Mueller Has Enough Evidence to Bring Charges in Flynn Investigation
November 6, 2017 by admin
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WASHINGTON — Federal investigators have gathered enough evidence to bring charges in their investigation of President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser and his son as part of the probe into Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation.
Michael T. Flynn, who was fired after just 24 days on the job, was one of the first Trump associates to come under scrutiny in the federal probe now led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into possible collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign.
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Mueller is applying renewed pressure on Flynn following his indictment of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, three sources familiar with the investigation told NBC News.
The investigators are speaking to multiple witnesses in coming days to gain more information surrounding Flynn’s lobbying work, including whether he laundered money or lied to federal agents about his overseas contacts, according to three sources familiar with the investigation.
Mueller’s team is also examining whether Flynn attempted to orchestrate the removal of a chief rival of Turkish President Recep Erdogan from the U.S. to Turkey in exchange for millions of dollars, two officials said.
A spokesperson for the special counsel had no comment.
Related: Mike Flynn’s Son Is Subject of Federal Russia Investigation
Flynn’s son, Michael G. Flynn, who worked closely with his father, accompanied him during the campaign and briefly worked on the presidential transition, could be indicted separately or at the same time as his father, according to three sources familiar with the investigation.
If the elder Flynn is willing to cooperate with investigators in order to help his son, two of the sources said, it could also change his own fate, potentially limiting any legal consequences.
The pressure on Flynn is the latest signal that Mueller is moving at a rapid and steady pace in his investigation. Last week, investigators unsealed indictments of Manafort and Manafort’s business partner Rick Gates. They pleaded not guilty.
Investigators also revealed Monday that former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty to lying to federal officials and had been cooperating with Mueller’s investigation.
If the senior Flynn is charged, he would be the first current or former Trump administration official formally accused of criminal wrongdoing by the Mueller team.
So far, the probe has only ensnared campaign officials, and the White House has argued that the connection to the president is minimal. An indictment of the president’s former national security adviser and his son would scramble that dynamic.
Related: Flynn, Manafort Are Key Figures in Mueller’s Russia Probe
A former senior law enforcement official said that in the weeks after Trump’s inauguration the FBI was asked to conduct a new review of Turkey’s 2016 request to extradite Fethullah Gulen, an elderly Muslim cleric living in the U.S. whom President Erdogan blames for orchestrating a coup to overthrow him.
The FBI pushed back on the request because Turkey had supplied no additional information that could incriminate Gulen following a review of the case during the Obama administration, the official said. It is unclear whether the request to investigate Gulen came from Flynn or through the typical diplomatic channels at the State Department.
The FBI is also investigating former CIA Director Jim Woolsey’s account to The Wall Street Journal — which he confirmed to MSNBC — that Flynn and Turkish officials discussed a potential plan to forcibly remove Gulen from the country in September 2016, according to sources close to Woolsey, who say the former director has spoken to FBI agents working for Mueller about the matter.
Flynn was fired in February following public revelations that he had lied to Vice President Pence about his dealings with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak.
Flynn’s lawyer, Robert Kelner, declined to comment.
The younger Flynn’s lawyer, Barry Coburn, declined to comment.
Father and Son
Both Flynns have for months been subjects of the Mueller investigation.
The elder Flynn, an Army lieutenant general, was pushed out as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 and retired from the military. He then founded a lobbying firm, Flynn Intel Group, where his son worked closely with him. The younger Flynn was involved in the daily operations of his father’s firm and functioned as his chief of staff. He often attended meetings with his father and would communicate with prospective clients.
The elder Flynn was paid $530,000 last year for work the Justice Department says benefited the government of Turkey. The elder Flynn did not register as a foreign lobbyist at the time, but did so retroactively this year. The issue has been part of Mueller’s probe.
His lawyer later said Flynn didn’t need to register because his client was a Turkish businessman and not a government official, but had opted to do so retroactively.
According to Flynn’s Justice Department filing, the Flynn Intel Group was hired to gather information about Gulen, and to produce a short film about its findings.
During the contract, which ended the day after Trump won the election, Flynn had at least one meeting, in September 2016, with Turkish officials, according to officials. Woolsey says that it included a discussion about kidnapping Gulen and flying him to Turkey.
