Returned from Moscow......

'I did meet with Putin': Dem report highlights Flynn exchange after 2015 trip

By KYLE CHENEY

Shortly after he returned from Moscow in 2015, former national security adviser Michael Flynn told a business associate that he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I had an interesting trip to Moscow (I did meet with Putin)," Flynn wrote in the Dec. 16, 2015 email, obtained by investigators on the House Oversight Committee.

Flynn famously was seated next to Putin at a gala hosted by Russia Today in Moscow that month. Both men have insisted, when asked, that they exchanged brief pleasantries but had no substantive discussions. And a lawyer for Flynn, who is awaiting sentencing for lying to the FBI during its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, said nothing about the newly unearthed email that undercuts this argument.

"Special counsel investigated all of this. There's nothing there," said his attorney, Sidney Powell, in an email. "It's just renewed efforts by the Democrats to smear a great man. Please also recall that he was briefed and debriefed by DIA before and after his trip."

The email was revealed as part of a broader investigation on the corporate and foreign entanglements with the White House's push to ship nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia. Flynn, at the time of his trip to Moscow, was an adviser on a corporate plan to bring dozens of nuclear reactors to the Middle East. The committee documented Flynn's plans to bring up the project to associates in Russia.

The Oversight Committee's new report describes rampant foreign influence seeping into decision-making inside the White House. An initial report on the matter in February described concerns among whistleblowers that corporate and foreign interests had circumvented traditional foreign policymaking in order to influence Trump's plans to share nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia. The committee says it's received 60,000 additional pages of information since then that add substantial heft to those concerns.

"Overall, the new documents obtained by the Committee reveal that, with regard to Saudi Arabia, the Trump Administration has virtually obliterated the lines normally separating government policymaking from corporate and foreign interests," the committee staff wrote, adding, "These new documents raise serious questions about whether the White House is willing to place the potential profits of the President’s friends above the national security of the American people and the universal objective of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.”

The report chronicled efforts by IP3, a consortium of private companies interested in building nuclear plants in Saudi Arabia, to use high-level connections in the Trump White House to circumvent foreign policy decision-makers and exert influence on Trump's decision-making. Top officials had access to a wide range of senior Trump administration officials, from cabinet secretaries to White House advisers, Democrats found.

The committee report focuses in particular on the access that longtime Trump associate Tom Barrack enjoyed to the president.

"A key component of Mr. Barrack’s plan, which he called the Middle East Marshall Plan, was to purchase Westinghouse Electric Company—the only U.S. manufacturer of large-scale nuclear reactors—using significant Saudi and Emirati capital, but with enough U.S. ownership to bypass scrutiny from [federal overseers]," Democrats found.

The documents obtained by Democrats also revealed that Barrack solicited feedback on a draft speech Trump was scheduled to give in May 2016 from a UAE businessman, who in turn passed the draft around to Emirati and Saudi officials. Barrack shared the feedback with then-Trump campaign official Paul Manafort.

Democrats also said the White House and federal agencies have largely refused to cooperate with the committee's investigation but that the panel was able to obtain some of the details it was seeking through "outside sources."

"Based on these communications, it appears that multiple White House officials used their personal email and text accounts rather than their official government accounts," the panel found. "These actions not only potentially violate White House policy and the Presidential Records Act, but they raise serious questions about whether records of the Trump Administration’s actions are being properly retained for use by investigators and others."

Last week, the committee authorized Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) to issue a subpoena for official communications sent by White House employees on private channels such as encrypted messaging services or through personal email and text messages.

Republicans rejected Democrats' assertions, issuing a rebuttal that called their claims inaccurate.

"The evidence shows that in the early days of the Trump Administration, IP3 attempted to excite new senior officials—including Michael Flynn and K.T. McFarland—about its proposal to place the United States as the leader in developing civilian nuclear technology in the Middle East," they wrote. "Importantly, IP3 did not successfully convince the Trump Administration to take any action. Since then, the nuclear energy technology progress relating to Saudi Arabia has been the legal process initiated during the Obama Administration and undertaken by the energy companies with the appropriate approvals by several federal agencies."