” including his reported move to block a U.S. military operation against ISIS that Turkey opposed.

Flynn and Alptekin have characterized their work together quite differently.

Alptekin told ABC News this week that he has “never represented the government of Turkey” and that reports implying “that I was in any way representing the government are simply not true.”

By contrast, Flynn’s filings under the Foreign Agents Registration Act say that his work for Inovo “could be construed to have principally benefitted the Republic of Turkey.”

Alptekin seems well aware of the powerful weight lobbyists carry in Washington, telling the Centre for Policy and Research on Turkey last year that working with think tanks and “engaging in lobbying activities” was key to gaining influence in American politics.

With or without Flynn, he seems intent on continuing his crusade to extradite Gulen—who he insisted the United States must “stop tolerating” in his Monday speech at the Trump International Hotel—and to burnish the reputation of Erdogan, who he has heavily praised, on Capitol Hill.

Rahman, the Turkish GW professor, predicts Alptekin will have an easier time of achieving his goals under Trump than he did under Barack Obama. Trump’s decision not to address human rights during a speech in Saudi Arabia this week and his warm outreach to strongman leaders sends a “green light” to politicians like Erdogan, she said, as well as a simple message: “You have us as allies; manage your own house.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/ekim-al ... estigation
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue May 30, 2017 9:00 pm

Mike Flynn’s Pro-Turkey Work: An Unfinished Documentary to Boost Country’s Image

Unseen film footage appears to represent the core of the Flynn Intel Group’s $530,000 work on behalf of Turkey

Work by Flynn Intel Group Under Scrutiny
An unfinished documentary produced by the Flynn Intel Group and paid for by a Turkish businessman is part of an investigation into former national security adviser Mike Flynn's business dealings and alleged ties to the Turkish government.​ Photo: ​Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press
By Dion Nissenbaum
Updated May 30, 2017 7:36 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON—Last fall, as retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn traveled the country stumping for Donald Trump, his business partner holed up in a small Washington hotel room with the former head of Turkish military intelligence to work on a special project.

“General, hi. I’m Bijan Kian, welcome to Washington, D.C.,” Mr. Kian, the head of Mr. Flynn’s consulting firm, greeted the Turkish dignitary. “Gen. Flynn, my partner, sends his regards to you.”

The hotel room meeting was filmed as part of a documentary the Flynn Intel Group was producing for a Turkish businessman, who paid $530,000 to the lobbying shop to polish the country’s image after a botched military coup. That contract has landed Mr. Flynn in legal jeopardy.

The unfinished, never-distributed film, details of which haven’t been previously reported, appears to represent the core of the Flynn Intel Group’s work for Turkish interests.

The contract is at the heart of an expanding investigation into Mr. Flynn’s business dealings. In February the retired three-star general was forced to resign, under fire over his conflicting statements about his contacts with Russian officials before the inauguration, after 24 days as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser.

Mr. Flynn didn’t disclose to the federal government until March that his company was paid to represent Turkish interests. He is now facing military, congressional and criminal investigations into allegations that he improperly concealed his financial ties to Turkey and Russia, and into whether the ties played any role in his decisions as the president’s adviser.

Along with the money from the Turkish businessman, Mr. Flynn received $33,750 from a Russian state news network to travel to Moscow in 2015, sit next to President Vladimir Putin at a gala and give a public interview on U.S. foreign policy.



Turkish journalist Nedim Sener and former head of Turkish military intelligence Ismail Hakki Pekin, both shown in 2015, were interviewed in a Flynn Intel Group project. PHOTOS: OZAN KOSE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES; HE CANLING/XINHUA/ZUMA PRESS
A federal grand jury in Virginia recently issued subpoenas to people who worked for the Flynn Intel Group. Last week, Mr. Flynn said he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refuse to honor a subpoena from the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

On Tuesday, Mr. Flynn said he would turn over documents from his businesses to the Senate Intelligence Committee, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Flynn Intel Group shut down in November.

Robert Kelner, the attorney for Mr. Flynn and the Flynn Intel Group declined to comment. In the past, Mr. Kelner has criticized what he called “unfounded allegations” against Mr. Flynn and said he hoped Mr. Flynn would have a fair chance to tell his story. Mr. Kian didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Flynn Intel Group hired professionals to shoot the documentary and then worked to conceal its role in producing the film, according to David Enders, a former VICE News correspondent hired to work on the project. The Wall Street Journal reviewed footage prepared for the unfinished documentary, which was shelved last November, two days before Mr. Flynn was officially asked to become the president’s national security adviser.

Mr. Enders and Rudi Bakhtiar, a former CNN anchor hired to be the on-camera face for the film, said the disclosure in March about Mr. Flynn’s work as a foreign agent came as a shock.

Ms. Bakhtiar said she was misled about the true intentions of the film, which she said was focused on attacking a U.S.-based Turkish imam President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused of orchestrating last summer’s botched military coup. She said she thought the work would produce an objective, investigatory documentary about Turkey and Fethullah Gulen, the imam.



Bijan Kian, shown in 2009, was the head of retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn's consulting firm. Turkish businessman Ekim Alptekin, shown in May, hired the firm to burnish Turkey's image. PHOTOS: DANIEL ACKER/BLOOMBERG NEWS; MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES
As the documentary plans moved ahead last fall, Mr. Enders said that Mr. Kian told him he didn’t want anyone to know who was behind the film about Mr. Gulen, whom Mr. Erdogan wants the U.S. to extradite to Turkey to face accusations he runs a terrorist group behind last summer’s failed coup.

“Bijan said they did not want to be connected to this in any way,” Mr. Enders said. “He said: ‘We don’t want anyone to know the Flynn Intel Group has anything to do with this.’ ” Mr. Enders said Mr. Kian didn’t explain his reasons.

The project began last summer, after Mr. Erdogan quashed a poorly conceived July 15 military coup attempt. A few weeks later, Ekim Alptekin, a Turkish businessman and Erdogan defender, signed a three-month contract with the Flynn Intel Group to help Turkish interests.

Mr. Alptekin, head of a Netherlands-based consulting firm called Inovo BV, and chairman of the Turkey-U.S. Business Council, a group that promotes business between the two countries, said he wanted to use the documentary to help expose America to the dangers of Mr. Gulen.

“We were thinking of a small, ‘60 Minutes’ kind of a thing, where these conclusions are brought to the public,” Mr. Alptekin told the Journal. “We thought that might have a good effect.”

Mr. Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania, has repeatedly denied playing any role in last summer’s failed coup in Turkey or that he leads a terrorist group.

U.S. officials have said several times over the past year that Turkey has yet to provide enough evidence to extradite Mr. Gulen. Washington’s refusal to comply with the request remains a major point of contention between the two countries.

On Sept. 9, Mr. Alptekin’s company sent the first $200,000 to the Flynn Intel Group, according to the U.S. company’s Foreign Agents Registration Act filing, the disclosure that was filed in March. Mr. Alptekin said the money for the project came from his own accounts and not the Turkish government.

Four days later, the Flynn Intel Group sent $40,000 back to Mr. Alptekin’s firm and characterized it in the filing as a consulting fee.

Mr. Alptekin said the $40,000 was actually a refund because the Flynn Intel Group didn’t have the ability to lobby the U.S. government as planned.

“They didn’t have a game plan, so they immediately wired the lobbying component of the contract back to me,” Mr. Alptekin said. “So that was a reimbursement to me.”

In its foreign registration filing, the Flynn Intel Group said its work was “focused on improving U.S. business organizations’ confidence regarding doing business in Turkey, particularly with respect to the stability of Turkey and its suitability as a venue for investment and commercial activity.”

In Washington, the Flynn Intel Group began gathering publicly available information about Mr. Gulen, with a particular focus on his network of charter schools in the U.S.

Soldiers take park in an attempted coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul on July 15, 2016.
Soldiers take park in an attempted coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul on July 15, 2016. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
The company hired Mr. Enders, who said he was asked to track down for the documentary historic footage of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian leader who took power in 1979 after the country’s shah was overthrown. Mr. Enders, who was paid $3,400 for his work, said he was initially told the film would be a “well-investigated documentary about Iran.” Mr. Enders said it later became clear that Mr. Kian saw Mr. Gulen as a Turkish Ayatollah.

Ms. Bakhtiar, who was hired to conduct interviews on camera, and Mr. Kian were old family friends united by their Iranian heritage. Mr. Kian, a former director of the Export-Import Bank, got in touch to express sympathies with Ms. Bakhtiar in 2005, after her father died. Ms. Bakhtiar’s uncle, who served as the last prime minister of Iran before the 1979 revolution, was assassinated in Paris in 1991.

Ms. Bakhtiar had worked as an anchor at CNN and a correspondent at Fox News, Voice of America and Reuters, and had traveled to some of the world’s toughest spots throughout her career, including Iran and Iraq.

Last fall, Ms. Bakhtiar said Mr. Kian told her he wanted to bring her in on a “very exciting” project about Turkey. At the time, Turkey was in the midst of a sweeping post-coup crackdown on dissent. Mr. Erdogan had imposed a state of emergency and had begun detaining tens of thousands of soldiers, police officers, teachers, journalists and diplomats accused of supporting Mr. Gulen.

Ms. Bakhtiar said she agreed to meet Mr. Kian at his office in Alexandria, Va. She said she didn’t realize until she got there that it was the offices of the Flynn Intel Group. She said Mr. Kian told her at that meeting that the company he ran with Mr. Flynn would be funding the project.

At the time, Mr. Flynn, who had been fired as head of the Pentagon’s intelligence branch in 2014, had recently rocketed to the center of the campaign news by delivering a fiery speech at the Republican National Convention, where he led the crowd in chanting “lock her up” about Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Journalist Rudi Bakhtiar in a video still from the unfinished documentary made by the Flynn Intel Group.
Journalist Rudi Bakhtiar in a video still from the unfinished documentary made by the Flynn Intel Group.
“I was excited—until I realized it was Flynn Intel Group,” said Ms. Bakhtiar, who agreed to work on the film anyway, in part because Mr. Kian was a family friend.

Meanwhile, lobbying firm SGR LLC, run by veteran Washington consultant Jim Courtovich, was hired to promote the film once it was made, and it developed proposals to try to place the documentary on news shows such as PBS’s “Frontline,” according to one consultant involved in the project.

SGR also created a Monopoly-style illustration it called “Gulenopoly.” It was paid $40,000 by the Flynn Intel Group for its work, according to the foreign registration filing.

A short time after the Alexandria meeting, Ms. Bakhtiar said Mr. Kian called her and asked her to meet him at a boutique hotel in Washington the next day to do some interviews for the film. Mr. Kian sent over a packet of background information to prepare, and all of it centered on Mr. Gulen.

The info on Mr. Gulen, said three people who saw it, was little more than a collection of information easily available on the internet, including publicly available details about his charter schools.

When Ms. Bakhtiar got to the hotel, she said she met Mr. Kian and Mr. Enders, who were waiting in a room to do the interviews. Mr. Kian gave Ms. Bakhtiar a list of questions to ask and told her the people coming didn’t have much time.

Mr. Enders said Mr. Kian told him to bring the equipment in piece-by-piece so the hotel staff wouldn’t know they were filming. “It was very hush-hush,” Mr. Enders said. “They were like Keystone Kops.”

U.S.-based Turkish imam Fethullah Gulen, above, was the subject of the Flynn Intel Group’s unfinished documentary.
U.S.-based Turkish imam Fethullah Gulen, above, was the subject of the Flynn Intel Group’s unfinished documentary. PHOTO: CHARLES MOSTOLLER/REUTERS
As Ms. Bakhtiar prepared for the interviews, Mr. Kian greeted the men she would be talking to, which included Ismail Hakki Pekin, the general who once served as head of Turkey’s military intelligence branch, and Nedim Sener, a well-known Turkish journalist.

The men have said they were persecuted by supporters of Mr. Gulen, who were once allies of Mr. Erdogan and held powerful government positions.

Ms. Bakhtiar said she had little time to prepare and knew little about the Turks she was interviewing.

In his 20-minute interview, Mr. Pekin repeated a contention by top Turkish officials that Mr. Gulen was an asset of the Central Intelligence Agency, which protected the Turkish cleric from being extradited.

Mr. Pekin said that he wanted to take part in the documentary because he saw it as a chance to let as many Americans as possible know about the danger posed by Mr. Gulen.

At the end of the interview with Mr. Sener, Mr. Kian stepped in to ask a few questions of his own. But he wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be filmed.

“I don’t want to be on camera,” Mr. Kian can be heard whispering in the video reviewed by the Journal.

“That’s fine,” responds Mr. Enders, who was running the camera. “You’re not.”

Mr. Sener told the Journal that he came to Washington because he thought it was important to raise the issue of Mr. Gulen with U.S. officials. “The Americans think of him as a supporter of moderate Islam,” he said. “However, Fethullah Gulen is the plotter of the July 15 coup.”

Ms. Bakhtiar, who was paid $1,200 for the day’s work on the film, said she told Mr. Kian that she wanted to go to Turkey to round out the piece. “I said: ‘I want to get both sides,’” she said. “I’m a journalist. He never said ‘We’re going to make a documentary that’s going to crush Gulen.’ I never would have done it.”

She said she hasn’t been contacted by any officials investigating Mr. Flynn.

A few days after the filming, Mr. Alptekin wired another $185,000 to the Flynn Intel Group. Mr. Alptekin said he shaved off $15,000 because the company wasn’t living up to its pledge to produce some good publicity.

“PR is something that you have to see,” he said. “It’s not something that is behind-the-scenes. It’s in front of the scenes, so if there is no output, it’s very clear that nothing is happening.”

The following week, the Flynn Intel Group sent another $40,000 back to Mr. Alptekin’s firm and later classified it as a consulting fee. Again, Mr. Alptekin said, the money was a reimbursement, not a consulting fee.

By mid-October, work on the film had come to a halt.

On Nov. 8, Election Day, The Hill newspaper printed an op-ed by Mr. Flynn that compared Mr. Gulen to Ayatollah Khomeini and backed Turkey’s demand that Mr. Gulen be extradited.

The piece included an image of the spoof Gulenopoly game.

On Nov. 14, Mr. Alptekin sent another $145,000 to the Flynn Intel Group. The next day, two days before the president-elect named Mr. Flynn as his first national security adviser, Mr. Alptekin and the Flynn Intel Group ended their contract.

Mr. Alptekin said the three-month contract came to a natural end. “They did a great job,” he said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/mike-flynn ... 6?mod=e2tw
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed May 31, 2017 12:32 pm

MAY 30, 2017 | MARTIN J. SHEIL
FOLLOW THE MONEY, STARTING WITH MICHAEL FLYNN

Editor’s note: Martin. J. Sheil is a retired branch chief of the IRS Criminal Investigation division.

“Follow the money!” This is not only a phrase made famous by the Watergate scandal and the subsequent investigation; it’s also good advice for anyone trying to dig out the truth that someone else wants to keep hidden.

An IRS probe requested by the Watergate Special Prosecutor in 1973 led to a slew of indictments. Now, with the Trump administration facing a similar investigation, could the IRS once again play a key role in helping to bring the truth to light and key players to justice?
Even before President Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace in 1974, Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced from office by an IRS criminal investigation that discovered tax violations committed when Agnew was governor of Maryland.