Flynn also was paid some $35,000 in 2015 by Russian state television for a speech in Moscow at a gala where he sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The younger Flynn accompanied him on that trip. The trip raised concerns among federal officials.
NBC News has reported that others under scrutiny by Mueller include Carter Page, a Trump campaign ally; Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser; and the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr. They have denied any collusion with Russia.
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President Trump has denied any collusion with Russia during the campaign and has called the investigation a politically motivated witch hunt.
Kelner has declined to comment when asked if Flynn denies colluding with the Russian election interference effort.
Turkey has long demanded the U.S. extradite Gulen, saying he is considered a terrorist. Erdogan forcefully renewed that request after the attempted coup against him in July 2016. U.S. officials have said the Justice Department has not found sufficient evidence linking Gulen to the coup attempt despite the boxes of documents Turkey has submitted to the U.S. that Ankara says back up its claim.
Extradition requests are processed through the U.S. justice system and are not determined by the White House or other agencies.
Any quid-pro-quo deal such as the alleged agreement between Flynn and Turkey would be illegal, officials said.
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Paradise Papers: Tax haven secrets of ultra-rich exposed
November 6, 2017 by admin
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EPA
The leaks show about £10m of the Queen’s private money was invested offshore
A huge new leak of financial documents has revealed how the powerful and ultra-wealthy, including the Queen’s private estate, secretly invest vast amounts of cash in offshore tax havens.
Donald Trump’s commerce secretary is shown to have a stake in a firm dealing with Russians sanctioned by the US.
The leak, dubbed the Paradise Papers, contains 13.4m documents, mostly from one leading firm in offshore finance.
BBC Panorama is part of nearly 100 media groups investigating the papers.
As with last year’s Panama Papers leak, the documents were obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which called in the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) to oversee the investigation. The Guardian is among the nearly 100 media partners involved in investigating the documents.
Follow the latest reaction here
Sunday’s revelations form only a small part of a week of disclosures that will expose the tax and financial affairs of some of the hundreds of people and companies named in the data, some with strong UK connections.
Many of the stories focus on how politicians, multinationals, celebrities and high-net-worth individuals use complex structures of trusts, foundations and shell companies to protect their cash from tax officials or hide their dealings behind a veil of secrecy.
The vast majority of the transactions involve no legal wrongdoing.
Other key stories being released on Sunday are:
- A key aide of Canada’s PM has been linked to offshore schemes that may have cost the nation millions of dollars in taxes, threatening to embarrass Justin Trudeau, who has campaigned to shut tax havens. Read the full story here
- Lord Ashcroft, a former Conservative party deputy chairman and a significant donor, may have ignored rules around how his offshore investments were managed. Read the full story here Other papers suggest he retained his non-dom status while in the House of Lords, despite reports he had become a permanent tax resident in the UK. Read the full story here
- How questions were raised about the funding of a major shareholding in Everton FC. Read the full story here
- The papers suggest oligarch Alisher Usmanov may influence due diligence checks on his own firms. Read the full story here
The other media partners may be covering different stories affecting their regions.
How is the Queen involved?
The Paradise Papers show that about £10m ($13m) of the Queen’s private money was invested offshore.
It was put into funds in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda by the Duchy of Lancaster, which provides the Queen with an income and handles investments for her £500m private estate.
There is nothing illegal in the investments and no suggestion that the Queen is avoiding tax, but questions may be asked about whether the monarch should be investing offshore.
There were small investments in the rent-to-buy retailer BrightHouse, which has been accused of exploiting the poor, and the Threshers chain of off-licences, which later went bust owing £17.5m in tax and costing almost 6,000 people their jobs.
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Alamy
The Queen’s private estate had a very small investment in the retailer BrightHouse
The Duchy said it was not involved in decisions made by funds and there is no suggestion the Queen had any knowledge of the specific investments made on her behalf.
The Duchy has in the past said it gives “ongoing consideration regarding any of its acts or omissions that could adversely impact the reputation” of the Queen, who it says takes “a keen interest” in the estate. Read the full story here
Embarrassment for Ross and Trump?
