Posted on 11/17/2016 7:40:59 PM PST by Mariner
Full Title: Michael Flynn, Trump's reported pick for national security advisor, sat in on intel briefings — while advising foreign clients
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who has reportedly been offered the role of national security adviser in Donald Trump’s White House, began receiving classified national security briefings last summer while he was also running a private consulting firm that offered “all-source intelligence support” to international clients.
Flynn’s relationship with his overseas clients is coming in for new scrutiny amid recent disclosures that two months ago, during the height of the presidential campaign, his consulting firm, the Flynn Intel Group, registered to lobby for a Dutch company owned by a wealthy Turkish businessman close to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.
Robert Kelley, the chief counsel to the Flynn Intel Group, read a statement from Flynn to Yahoo News on Thursday, promising that “if I return to government service, my relationship with my company will be severed, in accordance with the policy announced by President-elect Trump.”
But critics today dismissed Flynn’s pledge as “Too little, too late,” given that he began sitting in on U.S. intelligence briefings for Trump in August while working for foreign clients. Classified national security briefings are by tradition provided to the major presidential candidates and their top aides.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
Name one.
You don’t think it should have been severed at the time he began receiving briefings?
I think he’s a great pick. But the swamp water is hat high in DC.
The difficulty of such negative evidence is why the “appearance of impropriety” is a thing.
Nkw tell us about the clintkn pedophile ring
If we’re going to dismiss people based on the appearance of the potential for a conflict of interest, let’s start with Trump. And move down from there and eliminate anyone with expertise in the field they are being looked at serving in. Good luck finding someone to replace Yellen (Fed). Or Pritzker (Commerce). Or Vilsack (Ag). Or Moniz (Energy). Or Aston Carter (Def).
It’s a thing for mostly political reasons. Let’s not play that game anymore. How about we insist on factual evidence.
Oh, don’t get me wrong—I want Flynn as NSA.
But he should have gone through some sort of recusing himself formality before sitting in. Not a deal breaker, but a poor move that he didn’t.
Trump can’t go draining the swamp if the tub is overflowing in his own house. Or something like that.
How do you know he didn’t? If there’s one thing we are seeing from the Trump administration it’s that they keep their cards pretty close to their chest. Why would they publicize “Gen Flynn has signed a statement confirming he won’t violate Federal law and share classified information with outside interests.”
You’re still not getting it—that’s not good enough.
Again, I think it is water over the dam and not big enough to derail the right NSA appointment, in part because the NSA position doesn’t require Senate approval.
But that’s the kind of stuff Trump is trying to stop.
No. You aren’t getting it. You have absolutely zero idea what Flynn did or didn’t disclose to the Trump campaign. You seem to be stuck on trying to live up to the expectations of politics of the past. Where the first requirement for conservatives is to appease media expectations. There are very specific federal laws regarding what a guy like Flynn can do with knowledge gained as a result of his position within the government (to include being on the campaign staff of a Presidential candidate). If you believe Flynn did something that violates federal law, you should report it immediately to the AG. If you are just guessing...well then maybe you’ve got a future in the dying mainstream media.
No. You aren’t getting it. You have absolutely zero idea what Flynn did or didn’t disclose to the Trump campaign.
We do know with 100% certainty that Flynn did not disclose his financial and lobbying connections to islamist Turkey in his op-ed. Given that it’s fair to question his credibility. I realize you don’t want to hear it but those are the facts.
Prove me wrong here. Show me what Flynn's financial and lobbying connections are to Turkey's government. And don't say the connections are through Inovo BV. The Turkish man who owns that company has no direct ties at all to the Turkish government and is part of a secularist business council that has been openly hostile to Erdogan.
As long as he doesn’t use any information to influence any company decisions I don’t really care.
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