When President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton were involved in the Whitewater investigation of financial misdeeds surrounding a real estate deal in Arkansas, it was the IRS Criminal Investigation (CI) division that provided financial-investigative expertise to the FBI in a probe that led to a number of convictions of business associates of the Clintons.

What if IRS CI investigators were brought about to supplement the FBI’s Russia-Trump inquiries?
It has recently been reported that the Russia investigation is no longer purely a counterintelligence investigation but now also includes a criminal probe. There are also reports that financial documents related to the Russia investigations have been requested/subpoenaed at the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

Michael Flynn
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, June 17, 2010.
Photo credit: FBI

Now that the FBI investigation seems to be morphing into a “follow the money” probe, will Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller bolster the team of investigators that James Comey assembled with specialists from the unit that Eliot Ness made famous in the Prohibition era investigation and successful prosecution for tax evasion of Al Capone?

IRS Critical to Following the Money
.
FinCEN is essentially a massive repository of information drawn from financial institutions all over the country as well as from overseas. Its multiple specialized databases are available to authorized law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI, IRS, DEA, and ICE.

The official mission of FinCEN, which was created in 1990, is “to safeguard the financial system from illicit use, combat money laundering and promote national security.” But FinCEN employees are not trained in conducting counterintelligence, counterterrorism, or criminal investigations involving sophisticated unlawful activity, like foreign corruption, bribes, and kickbacks.

Money laundering investigations necessarily involve financial transactions but these transactions must tie back to Specified Unlawful Activity (SUA) before successful prosecution(s) can be brought. This is where trained Federal law enforcement agencies with expertise in sophisticated financial crimes — such as the IRS CI — can play a critical role.

These agencies will be analyzing the financial data with an eye for evidence of an underlying crime or illegal source of funds — like embezzlement, theft, extortion — that can be connected to the raw financial transaction evidence obtained via subpoena.

Starting With Michael Flynn
.
One target of such an investigation will probably be Michael T. Flynn, the retired US Army lieutenant general who briefly served as President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor until he was forced to resign over his attempt to lie about his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States

Mueller will certainly call in an IRS CI to review Flynn’s personal and business tax returns to examine whether he reported the payments received in December 2015 from RT (the TV network sponsored by the Kremlin). Flynn purportedly did not disclose these payments on his SF 86 security disclosure forms; indeed, he reportedly lied about them, allegedly claiming they were not from a foreign entity but from “American companies.”

Michael Flynn
DIA Director Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, February 18th, 2014.
Photo credit: DIA

Furthermore, it would be logical to review Flynn’s 2016 tax returns to ascertain whether he reported the half million or so payments from Turkey. We already know from the forms Flynn filed which have already been made public that he took out a mortgage loan of between $500k-$1M in 2016. Investigators should have lots of questions with regard to the above. How was Flynn planning on making his mortgage payments on a government salary?

It should be noted that falsifying a government form signed under oath, e.g., SF-86, is prosecutable under Title 18 Sec 1001. (Lying to Federal investigators can be grounds for perjury, a violation of a separate federal statute. Filing a false income tax return can be prosecuted under Title 26 Section 7201 or more likely 7206(1).

Given that we know Flynn falsified his SF-86 with regard to his Russia payments in 2015 and then lied about the source of his payments to investigators when he had an obligation to request permission to receive payments from a foreign country, any prosecutor would want to ask just how Flynn treated his foreign payments on his tax returns.

Did he continue his concealment of the source, ownership, control of these foreign payments? Or did he make a full reporting of the payments on his tax returns? The main money-laundering statute is Title 18 Section 1956(a)(1), which makes it a crime to knowingly conduct or attempt to conduct a financial transaction with proceeds from a specified unlawful activity with specific intent to promote that activity or conceal or disguise the source, origin, nature, ownership, or control of the proceeds.

An additional reason to obtain Flynn’s income tax returns for 2015 and 2016 would be to review Schedule B of his individual 1040 tax returns to determine whether he checked off the boxes at the bottom of the form as to whether he admitted ownership of any foreign bank accounts.

If he checked off yes to these questions, then the next question is whether he filed any reports of Foreign Bank Account (FBAR) activity/ownership with FinCEN using form 90-22-1. This FBAR report must be filed if ownership of a bank account holding over $10,000 during the calendar year is maintained.

The above paper trail may provide answers to such questions as: How did Flynn get paid by RT from Russia? Wire transfer? Directly to an American bank account or through a foreign-held bank account? Did Flynn use an LLC to make or receive payments from Russia or Turkey? Did this LLC have an offshore account? If so, where? Did Flynn ever personally transport large amounts of cash overseas? Did FinCEN file CMIRs? What are the details?

Other questions that FinCEN records could help address:

Did Flynn enter into any cash transactions with his foreign clients? Above $10,000 then there should be Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs) available detailing account information. If Flynn entered into cash transactions at a financial institution below $10,000, were any Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) filed? What do they say?

Did Flynn ever wire-transfer large amounts of money overseas? What Money Service Business (MSB) did he use? Whom did he transmit the money to and for what purpose?

It should be evident by now that a thorough financial investigation could really box Flynn in on key questions and financial transactions. Any competent financial investigation will begin by requesting all tax returns filed by Flynn, his partners, his businesses and associates. Credit reports should be requested to obtain leads to additional accounts and or loan activity.

Finally, it would be nice to know if FinCEN was requested by the FBI or any other appropriate authority via Patriot Act 314(a) protocol to request all financial institutions related to FinCEN whether any accounts were identified for Flynn that were not reported on his SF-86 disclosure form or his personal income tax returns.

This information could only be used for lead purposes but it could easily be followed up by MLAT treaty requests so that the bank records could officially be introduced into a judicial proceeding. It should be noted that the US does have MLAT agreements with Turkey and Cyprus.

There is much to be gained here in conducting a comprehensive financial investigation into Michael Flynn particularly if done by the real experts, the heirs to Elliot Ness. Just like with Watergate, we will all know that the Russia investigations have gotten serious if Mueller calls in the cavalry: IRS Criminal Investigation.

https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/05/30/follo ... ael-flynn/
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Jun 01, 2017 3:09 pm

House intelligence panel subpoenas Flynn, Cohen; seeks 'unmasking' docs
By Tom LoBianco, Jeremy Herb and Deirdre Walsh, CNN
Updated 8:29 AM ET, Thu June 1, 2017

Washington (CNN)The House intelligence committee issued subpoenas Wednesday to former national security adviser Michael Flynn and President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, as part of the probe into Russian activity during the 2016 election.

The panel also issued subpoenas for documents related to "unmasking" of names separate to the Russia investigation.
The subpoenas, the first from the House panel, seek their testimony, as well as documents from their businesses. The committee issued a total of seven subpoenas Wednesday -- four related to the Russia investigation and three seeking details of "unmasking" of US residents by former national security adviser Susan Rice, former CIA Director John Brennan and former US ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, a source said Wednesday.
"As part of our ongoing investigation into Russian active measures during the 2016 campaign, today we approved subpoenas for several individuals for testimony, personal documents and business records," Reps. Michael Conaway, R-Texas, and Adam Schiff, D-California -- the co-leaders of the House investigation -- said Wednesday in a statement.
"We hope and expect that anyone called to testify or provide documents will comply with that request, so that we may gain all the information within the scope of our investigation. We will continue to pursue this investigation wherever the facts may lead," they added.

