In and Out Like Flynn?

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Flynn was warned not to accept foreign payments in 2014
Associated Press Associated Press
CHAD DAY and STEPHEN BRAUN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Documents released by lawmakers show President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was warned when he retired from the military in 2014 not to take foreign money without "advance approval" by Pentagon authorities.

Also, the Defense Department inspector general's office confirms in a separate document that it is investigating whether Flynn failed to obtain prior approval.

The chairman and senior Democrat on the House Oversight Committee say they want the Army to rule on whether Flynn informed and asked permission for the payments from Russian and Turkish entities.

Flynn earned tens of thousands of dollars from Russia's state-sponsored RT television network and from a Turkish businessman linked to Turkey's government.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/flynn-was-warned-not-to-accept-foreign-payments-in-2014/ar-BBArrAj?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout

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Well, Flynn is fucked now. May have been involved in a plot to kidnap a cleric hated and wanted by Turkey's irrational gov't, and Mueller might be angling to charge his son if Flynn doesn't cooperate...



Mueller Probing Possible Deal Between Turks, Flynn During Presidential Transition

by Carol E. Lee and Julia Ainsley

WASHINGTON — Federal investigators are examining whether former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn met with senior Turkish officials just weeks before President Donald Trump's inauguration about a potential quid pro quo in which Flynn would be paid to carry out directives from Ankara secretly while in the White House, according to multiple people familiar with the investigation.

Investigators for Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russia's interference with the U.S. presidential election recently questioned witnesses about the alleged December 2016 meeting between Flynn and senior Turkish officials, two people knowledgeable with the interviews said. The questions were part of a line of inquiry regarding Flynn's lobbying efforts on behalf of Turkey.

Four people familiar with the investigation said Mueller is looking into whether Flynn discussed in the late December meeting orchestrating the return to Turkey of a chief rival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who lives in the U.S. Additionally, three people familiar with the probe said investigators are examining whether Flynn and other participants discussed a way to free a Turkish-Iranian gold trader, Reza Zarrab, who is jailed in the U.S. Zarrab is facing federal charges that he helped Iran skirt U.S. sanctions.

Mueller is specifically examining whether the deal, if successful, would have led to millions of dollars in secret payments to Flynn, according to three sources familiar with the investigation.

The meeting allegedly took place at the upscale 21 Club restaurant in New York, just blocks away from Trump Tower, where Flynn was serving on the presidential transition team. Flynn was offered upwards of $15 million, to be paid directly or indirectly, if he could complete the deal, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.

It is unclear how Flynn, as national security adviser, could have successfully carried out either alleged request. But any deal in which a government official would be bribed to secretly act on behalf of a foreign government could potentially constitute multiple federal crimes.

Investigators also are looking into what possible role Flynn's son, Michael G. Flynn, may have played in any such efforts. The younger Flynn worked closely with his father at his lobbying firm, Flynn Intel Group.

Related: Flynn's Son Is Subject of Federal Probe

The elder Flynn was fired in February after just 24 days as Trump's national security adviser when it became public that he misled Vice President Mike Pence and other Trump officials about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S.

NBC News reported Sunday that federal investigators looking into Russia's intervention in the 2016 election and possible collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign have gathered enough evidence to bring charges in the investigation into Flynn.

The grand jury is continuing to interview witnesses with knowledge of Flynn's business activities over the next week, two people familiar with the deliberations said.

The elder Flynn's lawyer, Robert Kelner, did not respond to requests for comment. The younger Flynn's lawyer, Barry Coburn, declined comment.

Erdoğan has repeatedly pressed U.S. officials to extradite the cleric, Fethullah Gülen, who lives in Pennsylvania. Turkey blames Gülen for the attempted coup in that country in July 2016. Erdoğan also has repeatedly raised Zarrab's case with U.S. officials.

Rudy Giuliani, who was a top Trump campaign surrogate alongside Flynn, is part of Zarrab's defense team. The New York Times reported that Giuliani met with Erdoğan in late February and discussed an agreement under which Zarrab would be freed in exchange for Turkey's help furthering U.S. interests in the region.
Image: Erdogan and Gulen
Embroidered images of United States-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen and Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan displayed in a shop in the Gaziantep market in Gaziantep, near the Turkish-Syrian border. Ozan Kose / AFP - Getty Images file

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Erdoğan said he had previously raised Zarrab's case with then-Vice President Joe Biden and suggested Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, was acting on behalf of supporters of Gülen, according to the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet. Trump fired Bharara this past March.

