Flynn left Mideast trip undisclosed, legislators say
WASHINGTON — Michael Flynn traveled to the Middle East in 2015 as part of a private proposal to build nuclear power plants across the region, former business associates told lawmakers, a trip that the former Trump administration national security adviser never disclosed during his security clearance process.
In a letter released Wednesday, two top House Democrats revealed that companies involved in the proposal provided details of Flynn’s trip in June 2015 that suggest he also failed to report contacts with Israeli and Egyptian government officials.
The lawmakers — Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland and Rep. Eliot Engel of New York — are now asking the companies and Flynn to provide the names and nationalities of any officials he met with during the trip abroad.
The information released by the lawmakers is the latest evidence that Flynn didn’t fully account for his foreign contacts and business entanglements even though he was liable for possible federal criminal penalties for lying or omitting such information.
Security clearance questionnaires specifically ask applicants to report any meetings abroad or contacts with foreign government officials that occurred in the previous seven years. As a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Flynn maintained a security clearance. His last renewal was in early 2016.
Flynn has been dogged by questions about his lack of disclosure of a Turkish lobbying operation and of foreign payments he accepted after leaving the military in 2014. Flynn also was forced to resign his post in President Donald Trump’s administration in February after White House officials determined that he had misled them about the nature of diplomatic conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.
Special counsel Robert Mueller is scrutinizing Flynn’s foreign interactions as part of his probe into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and any possible coordination with Trump associates. Earlier this year, that investigation incorporated an ongoing federal probe into Flynn’s lobbying for a Turkish businessman during the final months of the presidential campaign.
Flynn’s attorney, Robert Kelner, declined to comment on the letter. Flynn’s legal team has previously said that he’d like to cooperate with Congress but only intended to respond to subpoenas that compel him to do so.
Flynn has been turning over documents, mostly related to two of his business es, to the Senate and House intelligence committees in response to subpoenas, but he has declined to speak with congressional committees without a guarantee of immunity.
Flynn’s son, Michael Flynn Jr., also has declined to talk to the Senate intelligence committee, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because negotiations were private.
As members of the minority party, Cummings, the ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Engel, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs committee, do not have subpoena power.
Cummings and Engel first raised concerns in June about Flynn’s 2015 Mideast trip after Newsweek reported that Flynn had worked with companies angling to persuade foreign governments and companies to join in a plan to build a cluster of 40 nuclear plants in the Mideast for civilian power needs.
The lawmakers also seized on a comment Flynn made in congressional testimony in the summer of 2015, in which he said that he had just returned from the Middle East.
In their letter, Cummings and Engel write that “it appears that General Flynn violated federal law by omitting this trip and these foreign contacts from his security clearance renewal application in 2016 and concealing them from security clearance investigators who interviewed him as part of the background check process.”
Because of the potential for a criminal violation, the two lawmakers say they are providing Mueller with the responses from the companies.
According to the letter and documents released by Cummings and Engel, Flynn’s Mideast trip was backed by ACU Strategic Partners, a U.S. firm that sent him to persuade officials to support a plan involving companies from the U.S., Russia, France, the Netherlands, Britain, Ukraine, Israel and several Persian Gulf nations.
Thomas Cochran, an adviser to ACU Strategic Partners, told the lawmakers that Flynn’s Egypt visit was to persuade the government to hold off on accepting a rival offer from Russia to finance and construct a smaller system of four reactors in Egypt and two in Jordan — and to carefully consider ACU’s “alternative.”
Flynn also traveled to Israel where, Cochran said in his response, he sought to assure officials that the project would be in Israel’s interest.
The proposal has never gotten beyond the planning stage.
In a separate response to the congressmen, ACU Managing Director Alex Copson confirmed that ACU paid Flynn’s travel expenses and wrote him a $25,000 check for “loss of income and business opportunities resulting from this trip.” But Copson told the lawmakers that bank records show Flynn never cashed the check.
Flynn had previously not disclosed his compensation on his government financial disclosure filed earlier this year, but in August, he filed an amended disclosure that listed he had received more than $5,000 from ACU. Flynn also listed that he was a consultant to another company, IronBridge Group, which was connected to the project.
An attorney for retired Rear Adm. Michael Hewitt, the chairman of IronBridge, confirmed to lawmakers that Flynn took the trip but did not provide details of his foreign contacts.
The lawmakers also seized on a comment Flynn made in congressional testimony in the summer of 2015, in which he said that he had just returned from the Middle East.