The subpoenas come a day after Cohen said he would not cooperate with congressional investigators and amid turmoil inside the House investigation itself, as lawmakers wrangle with the role of House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-California, in the probe.
A congressional source familiar with the committee's probe tells CNN that the House intelligence committee issued a total of seven subpoenas today. Four of the subpoenas were issued on the Russia probe and three others were issued seeking information on "unmasking," the identification of US citizens picked up during surveillance of foreign nationals.
Trump tweeted Thursday morning that "the big story is the 'unmasking and surveillance' of people that took place during the Obama administration," a point he's made previously as the investigation into alleged ties between his campaign and Russia has accelerated.
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A source close to Flynn said Tuesday that the former national security adviser would comply with a series of Senate subpoenas issued for documents from Flynn and his businesses.
Nunes' role in the issuing of subpoenas has been a sore point behind the scenes in the House investigation ever since he announced he was recusing himself from leading the Russia investigation.
The three subpoenas for information about Rice, Brennan and Power's roles in revealing names reflects Nunes' public statements wanting more information about who may have unveiled the names of Trump transition aides caught on US-monitored lines talking with foreign officials.
Nunes has unilateral authority on the House intelligence committee to issue subpoenas, although the committee's rules recommend he consult with the top Democrat as well, who is currently Schiff.
"If the reports are accurate, subpoenas related to the 'unmasking' issue would have been sent by Nunes acting separately from the committee's Russia investigation," said a senior aide on the committee. "This action would have been taken without the Democrats' agreement. Any prior requests for information would have been undertaken without the Democrats' knowledge."


Ex-CIA chief Woolsey: Flynn offered me job as CIA director
By LOUIS NELSON 06/01/2017 07:13 AM EDT
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Former CIA Director James Woolsey was offered his old job back in the administration of President Donald Trump, Woolsey told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Thursday, but he turned down the job over concerns with Michael Flynn, then the incoming national security adviser.

It was Flynn who offered Woolsey the job six days after Trump’s surprise victory in last November’s presidential election, according to the former CIA director who led the agency under President Bill Clinton. The offer, Woolsey said, was to lead the CIA and report directly to Flynn, a stipulation that prompted Woolsey to turn down the job.


Woolsey also told the Journal that he did not believe Flynn had the authority to offer him the CIA job.

“I turned it down, partially because I didn’t want to work for him, partially because I didn’t think the structure was set up right,” he said.

Robert Kelner, Flynn's lawyer, disputed Woolsey's account in a statement to POLITICO, suggesting that the former CIA director's statements to the Journal could be sour grapes after he was passed over for jobs in the Trump administration.

"Mr. Woolsey’s claim in The Wall Street Journal that he was offered the position of the CIA director if he would agree to report only to Gen. Flynn is entirely false," Kelner said. "Woolsey was passed over for any position in the Trump administration and that may be coloring this and other untrue allegations he has made against Gen. Flynn."

Woolsey said he would have considered the job if Trump had wanted him and if the job reported directly to the president and not to Flynn, who was fired as national security adviser just weeks after inauguration
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/0 ... job-239018
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Jun 02, 2017 1:49 pm

POLITICS | Fri Jun 2, 2017 | 12:38pm EDT
Exclusive: Special counsel Mueller to probe ex-Trump aide Flynn's Turkey ties

By Nathan Layne, Mark Hosenball and Julia Edwards Ainsley | WASHINGTON
Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating possible ties between the Trump election campaign and Russia, is expanding his probe to assume control of a grand jury investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, three sources told Reuters.

The move means Mueller’s politically charged inquiry will now look into Flynn’s paid work as a lobbyist for a Turkish businessman in 2016, in addition to contacts between Russian officials and Flynn and other Trump associates during and after the Nov. 8 presidential election.

Federal prosecutors in Virginia are investigating a deal between Flynn and Turkish businessman Ekim Alptekin as part of a grand jury criminal probe, according to a subpoena seen by Reuters.

Alptekin’s company, Netherlands-based Inovo BV, paid Flynn's consultancy $530,000 between September and November to produce a documentary and research on Fethullah Gulen, an exiled Turkish cleric living in the United States. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan blames Gulen for a failed coup last July.

Alptekin, an ally of Erdogan, told Reuters he hired Flynn to provide research on how Gulen is “poisoning the atmosphere” between Turkey and the United States.

Gulen has denied any role in the coup and dismisses Turkey’s allegations that he heads a terrorist organization.

The grand jury in Virginia has issued subpoenas to some of Flynn’s business associates involved in the work for Inovo, two people familiar with the probe say. The subpoena seen by Reuters seeks bank records, documents and communications related to Flynn, his company, Flynn Intel Group, Alptekin and Inovo.

Flynn's lawyer, Robert Kelner, did not respond to questions about Flynn's work for Inovo or Mueller's investigation. A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment.

Alptekin declined to comment when asked about the investigation into Flynn and whether he or anyone he knows has been subpoenaed.

BROAD POWERS

FILE PHOTO: Then White House National Security Advisor Michael Flynn walks down the White House colonnade on the way to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. President Donald Trump's joint news conference at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 10, 2017. REUTERS/Jim Bourg/Files Photo
FILE PHOTO: Then White House National Security Advisor Michael Flynn walks down the White House colonnade on the way to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. President Donald Trump's joint news conference at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 10, 2017. REUTERS/Jim Bourg/Files Photo
Mueller’s move to take over the Virginia grand jury’s criminal investigation highlights his broad powers as special counsel. Reuters could not determine when the grand jury was first convened, but its existence has been previously reported.

Until now the investigation has been led by Brandon van Grack, an espionage prosecutor in the Justice Department, and federal prosecutors from the Eastern District of Virginia.

It is not clear whether Van Grack and others who have been working on the case will continue to do so.

Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller, a former FBI director, on May 17 to oversee an investigation into any links or collusion between Russia and individuals associated with the Trump campaign. Rosenstein also gave him authority to pursue “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation."

Some members of Congress have asked the Justice Department to define the scope of Mueller’s inquiry.

Mueller’s appointment followed an uproar over Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, who had been investigating alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Democrats and some of the president's fellow Republicans had demanded an independent probe of whether Russia tried to sway the outcome of November's election in favor of Trump and against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Trump, who has said there was no coordination between his campaign and Russia, has decried the investigation as a “witch hunt.”

One of Trump’s most trusted aides during the election campaign, Flynn had a long career in the military. He set up the Flynn Intel Group, an Alexandria, Virginia-based intelligence consultancy, after President Barack Obama dismissed him as head of the military’s Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014.

UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY

Mueller, who takes over leadership of an FBI investigation that began last July, can present evidence to grand juries and hear testimony from witnesses.

Trump fired Flynn in February after it became clear that he had falsely characterized the nature of phone conversations he had with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak in December, just after the Obama administration imposed new sanctions on Russia for what U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded was a Kremlin-led effort through computer hacking, fake news and propaganda to boost Trump’s chances of winning the White House.

ALSO IN POLITICS

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Day before Comey appearance, U.S. intel chiefs to testify on surveillance
Flynn's work for Inovo came under scrutiny after he published a commentary on a political news website on Election Day calling Gulen a “radical Islamist” who should be extradited to Turkey.

Along with the editorial, the Flynn Intel Group also produced a 75-page report on Gulen based mainly on news reports and some video footage for a documentary that was never made, according to three people familiar with the project.

Alptekin, who is chairman of the Turkey-U.S. Business Council, told Reuters he was satisfied with Flynn’s research because it had helped him understand how Gulen’s network operates in the United States.

He said the $530,000 payment to Flynn’s firm came "mostly" from his personal funds.

On Nov. 18, the day after Flynn was appointed Trump’s national security adviser, Trump transition team lawyer William McGinley raised concerns on a call with the Flynn Intel Group and others involved in the Inovo project over who had paid for Flynn's commentary, according to two people with knowledge of the conversation.

Flynn did not participate in that call, they said.

