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Tag: foreign payments
Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn

Gen. Flynn Repeatedly Took Foreign Payments Despite Official Warnings

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is among the many allies of Donald Trump who faced criminal charges and was granted a presidential pardon while the former president was still in the White House. Flynn's foreign interactions were a major source of controversy during the Trump years, and according to Guardian reporter Murray Waas, Flynn was warned about accepting foreign money even before Trump was elected president in 2016.

The office of the Defense Department's inspector general, Waas reports, "has uncovered evidence that Michael Flynn accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from foreign interests and governments, despite repeated warnings by the DoD and the Justice Department that his conduct might be illegal."

In 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. But Trump defended Flynn vigorously, claiming that his former national security adviser was a victim of political persecution from "the deep state."

"While pleading guilty in 2017," Waas explains, "Flynn also admitted to committing another crime: related to his acceptance ofhundreds of thousands of dollars from the government of Turkey without registering with the Justice Department as an agent of a foreign government, whichwas required by law. Now, according to people familiar with the confidential findings of the recently completed IG investigation, The Guardian can reveal Flynn was warned years earlier that his acceptance of foreign money and his not registering as a foreign agent likely would be illegal."

Waas adds, "Moreover, Flynn's conduct occurred while he was a private citizen, long before Trump became president. Taken together, this appears to constitute powerful new evidence discrediting Trump and Flynn's claims of political persecution by those opposed to Trump's agenda."

Trump launched his 2016 presidential campaign in 2015, and according to Waas' reporting, Flynn was first warned about accepting foreign money in 2014. Flynn resigned as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in August 2014.

"The new disclosures portray how a former military officer, despite his training to obey rules and orders, was instead driven by personal profit to break the law," Waas reports. "The Defense Intelligence Agency first warned Flynn, in an 8 October, 2014 letter, that his acceptance of foreign money might be a potential violation of federal law, as well as the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which similarly prohibits such foreign payments to government officials." In that letter, the DIA warned Flynn, "The Emoluments Clause.… as interpreted in Comptroller General opinions, and by the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, prohibits receipt of consulting fees, gifts, travel expenses, honoraria, or salary by all retired military personnel" from foreign interests.

Flynn received another warning on November 30, 2016 — this time, from the Department of Justice. At issue was his work for a lobbyist for the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an authoritarian who has gone to great lengths to undermine the system of checks and balances in what was once one of the more democratic countries in the Middle East. Flynn, according to Waas, was warned that he might be violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938.

But despite that "warning not to take foreign money," Waas notes, Flynn "still accepted $45,000 from RT — a Kremlin-controlled media organization described by…. intelligence agencies as the 'Kremlin's principal international propaganda outlet' — $22,000 from other Russian interests, and $530,000 to serve as a lobbyist for Turkey. And despite the warning from the Justice Department, Flynn did not comply with the FARA statute."

Clark Cunningham, a professor at the Georgia State University College of Law and expert on the Constitution's Emoluments Clause, told The Guardian, "There is little doubt that money received by Flynn to lobby on behalf of the Turkish government or to promote Russian interests would be considered emoluments."

Trump Campaign Manager Parscale Paid Thousands By Foreign Officials

Trump Campaign Manager Parscale Paid Thousands By Foreign Officials

Brad Parscale rakes in thousands from abroad at the same time he’s running Trump’s reelection campaign. And the campaign is fine with it.

Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, recently took thousands of dollars in payments from foreign officials. Parscale made his money while laying the groundwork for Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign.

The Washington Post reports that Parscale was in Romania in March, “delivering a paid speech to a room full of Romanian politicians and policy elites.”

While Parscale would not reveal the precise amount of his payment, the company that represents him lists his speaking fee as $15,000 to $25,000.

Parscale admitted to the Post that he has given several of these speeches for foreign payments over the last few years, with the full knowledge and permission of the campaign.

“I’ve never heard of anything like this before,” Republican campaign strategist John Weaver told the Post. “There are too many opportunities where there could be potential conflicts between a presidential campaign and the policies that the candidate could espouse and potential income. It is a conflict-of-interest zone that you just never enter into.”

Weaver was a key figure in campaigns for Republican presidential candidates like George H.W. Bush, John McCain, Jon Huntsman, and John Kasich.

“It appears the Trump political organization has learned nothing from 2016 about the dangers of senior campaign personnel’s entanglement with foreign money,” Trevor Potter of the Campaign Legal Center told the paper.

Trump has refused to cut off his own financial entanglement with foreign entities, even while occupying the Oval Office, despite widespread criticism that such ongoing relationships are highly unethical and perhaps even unconstitutional. The willingness to ignore such ethical concerns apparently extends to Trump’s campaign as well.

“The appearances are terrible,” former George W. Bush ethics lawyer Richard Painter explained. “You would certainly think that a campaign manager would not take money from foreign nationals in this political environment.”

The Trump campaign’s entanglement with foreign governments, particularly Russian operatives, has been a major issue over the last few years and the primary subject of the nearly two-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.

The Trump campaign is shrugging off such concerns. Parscale claimed questions about his foreign payments are just “another effort by the biased fake news media to systematically target another person in President Trump’s orbit.”

Parscale, as campaign manager, is one of the highest-ranking people in Trump’s orbit. And while he says that he is not involved with Trump’s policies, he is setting the tone and direction of Trump’s campaign. He recently said he will be spending up to half a billion dollars of campaign funds on digital advertising, much of which has thus far been racist and nativist in nature, designed to rile up and turn out the bigots within Trump’s base of voters.

Parscale was in charge of many of the attempts by the Trump campaign in 2016 to suppress black voters through deceptive ads.

The Trump reelection campaign is also reportedly working with former operatives from Cambridge Analytica, the data harvesting firm that is implicated in several scandals surrounding the 2016 election and the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom.

But it’s rare for Trump or any members of his team, whether in the White House or on the campaign, to try to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. So for Parscale, the only issue with profiting from deals with foreign officials is that anyone is asking questions about it in the first place.

Published with permission of The American Independent.

IMAGE: Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale.