Mueller asks White House for documents about Flynn
Team probes link to Turkey during last campaign months.
WASHINGTON — Investigators working for the special counsel, Robert Mueller, recently asked the White House for documents related to former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and have questioned witnesses about whether he was secretly paid by the Turkish government during the final months of the presidential campaign, according to people close to the investigation.
Although not a formal subpoena, the document request is the first known instance of Mueller’s team asking the White House to hand over records.
In interviews with potential witnesses in recent weeks, prosecutors and FBI agents have spent hours poring over the details of Flynn’s business dealings with a Turkish-American businessman who worked last year with Flynn and his consulting business, the Flynn Intel Group.
The company was paid $530,000 to run a campaign to discredit an opponent of the Turkish government who has been accused of orchestrating last year’s failed coup in the country.
Investigators want to know if the Turkish government was behind those payments — and if the Flynn Intel Group made kickbacks to the businessman, Ekim Alptekin, for helping conceal the source of the money.
The line of questioning shows that Mueller’s inquiry has expanded into a fullfledged examination of Flynn’s financial dealings, beyond the relatively narrow question of whether he failed to register as a foreign agent or lied about his conversations and business arrangements with Russian officials.
Flynn lasted only 24 days as national security adviser, but his legal troubles now lie at the center of a political storm that has engulfed the Trump administration. For months, prosecutors have used multiple grand juries to issue subpoenas for documents related to Flynn.
President Donald Trump has publicly said Mueller should confine his investigation to the narrow issue of Russia’s attempts to disrupt last year’s presidential campaign, not conduct an expansive inquiry into the finances of Trump or his associates.
Flynn declined to comment. Ty Cobb, special counsel to Trump, said, “We’ve said before we’re collaborating with the special counsel on an ongoing basis.”
“It’s full cooperation mode as far as we are concerned,” he said.
After Flynn’s dismissal, Trump tried to get James Comey, the FBI director, to drop the investigation, Comey said.
Mueller is investigating whether Trump committed obstruction of justice in pressing for an end to the Flynn inquiry. The president fired Comey on May 9.
Investigators are also examining the flow of money into and out of the Flynn Intel Group — a consulting firm Flynn founded after being forced out as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency — according to several potential witnesses who have been interviewed by prosecutors and FBI agents.
Taking money from Turkey or any foreign government is not illegal. But failing to register as a foreign agent is a felony, and trying to hide the source of the money by routing it through a private company or some other entity, and then paying kickbacks to the middleman, could lead to numerous criminal charges, including fraud.
Flynn has now had to file three versions of his financial-disclosure forms. His first version did not disclose payments from Russia-linked companies. He added those payments to an amended version of the forms he submitted in March.
This week he filed a new version, adding that he briefly had a contract with SCL Group, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining firm that worked with the Trump campaign.
The new forms list at least $1.8 million in income. He earlier reported $1.4 million.