Wilbur Ross helped stave off bankruptcy for Donald Trump in the 1990s and was later appointed commerce secretary in Mr Trump’s administration.
The documents reveal Mr Ross has retained an interest in a shipping company which earns millions of dollars a year transporting oil and gas for a Russian energy firm whose shareholders include Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law and two men subject to US sanctions.
It will again raise questions about the Russian connections of Donald Trump’s team. His presidency has been dogged by allegations that Russians colluded to try to influence the outcome of last year’s US election. He has called the allegations “fake news”. Read the full story here
Where does the leak come from?
Most of the data comes from a company called Appleby, a Bermuda-based legal services provider at the top end of the offshore industry, helping clients set up in overseas jurisdictions with low or zero tax rates.
Its documents, and others mainly from corporate registries in Caribbean jurisdictions, were obtained by Süddeutsche Zeitung. It has not revealed the source.
The media partners say the investigation is in the public interest because data leaks from the world of offshore have repeatedly exposed wrongdoing.
In response to the leaks, Appleby said it was “satisfied that there is no evidence of any wrongdoing, either on the part of ourselves or our clients”, adding: “We do not tolerate illegal behaviour.” Read the Appleby story here
What exactly is offshore finance?
Essentially it’s about a place outside of your own nation’s regulations to which companies or individuals can reroute money, assets or profits to take advantage of lower taxes.
These jurisdictions are known as tax havens to the layman, or the more stately offshore financial centres (OFCs) to the industry. They are generally stable, secretive and reliable, often small islands but not exclusively so, and can vary on how rigorously they carry out checks on wrongdoing.
The UK is a big player here, not simply because so many of its overseas territories and Crown dependencies are OFCs, but many of the lawyers, accountants and bankers working in the offshore industry are in the City of London.
It’s also about the mega-rich. Brooke Harrington, author of Capital Without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent, says offshore finance is not for the 1% but the .001%. Assets of around $500,000 (£380,000) would just not meet the offshore fees the schemes would need, she says.
What is the effect on us and should we care?
Well, it is a lot of cash. The Boston Consulting Group says $10tn is held offshore. That’s about the equivalent of the gross domestic products of the UK, Japan and France – combined. It may also be a conservative estimate.
Critics of offshore say it is mainly about secrecy – which opens the door to wrongdoing – and inequality. They also say the action of governments to curb it has often been slow and ineffective.
Brooke Harrington says if the rich are avoiding tax, the poor pick up the bill: “There’s a minimal amount the governments need to function and they recoup what they lose from the rich and from corporations by taking it out of our hides.”
Meg Hillier, UK Labour MP and chair of the Public Accounts Committee, told Panorama: “We need to see what’s going offshore; if offshore was not secret then some of this stuff just couldn’t happen… we need transparency and we need sunlight shone on this.”
Your guide to a history of financial leaks
What is the defence of offshore?
The offshore financial centres say that if they did not exist, there would be no constraint on taxes governments might levy. They say they do not sit on hoards of cash, but act as agents that help pump money around the globe.
Bob Richards, who was Bermuda’s finance minister when Panorama interviewed him for its programme, said it was not up to him to collect other nations’ taxes and that they should sort themselves out.
Both he and Howard Quayle, the chief minister for the Isle of Man, who was also interviewed for Panorama and whose Crown dependency plays a big part in the leaks, denied their jurisdictions could even be considered tax havens as they were well regulated and fully conformed to international financial reporting rules.
Appleby itself has in the past said OFCs “protect people victimised by crime, corruption, or persecution by shielding them from venal governments”.
The papers are a huge batch of leaked documents mostly from offshore law firm Appleby, along with corporate registries in 19 tax jurisdictions, which reveal the financial dealings of politicians, celebrities, corporate giants and business leaders.
The 13.4 million records were passed to German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung and then shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Panorama has led research for the BBC as part of a global investigation involving nearly 100 other media organisations, including the Guardian, in 67 countries. The BBC does not know the identity of the source.
Paradise Papers: Full coverage; follow reaction on Twitter using in the BBC News app, follow the tag “Paradise Papers”
Watch Panorama on the BBC iPlayer (UK viewers only)