Turkish lobbying client

Flynn’s Turkish lobbying client complained about Trump’s stance during campaign

By JOSH GERSTEIN

A foreign client paying retired Gen. Michael Flynn more than $500,000 to mount a campaign to advance Turkish government interests during the 2016 presidential campaign explicitly complained to a Flynn aide that then-candidate Donald Trump was not being supportive enough, newly released documents show.

A set of talking points prepared in October 2016 by Mike Boston, a former U.S. intelligence officer working with Flynn, indicate that “the client” backing the lobbying project complained that the GOP nominee had not gone to bat for Turkey. At the time, Flynn was also serving as a top foreign policy adviser to Trump.

“Republican Presidential candidate has not defended subject’s home country publicly. He should specifically ask questions about subject’s operations and funding,” Boston wrote under the heading “CLIENT FEEDBACK.”

The memo was obtained during special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and has now become part of the criminal case against former Flynn business partner Bijan Rafiekian, who was indicted last December for acting as an unregistered agent for Turkey in the U.S. and a related conspiracy charge.

Rafiekian, also known simply as Kian, has pleaded not guilty and is set to go on trial in July in federal court in Alexandria, Va.

The talking points prepared for Flynn less than a month before the 2016 presidential election track with other, handwritten notes Mueller obtained that indicate the critique was offered by Ekim Alptekin, the Turkish businessman who hired Flynn’s Flynn Intelligence Group to try to change attitudes in the U.S. about Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish dissident cleric who has lived for decades in Pennsylvania.

“Trump didn’t defend Turkey publically,” the notes say. “Potentially ask questions about $.”

Boston’s memo also makes another mention of the need to boost Turkey’s political clout with the incoming president.

“Start a strategic outreach campaign for the next President ... regardless of party,” he wrote, describing a discussion with Alptekin on Oct. 7, 2016.

Alptekin was also charged in the indictment filed against Rafiekian last December by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alexandria. The indictment charges that both men were on the call Boston summarized.

Flynn was not charged in the indictment, but when he pleaded guilty in 2017 to a single felony count of making false statements to the FBI, he also admitted to providing inaccurate information to the Justice Department about his work related to Turkey.

An email accompanying the talking points says they were intended to be shared with Flynn, but it’s not clear that they were.

Flynn is expected to be a key witness against Kian at his trial. Alptekin remains at large and is not expected to appear at the upcoming trial.

Defense lawyers for Kian have indicated plans to aggressively challenge Flynn’s credibility, pointing to what they say are numerous lies by the former Defense Intelligence Agency chief who served for 24 days as Trump’s national security adviser before being fired for allegedly lying to Vice President Mike Pence.

The newly disclosed documents could provide further fodder to attack Flynn as someone who was seeking to profit off his connection to the Trump campaign.

Attorneys for Flynn and for Kian did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

The memos indicate that part of the work done through the project included investigating alleged financial ties between Gulen’s schools and supporters and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Those points made it into an op-ed piece Flynn published on the day of the 2016 election. The article included a video of President Bill Clinton calling Gulen a “friend” and noting that a foundation backing pro-Gulen charter schools in the U.S. has also made donations to the Clinton Foundation.

Flynn’s team also boasted of getting the anti-Gulen message out in the media, including having a negative Los Angeles Times story about some of the charter schools cited in the “syllabus” section of an October 2016 edition of POLITICO’s Morning Education newsletter.

The documents were filed publicly on Thursday as part of a motion by prosecutors to get the judge in the case to allow them to present evidence of Kian’s discussions with attorneys about the lobbying efforts. Flynn Intelligence Group filed reports under the Lobbying Disclosure Act about the work, but made no mention that Turkish government officials had played any part in the project. In March 2017, FIG filed a belated Foreign Agents Registration Act disclosure providing more details about the engagement and saying it may have benefited Turkish interests.

The Turkish government blamed Gulen for a coup attempt in July 2016 and sought his extradition from the U.S., a request that was denied. Gulen has denied involvement in the unrest.