At the time of the call, Flynn had not disclosed that his work for Alptekin meant he was being paid to represent Turkish interests during the election campaign. Flynn Intel Group had said in a September 2016 filing that it was lobbying for Inovo but did not disclose its Turkish links. In March, Flynn retroactively registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

In a letter accompanying the March filing, Flynn's lawyer, Kelner, said the disclosure was being made because Flynn's work for Inovo "could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey," which he noted was seeking to extradite Gulen.

The House of Representatives intelligence committee, which is also investigating Russian interference in the election, subpoenaed records from Flynn on Wednesday. The Senate's intelligence committee, which has a separate probe under way, has also served subpoenas on Flynn and two of his businesses, and earlier this week Flynn indicated that he would start turning over relevant materials.

(Additional reporting by Julia Harte in Washington, editing by Kevin Krolicki and Ross Colvin)
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-t ... ium=Social
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Jun 06, 2017 1:49 pm

This DC Nonprofit Brings Together Key Players In Flynn Turkey Lobbying Mess (PHOTOS)

Image
Tony Brown, Imajination Photography, Facebook user: Nowruz Commission
By ALLEGRA KIRKLAND Published JUNE 6, 2017 1:22 PM


Outside of a lobbying contract that may have benefited the government of Turkey, the principal players in a subplot of the sprawling federal Russia investigation centered on ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn have another point of contact: a Washington, D.C. nonprofit that throws an opulent annual gala.

The Nowruz Commission, an organization founded to “promote and preserve” the Persian New Year, is an under-the-radar link between Flynn, his former business partner, Bijan Kian, and their onetime Turkish client, Ekim Alptekin. In various photos from galas and awards ceremonies dating back several years, the men can be seen separately glad-handing with people involved with the commission while dressed to the nines.

There is no indication that the nonprofit explains the trio’s relationship. Exactly how Flynn met Kian, and why Alptekin contracted their now-shuttered firm, Flynn Intel Group, remains unclear.

Alptekin declined to comment to TPM directly, but through a spokesperson said his “relationship with Mr. Kian and Mr. Flynn was established independently from the Nowruz Commission.”

The photographs indicate that Flynn and Kian, an Iranian-American businessman and former U.S. government official who served on the Trump transition team, were familiar at least a year and a half before teaming up in the fall of 2014 to form the small intelligence consulting firm whose work for Alptekin is under scrutiny by federal investigators.
Image
From left to right: Bijan Kian, Michael T. Flynn, Lori Flynn

The Nowruz Commission was founded in 2010 by Kian, Minnesota businessman Nasser Kazeminy and Kazakhstan’s ambassador to the U.S., Erlan Idrissov. Alptekin, who paid Flynn Intel Group $530,000 to research and produce negative PR materials on exiled Turkish cleric Fetullah Gulen during the 2016 campaign, is listed as the commission’s vice chairman, a member of the board of directors and an ambassador representing Turkey. Flynn Intel Group’s general counsel, Robert Kelley, is listed as secretary general of the commission.

In photographs and YouTube videos of the commission’s splashy annual fundraising dinner, Flynn pops up repeatedly. He can be seen seated at the head table by Kian’s side and mingling with guests. At the 2014 gala, in a moment described as the evening’s “highlight,” Flynn helped honor Beeta Christine Rafiekian, Kian’s daughter and the executive director of the Nowruz Commission, with the new title of “Global Nowruz Ambassador.”

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From left to right: Gissou Kian, Bijan Kian, Lori Flynn, Michael T. Flynn

That same event provided another point of overlap between the Nowruz Commission and Flynn Intel Group. The mistress of ceremonies at the 2014 gala was former CNN anchor Rudi Bakhtiar, who the firm paid $1,200 to carry out on-camera interviews with several high-profile Turkish generals and journalists who have said they were persecuted by supporters of Gulen. TPM was unable to reach Bakhtiar, but she recently told the Wall Street Journal that Kian, who she described as a family friend, brought her onto the project under false pretenses, even neglecting to disclose at first that the work would be done for Flynn’s firm.

“I’m a journalist,” Bakhtiar told the Journal. “He never said ‘We’re going to make a documentary that’s going to crush Gulen.’ I never would have done it.”

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From left to right: Bijan Kian, Rudi Bakhtiar

The annual gala, which raises money for a handful of international humanitarian organizations, seems to be the commission’s most visible and prominent project. For the ticket price of $500 or a sponsorship of between $2,000-$50,000, guests are invited to gather in tony D.C. ballrooms for a night of drinks, live performances and delicacies from the countries represented on the commission.

“This is just a celebratory thing,” Fereydoun “Fred” Nazem, a venture capitalist and Nowruz Commission ambassador who noted he has never actually attended one of the commission’s galas, told TPM in a phone interview. “I’m excited that people are excited about it because it’s such a beautiful and festive occasion. And with all the bad news from that part of the world, this is a very nice, peaceful thing.”

An eclectic mix of celebrities, deep-pocketed businessmen, academics and diplomats compose the commission’s advisory council, board of directors and list of ambassadors. Reps. Ed Royce (R-CA) and Eliot Engel (D-NY) are honorary co-chairs. Iranian actress Shoreh Adgashloo, Gallup chairman and CEO Jim Clifton and Hasan Asadullozoda, a bank executive who is one of the wealthiest men in Tajikistan, are among the dozens of individuals name-checked on the commission’s website.
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Another notable name on the commission’s list of ambassadors: Sergey Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the United States. Kislyak is a central character in the sweeping investigations into Russia’s election interference and possible collusion with Trump campaign officials, and Flynn was forced out of the Trump administration after lying to Vice President Mike Pence and others about his repeated contacts with the well-connected diplomat.

Kian and Flynn’s attorney, Robert Kelner, did not respond to TPM’s requests for comment for this story.

Kelley invoked his role as attorney for Flynn Intel Group when declining comment, saying, “It’s all attorney-client privilege. I can’t talk about it, okay?”

Nancye Miller, a spokesperson for former CIA director Jim Woolsey, who is listed as an ambassador to the commission, directed questions to Kian or Kazeminy, another of the nonprofit’s founders who once was accused of funneling tens of thousands of dollars to former Sen. Norm Colman’s family and improperly showering Coleman with expensive gifts. Kazeminy’s secretary directed TPM to Jim McGuire, president of Kazeminy’s investment firm NJK Holding Corporation.

“Mr. Kazeminy was one of the co-founders of Nowruz as a private individual. Nowruz is among the many charities that Mr. Kazeminy has personally supported,” read a statement attributed to NJK Holding. “Questions concerning Mr. Kian should be directed to him.”

Several other individuals involved with the commission did not return requests for comment. Six who did, however, offered effusive praise of Kian and his wife, Gissou, who serves as the commission’s president and CEO. Only one individual recalled seeing Alptekin at Nowruz Commission events, and none offered comment on Flynn or knew of any apparent connection between Flynn Intel Group’s principals and Turkey.

Another member of the commission’s advisory council told TPM that if anything, Turkey was “not represented as much as they should be” in the organization.

Image
From left to right: Bijan Kian, Michael T. Flynn
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/nowruz- ... m-alptekin
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Jun 07, 2017 9:35 am

KEEP PUSHING ME
Michael Flynn Had a Plan to Work With Russia’s Military. It Wasn’t Exactly Legal.
The former national security adviser had a long-standing desire to get closer to the Russians. One newly revealed step in the plan may have stepped beyond the bounds of the law.

