Thread: Michael Flynn left Russian speaking fees off initial financial disclosures

Michael Flynn left Russian speaking fees off initial financial disclosures

By Theodore Schleifer, Julia Horowitz and Eugene Scott, CNN
Updated 11:50 PM ET, Sat April 1, 2017
Story highlights

Flynn included the speaking fees in disclosure forms he filed Friday
The speaking engagements include RT, Russia's state-funded television network
The disclosures show Jared Kushner and other high-profile advisers held as much as $1.6 billion in assets

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, did not include receiving thousands of dollars in speaking fees from three Russian companies in initial financial disclosures to the Office of Government Ethics, copies of the reports show.

Flynn's initial disclosures, which he submitted in mid-February, left out that he received money from Russia's state-funded television network, RT, for a speech in Moscow and from air cargo company Volga-Dnepr Airlines and cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Government Security Solutions Inc. for speaking engagements in the United States.

Flynn included the speaking fees in disclosure forms he filed Friday, according to the documents. Both sets of filings were made public as part of a White House release of financial disclosures of 180 White House officials.

Flynn attorney Robert Kelner said Flynn "had only just begun the financial disclosure filing process at the time he left the White House.

"He filed a draft form explicitly listing his speakers bureau contract, and he expected to engage in the usual process of consultations with the White House Counsel's Office and OGE (Office of Government Ethics) regarding what he was expected to disclose. That process was suspended, however, after he resigned. When the White House asked him this week to complete the process and to itemize the specific speaking events, he did so," Kelner said.

CNN has reported extensively on the RT speech, but the existence of the other two speaking engagements was disclosed last month by House Democrats.

Flynn resigned just days after the date of the initial financial disclosure after it became public that he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Russia's ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak.

The disclosure forms show Flynn made as much as $1.5 million last year. According to his financial snapshot, Flynn received $827,055 in salary and bonus from his firm, Flynn Intel Group, alone.

The retired lieutenant general listed a speaking engagement for "RT TV," the Russian TV network, when asked in the form to disclose "compensation exceeding $5,000 in a year," but did not specify the amount.

CNN previously reported that Flynn, according to a top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, was paid more than $45,000 by RT, formerly called Russia Today, for a speech in Moscow in December 2015. The US intelligence community has long assessed RT to be a propaganda tool of the Kremlin, writing in a January report on Russian interference in the US election that the organization had participated in disinformation campaigns aimed at the US. Flynn initially said he was paid by his speakers bureau for the talk.

The forms say Flynn received "compensation exceeding $5,000 in a year" from the Russian airline and cybersecurity company for speaking engagements in the United States. House Democrats last month also revealed the existence of those two speeches, saying Flynn received $11,250 from the airline and $11,250 from the cybersecurity firm.

The White House acknowledged in March that Trump's transition team was aware before Flynn was tapped to serve as national security adviser that he had engaged in work that would likely require him to register his consulting firm as a foreign agent.

Flynn's Justice Department filing last month raised questions when it revealed that Flynn's firm worked on behalf of a Turkish-owned company, Inovo BV, to improve US confidence in Turkey's business climate.

Flynn Intel Group received $530,000 in payments from the company and acknowledged in its registration as a foreign agent that the work may have benefited the Turkish government.

The White House has many advisers who earned millions of dollars last year, including President Donald Trump's daughter, Ivanka, whose assets combined with her husband's could exceed $700 million.

Ivanka Trump and her husband, senior Trump adviser Jared Kushner, collected about $195 million in income, according to a new financial snapshot of about 180 of the men and women serving in Donald Trump's White House.

Other Trump aides with lucrative histories include Trump's top economic adviser Gary Cohn, the former president of banking giant Goldman Sachs, who netted up to around $75 million in the previous year. White House chief strategist Steve Bannon made up to $2.5 million.

