Posted on 03/09/2017 1:44:42 PM PST by Mount Athos
Its probably for the best that President Trump forced retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to resign as national security adviser when he did.
Thats because Flynn would likely have found himself in another scandal in addition to the one involving his phone calls with Russias ambassador over a $530,000 lobbying contract he had with a company linked to the Turkish government.
Flynn disclosed a slew of details about that lobbying contract this week in documents filed for his firm, Flynn Intel Group, with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
The Daily Caller has confirmed, in a follow-up to details in those documents, that Flynn met in New York City on Sept. 19 with Turkeys ministers of foreign affairs and energy, Mevlut Cavusoglu and Berat Albayrak, respectively. (RELATED: Trumps National Security Adviser Is Lobbying For Turkish Government)
The meeting, which occurred while the Turkish officials were in town for a United Nations General Assembly meeting, was organized by Ekim Alptekin, the sole proprietor of Inovo BV, the Flynn Intel client.
The Daily Caller first reported in November, just after the election, that Flynn Intel Group had a lobbying contract with Inovo BV, which is nothing more than a shell company registered in the Netherlands.
The relationship was puzzling because of Alptekins position as head of a business group with connections to the Turkish government called the Turkish-U.S. Business Council. An op-ed that Flynn wrote for The Hill on Nov. 8, Election Day, was also peculiar given the timing of the piece and Flynns rhetoric.
Flynn staked out positions in the op-ed he had never before expressed publicly. He expressed support for the Turkish government, an Islamist regime, and was heavily critical of Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric in the U.S. whose extradition is sought by Turkeys president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Berat Albayrak, one of the officials who met with Flynn Intel Group, is Erdogans son-in-law.
Alptekin confirmed to TheDC that Flynn was at the meeting. Earlier in the day, Flynn joined Trump and then-Sen. Jeff Sessions in a publicized meeting with Egypts president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. (RELATED: Trump Adviser Recently Met With Relative Of Turkeys President)
Flynns new filings undercut some claims that Alptekin made about the lobbying relationship in November. For his part, Flynn remained silent about his lobbying work.
In interviews with TheDC in November, Alptekin claimed he was unaware of the op-ed before it was published. He also claimed that he would have argued against publishing the article for the generals sake.
He must have really wanted to do that, because anyone that had his best interest in mind would advise him not to, Alptekin said in a phone interview at the time.
And while Alptekin is openly critical of Gulen, he said that the relationship with Flynn Intel had nothing to do with the 78-year-old cleric, who lives in a compound in the Pocono Mountains. Instead, Alptekin claimed that he sought Flynns help with a natural gas company based in the Middle East.
Nowhere in the FARA filings is work for the company mentioned.
Undercutting Alptekins denials is a letter Flynn Intels lawyers at the firm Covington & Burling sent to the Justice Department on Tuesday.
In it, the now-disbanded Flynn Intel states that Inovo BV could be construed as having links to the Turkish government. The documents also state that the contract with Inovo centered around the Gulen issue. (RELATED: Trump Adviser Recently Met With Member Of Turkish Presidents Family)
According to the FARA filings, Alptekin invited Flynn to the meeting with the Turkish government officials for the purpose of understanding better the political climate in Turkey at the time, as background for the project.
Attending this meeting on September 19, 2016, in New York, were the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Energy, to the best of Flynn Intel Groups current understanding, reads the disclosure.
It is perhaps that link between Alptekin and the ministers, Cavusoglu and Albayrak, that compelled Flynn Intel to file the FARA disclosures. The decision to file the FARA documents also comes as Flynn grapples with fallout from conversations he had in December with Russias ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.
President Trump asked for Flynns resignation after he misled Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of those conversations with the Russian diplomat.
Though the Flynn Intel-Inovo contract was ostensibly focused on improving business relations between the U.S. and Turkey, the contract also called for Flynns firm to conduct research focused on Mr. Fethullah Gulen and charter schools in the United States that are associated with, or allegedly associated with, Mr. Gulen.
The Turkish government has hired U.S. lobbying firms to assail Gulen over a network of charter schools operated by supporters of the cleric. Erdogan desperately wants the U.S. government to extradite Gulen, so much so that his regime has labeled the cleric a terrorist.
Alptekin did not tell TheDC whether the Gulen issue was discussed in the meeting between Flynn and the Turkish government officials. But it was broached in a meeting held between a Flynn Intel Group partner and a member of the House Homeland Security Committee in October.
According to the FARA filings, Bijan Rafiekian a Flynn Intel partner who owned 33 percent of the firm, met twice in October with Miles Taylor, the national security adviser on the House Committee on Homeland Security.
One meeting was in Taylors office, the other at Flynn Intel Groups offices in Virginia.
Over the course of the discussions, Mr. Rafiekian raised the firms representation of Inovo and issues related to the research conducted for Inovo concerning Mr. Gulen and Turkey, the filing states.