Spencer Ackerman
SPENCER ACKERMAN
06.07.17 12:00 AM ET

Donald Trump’s first national security adviser pushed so hard for the Pentagon to cooperate with the Russian military that his initiative would likely have broken the law if it had ever been enacted.
Four current and former Pentagon officials told The Daily Beast that during Michael Flynn’s brief White House tenure, the retired general advocated for the expansion of a relatively narrow military communications channel—one meant to keep U.S. and Russian pilots safe from one another—to see if the two nations could jointly fight the so-called Islamic State.
The initiative never went anywhere, in part because of opposition from the Pentagon and from U.S. Central Command; a legal prohibition set by Congress; and, ultimately, Flynn’s firing.
Inside the Pentagon, “there was a lot of fear that we’d move to outright cooperation [with Russia] through this channel,” according to a former senior defense official.
Whatever prospects it may have had died after Defense Secretary James Mattis made clear that he would not sign any required authorization to green-light cooperation, according to two knowledgeable former senior defense officials.
Although the plan was “ill-defined,” a senior defense official said, Pentagon officials were aghast at what they understood as a move by Flynn to sidle up to Russia—part of a closeness that ultimately got Flynn fired, and one that fit a pattern of extending an olive branch to a Kremlin that U.S. intelligence had concluded interfered in the presidential election on Trump’s behalf.
“Everyone knew where it was coming from,” the senior defense official said, referring to Flynn.
And it wasn’t the only such measure. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a senior adviser, reportedly sought in early December to route around U.S. intelligence through a backchannel to the Kremlin, according to intercepted communications from Kislyak. The following month, private military contractor chief Erik Prince, the brother of Trump’s education secretary, met with a Putin confidante in the Seychelles, a backchannel brokered by an Emirati crown prince, Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, according to The Washington Post, to test Russia’s commitment to Iran. Even after Flynn left government, his NSC aides were still interested in lifting oil sanctions on Russia, The Daily Beast’s Kim Dozier reported, despite all-consuming FBI and congressional investigations into ties between Trump deputies and the Russians.
In 2015, Russia sent its military to Syria to bolster the regime of proxy president Bashar Assad. U.S. aircraft and special operations forces were already attacking ISIS in northeastern Syria. With the proximity between the two global powers’ air forces raising the risk of an accidental confrontation, the Pentagon and the Kremlin established a communications line, known as the “deconfliction channel,” to mitigate the danger.
By then, Russia had swallowed up Crimea from Ukraine, and the GOP-controlled Congress took a step that ensured the purpose of the deconfliction channel could not legally expand. Beginning in 2015, the annual defense authorization bill, known as the NDAA, contained a provision barring “any bilateral military-to-military cooperation between the Governments of the United States and the Russian Federation” without a waiver from the secretary of defense.
The risk to the pilots is real, as several aircraft near-misses have occurred in Syria, even with the deconfliction channel open. And that led, over the past year, to what some Pentagon officials considered a risk of mission creep.
One persistent idea, emerging from the Pentagon-based Joint Staff and CENTCOM, was to discuss with the Russians keeping their missions on the opposite side of Syria from the American-led coalition’s. It seemed viable, as the U.S. typically bombs ISIS far from the Assad regime positions Russia defends. But while the idea would not amount to cooperation with Russia, Pentagon officials have worried that it looks too much like great Western powers agreeing in secret to a de facto imperial carve-up of Syria.

Another idea, known as “Enhanced Deconfliction,” emerged last fall, before the election. Advocated by General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his strategic planning chief, Lt. General Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie Jr., Enhanced Deconfliction sought to expand the deconfliction channel, making it more of a forum for senior-level military discussion, and without Pentagon policy officials on the line. But McKenzie, whose planning shop put together a memo on the idea, was vague about what the purpose of the higher-level talks would be. (Some understood it to include a technology upgrade.) The outgoing defense secretary, Ashton Carter, nixed the idea.
Several former defense officials do not consider Enhanced Deconfliction to be a sop to Trump or his closeness to Russia. Instead, they understood it as the military taking an opportunity to see what it could get out of Barack Obama’s successor. When the idea began floating around the Joint Staff, most at the Pentagon assumed Hillary Clinton would be their next commander in chief.
Into this dynamic stepped Mike Flynn.
But in January, Flynn went beyond any earlier proposal to hyperturbocharge the deconfliction channel.
Flynn’s comfort with Russia had been on display for years. As chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, he visited the Moscow headquarters of Russian military intelligence and later boasted of being the first U.S. official to ever do so. In December 2015, he was paid tens of thousands to speak at a Moscow gala for propaganda network RT, something he did not disclose as required to the Army. In a mid-2016 interview, Flynn said that if the U.S. and USSR could unite against Hitler, Washington and Moscow could unite against ISIS: “We have a problem with radical Islamism and I actually think that we could work together with them against this enemy.”
Accordingly, Flynn, through the NSC, began suggesting the Pentagon embrace Russia in Syria. A senior defense official summarized Flynn’s entreaties as: “Well, we should work more with the Russians, so we’re fighting the same enemy in Syria.” Although Flynn never communicated a formal plan or articulated an actual series of steps, he wanted the Pentagon to use the deconfliction channel to explore what the Russians considered possible for a team-up against ISIS.
If put into effect, such a proposal would clearly violate the NDAA prohibition on cooperation with Russia. A cadre of Pentagon lawyers had already aggressively reviewed the provision and provided guidance to keep the Pentagon on the right side of the law. That contributed to Pentagon opposition to a 2016 proposal from John Kerry to expand intelligence sharing with Russia over Syria in order to keep the Russians aboard a ceasefire.
Flynn’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
Whatever openness there was in the Pentagon and CENTCOM to expanding the deconfliction channel, officials were highly wary that what Flynn wanted was a step too far. Not only would the NDAA provision be an obstacle, the initiative rested on a dubious premise: that Russia is in Syria to fight ISIS. While Russia maintains that its intervention in the Syrian civil war is a counterterrorism mission, in practice, Russia only seems to find terrorists where the Assad regime meets resistance, leaving ISIS-held territory to the U.S. and its allies to assault.
CENTCOM did not buy into Flynn’s proposal, the senior Pentagon official said. Pentagon officials were alarmed that the deconfliction channel was about to transform into a mechanism for banned cooperation with a U.S. adversary. Not that there was much to actually buy into: The official described Flynn’s idea as “vaguely aspirational,” rather than programmatic. Initially, defense officials slow-rolled the White House idea.
Then, in February, new Pentagon chief Jim Mattis made clear that doing anything beyond talking to Russia about service member safety would require his personal imprimatur. Two knowledgeable former officials said Mattis refused to issue the waiver under NDAA.
However, in recent weeks, the Pentagon and Russia have opened up a new military communications channel, one that runs at the three-star general and flag officer level. The Joint Staff’s McKenzie is on the American end of the phone.
Flynn’s proposal, on the other hand, ultimately went nowhere. On Feb. 14, Trump fired him, ostensibly for misleading Vice President Mike Pence over conversations Flynn had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about relaxing U.S. sanctions. Whatever proposal Flynn had in mind for military cooperation in Syria left the White House with him.
Though nothing came of Flynn’s envisioned cooperation with the Russian military, the initiative he sought would have gone beyond repurposing a line of communication and placed the U.S. military alongside its Russian counterpart at a time when traditional U.S. allies were nervously watching the White House for signs of a Russian tilt. Despite Mattis’ opposition, had Flynn remained atop the NSC, it is possible that he would have continued his push.
“He was gone too fast,” a current senior defense official said, “and it never had a chance to gather steam.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/michael-fl ... ctly-legal
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Jun 19, 2017 5:58 pm

SPYTALK
MICHAEL FLYNN, RUSSIA AND A GRAND SCHEME TO BUILD NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS IN SAUDI ARABIA AND THE ARAB WORLD
BY JEFF STEIN ON 6/9/17 AT 7:00 AM


