Michael Flynn Concealed Foreign Lobbying Work From Justice Department
WASHINGTON ― Former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn was paid more than $500,000 last fall as a foreign lobbyist to help the Turkish government discredit the exiled cleric Fethullah Gülen, according to lobbying disclosure forms that Flynn filed Tuesday with the Department of Justice.
The new documents reveal that Flynn was collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to run an information campaign against Gülen while he was campaigning for Donald Trump by attacking his Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton as a corrupt stooge of foreign governments. Following Trump’s surprise victory in November, the president-elect rewarded Flynn’s loyalty by naming the retired lieutenant general as his national security adviser.
On Thursday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump was unaware of Flynn’s work on behalf of a foreign government when he decided to name Flynn his national security adviser. Spicer declined to say whether the president would have still hired Flynn if he had known.
Ultimately it would be Flynn’s ties to Russia, and not Turkey, that cost him his job in the White House after less than a month. Still unknown in February, when Flynn resigned from the White House, was the nature of his work to benefit the government of Turkey’s autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Michael Flynn Concealed Foreign Lobbying Work From Justice Department | The Huffington Post