NBC News reported Sunday that federal investigators were looking into whether Flynn tried to push for the return of Gülen to Turkey once in the White House in exchange for millions of dollars, and that Trump administration officials asked the FBI to review the Gülen case anew. Officials said the FBI denied the request because Turkey had not provided any new evidence in the case, which was reviewed by the Obama administration.

Extradition requests are processed through the State Department and U.S. justice system and are not determined by the White House or other agencies.

The possibility of the multimillion-dollar deal involving Flynn and Turkey arose as investigators examined Flynn's past dealings with foreign governments.

Flynn was paid $530,000 last year during the 2016 campaign for work he did during the campaign that the Justice Department says benefited the Turkish government. Flynn did not register as a foreign agent at the time, as is required in the U.S. for anyone working for a foreign government. His lawyer later said Flynn didn't need to register because his client was a Turkish businessman not a government official, though he opted to do so retroactively.

According to Flynn's Justice Department filing, his firm, Flynn Intel Group, was hired to gather information about Gülen, and to produce a short film about its findings.

The contract ended the day after Trump won the election.

As a top foreign policy adviser on the Trump campaign at the time, and then as national security adviser, Flynn played a leading role in shaping Trump's policy decisions on Turkey.

Among Flynn's decisions as incoming national security adviser was telling the outgoing national security adviser, Susan Rice, not to move forward with a plan President Barack Obama approved to arm Syrian Kurds in the ISIS fight. Turkey opposed the plan.

Obama officials, who had notified Flynn of the plan in early January because it would continue on Trump's watch, said they were surprised. Flynn said he didn't trust Obama on the plan, which the Trump administration approved after he was fired as national security adviser.

The decision on arming the Kurds came several weeks after Flynn held that key meeting with Turkish officials where the alleged deal for a "grab fee" for Gülen was discussed.

NBCnews

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ABC are "terrorists" for reporting on treasonous Commie agent Flynn

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OOPS!!!

Looks like its in like Flynn as to: The Fix

Another commie lib on the federal payroll outed like a San Fran bath house sissy. Andie Mcabe just fucked everything he touched.

Andie outed Flynn and got caught actually lying to setup Comey’s lie to Congress. Andie has fucked every other investigation he touched. He was the special counsel to investigate FISA abuse, Hillary’s emails, Fast and Furious, Lois Lerner and IRS abuse, Uranium One, the HillBilly sludge fund aka The Clinton Foundation.

If you are the typical leftist that really tosses a turd in your St Pats green beer...

[Nickdfresh]

OOPS!!!

Looks like its in like Flynn as to: The Fix

Another commie lib on the federal payroll outed like a San Fran bath house sissy. Andie Mcabe just fucked everything he touched.

Andie outed Flynn and got caught actually lying to setup Comey’s lie to Congress. Andie has fucked every other investigation he touched. He was the special counsel to investigate FISA abuse, Hillary’s emails, Fast and Furious, Lois Lerner and IRS abuse, Uranium One, the HillBilly sludge fund aka The Clinton Foundation.

If you are the typical leftist that really tosses a turd in your St Pats green beer...

Sounds like you started drinking the hard stuff, and turning your liver green, again with your recycled bullshit...

[jacksmar]

Sounds like you started drinking the hard stuff, and turning your liver green, again with your recycled bullshit...

The only recycled bullshit happening around here starts your keyboard.

I was drinking with the IndyCar guys for a week prior to last week. Last week was Betty Ford week. In anticipation of St. Patrick's Day.

By the way, last St. Patrick's Day was pretty damn tragic. I got so blasted I couldn't remember where I parked and I had to take a bus. To many people around here that may not seem like that big of a deal but I'd never driven a bus....

[Nickdfresh]

The only recycled bullshit happening around here starts your keyboard.

Ha! Maybe, but at least it's my own recycled bullshit!

I was drinking with the IndyCar guys for a week prior to last week. Last week was Betty Ford week. In anticipation of St. Patrick's Day.

You amateur! Pussy!