The newly released financial disclosure forms list the assets the Trump aides held when they walked in the doors of the White House in January -- before administration counsel advised them to resign from various postings, divest certain holdings or recuse themselves from future decisions. But the documents nevertheless offer a portrait into the lives of several key White House aides, especially those who came from Wall Street or have other ties to the financial industry.
Kushner, like Trump, a prominent real estate titan, held a position in 267 separate entities, ranging from the Trump transition team to dozens of property holdings in New York and New Jersey.

Ivanka Trump, who just this week formally said she would join the West Wing after serving as an informal adviser to her father, has yet to file her own disclosure forms. But the White House said earlier on Friday that her documents would look largely similar to her husband's.

Bannon's forms reveal numerous ties to various conservative organizations and sources funded by the family of influential Trump donors Bob and Rebekah Mercer, such as Breitbart News, which he led as executive chairman, and Cambridge Analytica, a data firm used by many Republican clients. Other income sources for him are Bannon Strategic Advisors, a consultancy firm valued at as high as $25 million, along with Affinity Media Holdings, which could have awarded him capital gains of as high as $1 million last year.

Bannon is also in the process of selling some of his stake in Cambridge Analytica and Glittering Steel, another Mercer-backed entity, according to the forms.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/31/politi...l-disclosures/

So where is the news here? He was paid $45,000 to give a speech in Russia and paid $11,250 each for 2 speeches he gave in the United States to two Russian company events held in the US which I'm sure the CIA/DNI/FBI/NSA covered fully and completely and leaked all possible innuendo or wrong-doing to the press at the time.

Do people forget that Flynn was asked to resign by Obama because he didn't agree with the intelligence assessments coming out of our Intel "community"?

Retirement from the military

On April 30, 2014, Flynn announced his retirement effective later that year, about a year earlier than he had been scheduled to leave his position. He was reportedly effectively forced out of the DIA after clashing with superiors over his allegedly chaotic management style and vision for the agency.[21][22][23][24] In a private e-mail that was leaked online, Colin Powell said that he had heard in the DIA (apparently from later DIA director Vincent R. Stewart) that Flynn got fired because he was "abusive with staff, didn't listen, worked against policy, bad management, etc."[23] According to The New York Times, Flynn exhibited a loose relationship with facts, leading his subordinates to refer to Flynn's repeated dubious assertions as "Flynn facts".[25]

According to what Flynn had told in one final interview as DIA director, he felt like a lone voice in thinking that the United States was less safe from the threat of Islamic terrorism in 2014 than it was prior to the 9/11 attacks; he went on to believe that he was pressed into retirement for questioning the Obama administration's public narrative that Al Qaeda was close to defeat.[26] Journalist Seymour Hersh wrote that "Flynn confirmed [to Hersh] that his agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings ... about the dire consequences of toppling [Syrian President] Assad." Flynn recounted that his agency was producing intelligence reports indicating that radical Islamists were the main force in the Syrian insurgency and "that Turkey was looking the other way when it came to the growth of the Islamic State inside Syria". According to Flynn, these reports "got enormous pushback from the Obama administration," who he felt "did not want to hear the truth". According to former DIA official W. Patrick Lang: "Flynn incurred the wrath of the White House by insisting on telling the truth about Syria ... they shoved him out. He wouldn't shut up."[27] In an interview with Al Jazeera, Flynn criticized the Obama administration for its delay in supporting the opposition in Syria, thereby allowing for the growth of Al Nusra and other extremist forces: "when you don't get in and help somebody, they're gonna find other means to achieve their goals" and that "we should have done more earlier on in this effort, you know, than we did."[28]

Flynn retired from the U.S. Army with 33 years of service on August 7, 2014.[29]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_T._Flynn

It sure looks like Flynn was right and the others were wrong. That's why the Intel community has gone after Flynn. They didn't want Flynn as National Security Advisor messing up their Fake Narratives for their black-ops policies that create havoc, war, destruction and refugees for their cut of the unaccounted for cash money they float around during these endeavors.

Flynn would have probably been a great National Security Advisor.

Flynn probably does have a story to tell about Intel. You'd think the Intel Committees would want to hear about it, but then, maybe they already know and don't want our "open society" to hear it on National Tee Vee.