Rafiekian is identified in Flynn Intel Group literature as Bijan Kian, a businessman and former director of the Export-Import Bank.
According to a source familiar with the topics discussed in the meetings, the first meeting was held under the auspices of a defense technology developed by Kians company, GreenZone Systems.
The second meeting involved discussions about GreenZone but then pivoted to a discussion about Gulen.
The source says a group of men were brought into the room by Kian to discuss Gulen and what they said was his shady network of charter schools.
The source said that committee staff were put off by the approach. Flynn was not present during either meeting, according to the source.
Flynn Intels work for Inovo also involved a massive public relations effort. In addition to the op-ed, the firm planned to produce a documentary about Gulen based on its research. Independent contractors were hired, and former CNN news anchor Rudi Bakhtiar was paid $1,200 for an interview.
Flynn Intel forked out $40,000 to SGR, LLC., a public relations firm, to help disseminate to documentary, which never came to fruition.
SGR also placed Flynns op-ed with The Hill, the disclosures reveal. And while Alptekin vehemently denied knowing about the op-ed before it was published, Flynn Intels filings say otherwise.
Nonetheless, the op-ed addresses subject matter related to the research that Flynn Intel Group conducted for Inovo, and a draft of the op-ed was shared with Inovo in advance of publication, the documents read.
While the filings say that Inovo BV did not have a hand in writing the document, Flynn Intel submitted it to Inovo/Alptekin before publication for feedback.
No changes, other than technical edits, were made to the op-ed based on feedback from Inovo, the filings state.
In previous interviews with Alptekin, he made no mention of having seen the op-ed prior to publication. He also claimed in one interview that his payment to Flynn Intel was in the tens of thousands of dollars.
But he told TheDC on Wednesday that he did see the op-ed prior to its release but that his warnings against publishing it were not taken into consideration.
Despite those inconsistent statements, Alptekin maintains that he has been consistent.
Everything I told you before is 100 percent accurate, he told TheDC.
He also confirmed that he paid much more than the tens of thousands he previously claimed to have shelled out to Flynn. He said that the initial contract called for a $600,000 payment for three months of work. Alptekin negotiated that figure down to 75 percent of the initial amount, he said.
I have always been truthful and transparent, but I agree with my legal counsel that this FARA filing is flawed and will consider whether I have legal ground to object against it, he told TheDC.
As for the meeting with Flynn and the Turkish ministers, Alptekin said he merely introduced them, knowing that all were in New York City.
He said that they met Flynn in his capacity as the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and not as a [Flynn Intel Group] officer to discuss Inovos work.
Gen. Flynn did not direct the Ministers to anyone working for the US government, he said, adding that Flynns plans to write the op-ed were not discussed.
A month after that meeting, Flynn attended an event with Halil Mutlu, a cousin of Erdogans and the former director of the Turken Foundation, a U.S.-based charity that focuses on Turkish issues. The Gulen issue was discussed at that meeting.
The new FARA filings also explain the origins of a mysterious infographic created that Flynn Intel requested of SGR, the public relations firm, to smear Gulen.
In an op-ed published on Jan. 13, also at The Hill, former Indiana Rep. Denny Rehberg included a graphic entitled Gulenopoloy. A spoof off of the board game, Monopoly, the graphic highlights many of the allegations against Gulens charter school network. It refers to him as the The Mula Mullah.
SGR declined to comment on the matter.
In its own filing, SGR says that it did not disseminate the graphic to any outfit but Flynns. And in its filing, Flynn Intel says it only disseminated the graphic to Inovo BV.
That would suggest that Inovo BV passed along the graphic that ended up in Rehbergs article. Alptekin acknowledged that he was aware of the graphic before it was published but that he did not share it with Mercury. He also said that the graphic was not discussed in Flynns meeting with the government officials in September.
Efforts to reach Bakhtiar, former members of Flynn Intel, and Rehberg were not successful.
where Trump has nominated an apparent supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood (which is supported and harbored by Turkey)
Shep about had a cow over this story today. He says Flynn registered today as a Foreign Agent. I thought this would be trouble for Flynn when it first came out months ago. It should have been brought up when he was vetted. Its also one of the reasons he was fired.
Giuliani seems to have had a lot of these same type of lobbying for foreign governments problems and managed to avoid dragging down Trump.
So what exactly law or rule did Flynn break? Long article and I still cannot understand what he did wrong.
Yup.
Just more bullshit accusations.
Notice the silence concerning :
Democrat super-lobbyist Tony Podesta was paid $170,000 over a six-month period last year to represent Sberbank, Russias largest bank, seeking to end one of the Obama administrations economic sanctions against that country, The Daily Caller News Foundations Investigative Group has learned.
Podesta, founder and chairman of the Podesta Group, is listed as a key lobbyist on behalf of Sberbank, according to Senate lobbying disclosure forms. His firm received more than $24 million in fees in 2016, much of it coming from foreign governments, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
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