Updated | By the time Michael Flynn was fired as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser in February, he had made a lot of bad decisions. One was taking money from the Russians (and failing to disclose it); another was taking money under the table from the Turks. But an overlooked line in his financial disclosure form, which he was forced to amend to detail those foreign payments, reveals he was also involved in one of the most audacious—and some say harebrained—schemes in recent memory: a plan to build scores of U.S. nuclear power plants in the Middle East. As a safety measure.In 2015 and 2016, according to his filing, Flynn was an adviser to X-Co Dynamics Inc./Iron Bridge Group, which at first glance looks like just another Pentagon consultancy that ex-military officers use to fatten their wallets. Its chairman and CEO was retired Admiral Michael Hewitt; another retired admiral, Frank “Skip” Bowman, who oversaw the Navy’s nuclear programs, was an adviser. Other top guns associated with it were former National Security Agency boss Keith Alexander and retired Marine Corps General James “Hoss” Cartwright, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff whose stellar career was marred when he was prosecuted last year for lying to the FBI during a leak investigation.Daily Emails and Alerts- Get the best of Newsweek delivered to your inboxIn June 2015, knowledgeable sources tell Newsweek, Flynn flew to Egypt and Israel on behalf of X-Co/Iron Bridge. His mission: to gauge attitudes in Cairo and Jerusalem toward a plan for a joint U.S.-Russian (and Saudi-financed) program to get control over the Arab world’s rush to acquire nuclear power. At the core of their concern was a fear that states in the volatile Middle East would have inadequate security for the plants and safeguards for their radioactive waste—the stuff of nuclear bombs.But no less a concern for Flynn and his partners was the moribund U.S. nuclear industry, which was losing out to Russian and even South Korean contractors in the region. Or, as Stuart Solomon, a top executive along with Hewitt at his new venture, IP3 (International Peace, Power and Prosperity), put it in a recent speech to industry executives, “We find ourselves…standing on the sidelines and watching the competition pass us by.”

That the oil-rich, sun-soaked Arab Middle East would pursue nuclear energy seems paradoxical. But as The Economist noted in 2015, “Demand for electricity is rising, along with pressure to lower carbon emissions; nuclear plants tick both boxes.” And some of the region’s major players, like Egypt and Jordan, don’t have oil and gas resources and “want nuclear power to shore up the security of their energy supplies,” The Economist said.So the genius idea the Americans advocated was a U.S.-Russian partnership to build and operate plants and export the dangerous spent fuel under strict controls. Flynn’s role would be helping X-Co/Iron Bridge design and implement a vast security network for the entire enterprise, according to an internal memo by ACU Strategic Partners, one of the lead companies involved, obtained by Newsweek.

Not only would the project revive the U.S. nuclear industry, but it would cost American taxpayers nothing, its principals asserted. It would be “funded entirely by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries,” according to the ACU memo. The cost for the kingdom? “Close to a trillion dollars,” says a project insider, who asked for anonymity in exchange for discussing internal matters.Theoretically, the Saudis and other “participating Mid-East governments” would recoup some costs by selling energy “through their utilities,” according to the ACU plan. But if the Saudis and other Arab states buy in, it won’t be for energy, says Thomas Cochran, a prominent scientist and nuclear nonproliferation proponent involved with the ACU project. “They are buying security,” he tells Newsweek. Under the ACU plan, “they’re buying a security arrangement involving the U.S., Russia, France, and the U.K., eventually.”Left out of this grand nuclear scheme: Iran (along with Syria, its war-ravaged Shiite proxy). In fact, “it was always part of the project that Russia’s involvement...would tilt Russia away from Iran,” Fred Johnson, ACU’s chief economist, wrote in an email to his advisers obtained by Newsweek. The idea was that Russia, facing what Johnson called an “economic and existential calamity” because of low oil prices, could use the income generated from the partnership. The consortium could then purchase “Russian military hardware” to compensate Moscow for losing military sales to Iran.

“Further plans to sideline Iran,” Johnson wrote, included “the development of X-Co,” the Hewitt company that Flynn was advising, “with its very visible deployment of Sea Launch,” a Russian company “that would provide a platform for rockets” to put surveillance satellites in orbit.

Flynn was “not involved” in the negotiations with Sea Launch, Cochran says. The former general, now being pursued by federal investigators probing contacts between Russian officials and Trump’s inner circle, did not respond to an inquiry from Newsweek. People associated with the Middle East project say they thought Flynn’s involvement was limited to sounding out the Egyptians and Israelis on security aspects of the enterprise. He listed no income from X-Co/Iron Bridge on his financial disclosure form.“To the best of my knowledge,” Flynn was not being paid for his expertise, as was the case with many advisers to the project, Cochran says, but the former general’s travel expenses were picked up by ACU, as were his own. (The cost of business-class round-trip airfare and exclusive hotels for the trip would have ranged between $10,000 and $15,000.)Hewitt denied that isolating Iran was part of the plan. “X-Co wasn’t created to simply ‘sideline Iran,’” he responded to Johnson and their associates in an email. “It was designed to set the conditions for stability which were the precursors to building 40 plants” and to “solidify the [Gulf Corporation Council], Jordan, Egypt under a security construct, led by two superpowers, using state of the art capability.”But the project faced opposition from the Obama administration, Cochran says. “They didn’t want to do it with the Russians and didn’t want to do it while they were negotiating the Iran [nuclear] deal,” he tells Newsweek.Trump’s embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, offered an attractive possibility. And when Flynn, who had connections to the Russians, became the candidate’s national security adviser, the ACU team, led by British-American dealmaker Alex Copson, suddenly seemed to have an inside man. Last year, Copson was touting such connections when he tried to persuade the Tennessee Valley Authority to transfer an unfinished Alabama nuclear plant to the ACU in exchange for shares in the consortium that would build reactors in the Middle East, telling a Huntsville reporter that “Alabama’s two senators”—both Republicans, and one, Jeff Sessions, then a top Trump campaign adviser—“can help the next administration move this project forward.” The plant was eventually sold to another company.When reports surfaced that the FBI was investigating possible collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign, however, some of Copson’s partners and advisers decided it was time to walk away. “When Copson decided he was going to saddle up with the Trump team, that was the last straw for me,” the insider says. “I said it’s time to regroup.”The Saudis hadn’t shown much interest anyway, the insider says. “Copson was promising the advisers lots of money if the Saudis put up money,” but it failed to materialize. “And so there’s nothing that anyone was going to gain unless the project was a success,” he tells Newsweek.Hewitt and his associates also split from ACU to pursue their own path toward a nuclear-powered Middle East, one that would swap in China for Russia as a nuclear partner, two sources close to the project say. (Hewitt declined to discuss plans for IP3, telling Newsweek he was “working hard to create our public persona right now.”)But the highly regarded Cochran stayed with ACU. A longtime senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, where he was director of its nuclear program, Cochran was the author of countless studies and articles over the decades and had initiated with Moscow the U.S.-Soviet nuclear test ban verification project in 1986. He “has extraordinary chutzpah,” a writer for Scientific American observed in 1998. “He is willing to take on what most people wouldn’t bother with because they assume it’s hopeless."

