Flynn associates charged with illegal lobbying
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Two business associates of Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, were charged Monday with illegally lobbying for Turkey as part of a campaign to pressure the United States to expel a Turkish cleric.
Bijan Kian and Ekim Alptekin are accused in an indictment of conspiring to “covertly and unlawfully” influence U.S. public opinion and politicians, all while concealing that the Turkish government was directing their work. The campaign came during the final months of the 2016 presidential campaign while Flynn was a top surrogate for Trump’s campaign.
The case sheds further light on how Flynn and those around him worked to benefit a foreign country in the months before he became one of America’s top national security officials. The goal of the work was to get the United States to expel Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen from the country.
Gulen, who holds a U.S. green card and lives in Pennsylvania, is a rival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has accused the cleric of directing a failed coup and who wanted the U.S. to extradite him back to Turkey. Gulen has denied any involvement in the coup.
Though Flynn and his company feature prominently in the latest indictment, he is not charged with any new crimes. A retired three-star U.S. Army general, Flynn is to be sentenced Tuesday in a separate case brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying about his Russian contacts.
As part of his cooperation in that probe, he has provided prosecutors with voluminous records from his business, Flynn Intel Group, which carried out the lobbying work. Flynn and Kian were co-founders of the firm.
On Monday, Kian, a former Trump transition official whose full name is Bijan Rafiekian, made a brief appearance in federal court in Alexandria, Va. He has an arraignment scheduled for Tuesday. His lawyer, Robert Trout, declined to comment.
Alptekin, a dual Turkish-Dutch citizen living in Istanbul whose full name is Kamil Ekim Alpetekin, remains at large. He has previously denied any wrongdoing and said he directed the lobbying on his own.