By the way, last St. Patrick's Day was pretty damn tragic. I got so blasted I couldn't remember where I parked and I had to take a bus. To many people around here that may not seem like that big of a deal but I'd never driven a bus....

Okay, that was funny LOL

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Trump Kept Praising Michael Flynn, Only Now Robert Mueller Is Praising Him Too

HuffPost•December 5, 2018

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s repeated praise for his first national security adviser as a good man who was treated badly by prosecutors appears to have ended, now that special counsel Robert Mueller is praising him.

Mueller revealed Tuesday night that he is recommending that retired Army Gen. Michael Flynn serve no jail time because of his “substantial assistance” in various investigations regarding Trump and his dealings with Russia.

Just a day earlier, Trump lauded a former business and campaign adviser for refusing to cooperate with prosecutors: “Nice to know that some people still have ‘guts!’” he wrote on Twitter about Roger Stone.

Yet by late Wednesday, Trump still had not weighed in on revelations that Flynn met with federal prosecutors on 19 occasions to help their various probes — including two that are not known publicly and whose details were blacked out in Mueller’s court filings.

Trump’s outside lawyer handling his criminal investigations, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, told HuffPost on Wednesday that there is no reason for Trump to attack Flynn because it does not appear that Flynn has given Mueller anything incriminating on Trump. “The president is confident that the general is telling the truth,” Giuliani said. “There’s no indication of any connection to the president. They’ve produced nothing on that.”

Giuliani said that if Flynn was actually an important witness against Trump, Mueller would not be letting sentencing go forward for fear of losing his leverage. Giuliani said he did not know what investigations were covered by all the redacted material in Tuesday’s filings but said he doubted they had anything to do with Trump. “He may have other things he’s cooperating about,” Giuliani said.

Trump’s silence thus far comes in stark contrast to his reaction last week to a guilty plea by his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen for lying to Congress about Trump’s efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

“He’s a weak person and not a very smart person,” Trump said the following morning. “What he’s trying to do is end ― and it’s very simple. He’s got himself a big prison sentence, and he’s trying to get a much lesser prison sentence by making up a story.”

Trump appointed Flynn to run his National Security Council despite warnings from outgoing President Barack Obama about Flynn, whom Obama fired from a top Pentagon post. Trump wound up firing Flynn after less than a month on the job. The dismissal came 18 days after then–acting Attorney General Sally Yates informed the White House that Flynn had lied to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials during the transition.

Trump claimed he had to fire Flynn because he lied to Vice President Mike Pence and because of negative press coverage. “I think he has been treated very, very unfairly by the media — as I call it, the fake media — in many cases. And I think it’s really a sad thing that he was treated so badly,” Trump said during a Feb. 15, 2017, news conference.

That praise continued for a year and a half.

“This man has served for many years. He’s a general. In my opinion, he’s a very good person,” Trump said in a May 11, 2017 interview with NBC News.

Even the day after Flynn pleaded guilty a year ago to lying to investigators, Trump continued to blame prosecutors. “It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!” the president wrote in a Dec. 2, 2017, tweet.

And early this summer, Trump told reporters that perhaps Flynn was coerced into pleading guilty and had not lied to investigators at all. “I feel badly for General Flynn. He’s lost his house, he’s lost his life. And some people say he lied and some people say he didn’t lie. I mean, really, it turned out maybe he didn’t lie,” Trump said.

Flynn is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 18. Prosecutors are set to file recommendations this week for sentences for Cohen from an earlier guilty plea and for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort from his September guilty pleas on fraud and obstruction of justice charges.

The FBI has been investigating Trump and his campaign’s contacts with Russia since before his election. He openly praised the country’s authoritarian ruler throughout his campaign, and President Vladimir Putin’s spy agencies worked to elect Trump by stealing emails from Democrats and releasing them through an ally, WikiLeaks. Trump repeatedly praised WikiLeaks and pointed to the stolen emails as proof that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was corrupt.

Trump fired FBI Director James Comey not long after taking office and told first Russian diplomats visiting the Oval Office and then NBC News that he had done so because of the Russia investigation. Mueller, who served as FBI director under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, was appointed special counsel to continue the probe after Comey’s firing.

Comey has said his firing took place after Trump asked him to go easy on Flynn and Comey did not agree to do so.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.