Or nuts. In 2001, a writer for the left-wing In These Times weekly got hold of a draft proposal for a 1990s-era project that Cochran was involved in, the Non-Proliferation Trust (NPT), which envisioned taking control of spent fuel from reactors around the world and shipping it to Russia “on large ships mounted with an arsenal of weapons designed to ward off nuclear pirates,” wrote Jeffrey St. Clair. “The big question is what happens to the waste after it arrives in Russia.” Most observers, including Cochran, believe countries developing nuclear power should be responsible for disposing of their own spent nuclear fuel. What St. Clair failed to appreciate, he says, is the difficulty of doing so for many countries, either because of geology (Taiwan, in the earthquake-prone Pacific), costs (Mexico) or a weak security environment, as in the Middle East, “where the buildup of spent fuel represents a significant proliferation risk.” Had the NPT project not failed, Cochran says, “we probably would have a spent fuel repository underway in Russia” and now under strict oversight—instead of a looming crisis. As for the danger of shipping spent fuel across the oceans, Cochran says it’s been done safely for decades.All the more reason to partner with the Russians today in an ironclad security arrangement, Hewitt says. “We’re always going to be engaged in the security of the Middle East,” he told a May gathering at the Nuclear Energy Institute. “It is in our best interests to ensure that nuclear power is introduced with all of the safety [standards of the U.S.].”Cochran urges critics not to lose focus on the big picture, which he alternately likens to launching the U.S. Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe after World War II, and the Tennessee Valley Authority, which tamed rivers and brought electricity and industrial development to the American South in the 1930s. “It would provide energy and jobs and so forth for countries like Egypt and others in the region,” he says, “so that these young men have got something more useful to do than go out and shoot each other.”For a project fraught with such diplomatic and logistical minefields, however, Copson is perhaps an odd choice to lead ACU into the Middle East. Widely reported to be “a sometime bass player with the British rock band Iron Butterfly,” (though not an official member), Copson once famously “described the natives of the Marshall Islands as ‘fat, lazy fucks’ when they nixed one of his nuke dump schemes” in the Central Pacific Ocean, muckraking journalist Greg Palast wrote in 2001. (The islands are now disappearing under rising seas.)Copson did not respond to several calls, emails and written questions asking for comment. But it’s not likely the Trump team, many of whom are under close scrutiny for their undisclosed Russian contacts, will be any help to Copson now. And the Saudis aren’t “taking the kind of steps that would be required to really get serious about setting up a civil nuclear-energy infrastructure,” says Tristan Volpe, a fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C.Others suspect the Saudis are up to something more nefarious because of the U.S.-led nuclear deal with Iran. The Saudis “have big ambitions for nuclear,” says David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, D.C. “The issue is whether they cross over into any processing or enrichment” with secret partners like Pakistan or China.Flynn once expressed deep worries about a Saudi-Iranian nuclear arms race. In a January 2016 interview with Al-Jazeera, he sounded like Cochran, the elder statesman of the nonproliferation movement. “An entirely new economy is what this region needs,” he said, especially for the millions of unemployed young men living under corrupt autocracies and tempted by extremism. “You’ve got to give them something else to do. If you don’t, they’re going to turn on their own governments.”But that was before he hitched up with Trump, who has embraced the Saudi monarchy and ratcheted up his rhetoric against Iran. Talk of a grand scheme to create jobs in the Middle East, meanwhile, has evaporated, with the Russia scandal enveloping not only Flynn but Trump’s entire presidency.
http://www.newsweek.com/2017/06/23/flyn ... 23396.html


House Democrats Want Documents On Michael Flynn's Work With Saudi Arabia
Reps. Elijah Cummings and Eliot Engel requested new documents relating to Flynn's foreign travel and work on a US-Russian nuclear power project in the Middle East, that was to be financed by Saudi Arabia.

Posted on June 19, 2017, at 4:00 p.m.
Lissandra Villa

House Democrats are asking for new documents on former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who has become a central figure in the congressional Russia investigation, related to any connection he has with Saudi Arabia and his apparent “failure to accurately report … foreign travel and contacts."

Reps. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, and Eliot Engel, the lead Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, on Monday requested information related to Flynn’s travel before he joined the administration. In particular, the letter highlights a trip Flynn reportedly took to the Middle East “in the summer of 2015 to pursue a joint US-Russia business venture to develop nuclear facilities located in — and financed by — Saudi Arabia.”

The Democrats sent the letter to Flynn’s lawyer and two companies involved in the deal, one of which Flynn advised. The letter points to a Newsweek report from earlier this month, which said that Flynn made the trip to Cairo and Jerusalem on behalf of the firm he advised, X-Co Dynamics Inc./IronBridge Group, to “gauge attitudes” toward the Saudi-financed US–Russian project that would provide nuclear power in the Middle East.

The Democrats write that they “have no record” that Flynn disclosed the trip when he applied for a new security clearance to join the Trump administration in January 2016. The letter goes on to quote the security clearance application, which states that “knowingly falsifying or concealing a material fact” on the form could lead to fines and/or five years in prison.

The two Democrats are requesting, by the end of the month, documents and communication related to Flynn’s travel, and information on his — or the Flynn Intel Group’s — relationship with X-Co Dynamics Inc./IronBridge Group and ACU Strategic Partners. According to Newsweek, ACU Strategic Partners was “one of the lead companies involved” in the power project.

(Flynn and the Flynn Intel Group have been subpoenaed by the House Intelligence Committee in relation to its Russia investigation.)

The letter also raises questions about the details of another trip Flynn made in 2015, to Saudi Arabia. The Democrats note that Flynn did disclose that trip, but argue that he “omitted significant details.” The Democrats are requesting information about the trip — including who sponsored it, the identity of the “friend” Flynn reported that traveled with him, which conference he attended while in the country, and where he stayed.

The two Democrats wrote that they’re looking into “what influence General Flynn’s business interests with Saudi Arabia, Russia, or other countries may have had after he assumed his post in the White House.” They go on to note that Saudi Arabia was the first foreign country that Trump visited as president, and that the Trump administration recently “concluded” an arms deal with the country, questioning “what advice or input General Flynn may have offered relating to these matters, if any.”

“Most troubling of all, we have no record of General Flynn identifying on his security clearance renewal application— or during his interview with security clearance investigators— even a single foreign government official he had contact with in the seven years prior to submitting his security clearance application,” the pair wrote.

Flynn was fired only 24 days into the Trump presidency after he was accused of misleading Vice President Mike Pence about Flynn's communication with the Russian ambassador to the US during the transition.

This is not the first time House Democrats have requested additional documents on Flynn. Cummings and other Democrats on the Oversight Committee have previously released information showing that the Defense Department’s inspector general was investigating Flynn over payments Flynn received from Russia-linked entities, including RT, after he retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/lissandravilla ... ryDPa6qGLp




Senator reveals Michael Flynn may have already cut a deal with the FBI against Donald Trump
By Bill Palmer
Updated: 7:23 pm EDT Mon Jun 19, 2017 | 0
Home » Politics

With each passing day, more evidence surfaces of just how much legal trouble former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn might be in. For instance today’s latest news has Flynn having lied on his clearance forms about a trip to Saudi Arabia in which he secretly negotiated a nuclear deal with the Russians. But now one Senator says he thinks Flynn may have already cut a deal with the FBI awhile ago.



Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse appeared on-air on CNN today and volunteered the following about Michael Flynn: “All the signals are suggesting he is already cooperating with the FBI, and may have been for some time. First of all, they had him dead to rights on a felony false statement, on the statement they took from him at the White House on the Kislyak conversations. Second, [James] Comey reported that one of the things the FBI does with cooperators is get them to go back and clean up areas of non-compliance. Flynn – who will never be hired by a foreign government again – went back and cleaned up his foreign agent filings. Third, all of the reporting out of the Eastern District of Virginia on subpoenas is one hop away from Flynn.”



You can watch the video clip here of Senator Whitehouse revealing this information on CNN today:




The question becomes why the Democratic Senator would choose now to reveal this about Michael Flynn. To be clear, Whitehouse doesn’t know for sure that Flynn has flipped, or if he does, he’s acting like he doesn’t know it for sure. But if Flynn has cut a deal with the FBI, it would be against Donald Trump, as there is no other “bigger fish” than Flynn that the FBI would be interested in. Are the Democrats now trying to get Trump to melt down and further incriminate himself by pointing out that Flynn has probably already flipped on him?
http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/se ... rump/3529/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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seemslikeadream
 
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