Michael Flynn Jr has been caught in the cross hairs of the ever-expanding Russia probe, NBC is reporting.
Four former and current officials told the network that Flynn Jr is being looked at as party of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into collusion between President Trump’s campaign and the Russian government.
Flynn Jr served as chief of staff to his father, Mike Flynn Sr, at the Flynn Intel Group and traveled with him to Moscow in 2015. He continued to work with his father in the transition but was pushed out of Trump’s orbit for spreading fake news.
Michael Flynn Jr has been caught in the cross hairs of the ever-expanding Russia probe, NBC is reporting
The White House declined to comment on the widening probe on Wednesday afternoon.
‘I haven’t had a conversation with him about that, but I’d refer you to outside counsel,’ the president’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said.
The elder Mike Flynn worked at the White House briefly as the president’s national security adviser. He was dismissed weeks into the Trump presidency for lying about the nature of his conversations with a Russian diplomat.
Michael Flynn Sr said he never discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador to the United States in the transition. He changed his story after he was confronted by the Department of Justice.
President Trump said that he fired the retired lieutenant general for misleading the vice president – who’d claimed on national television after speaking to Flynn that sanctions didn’t come up.
Flynn Jr, 34, was forced out of Trump world when he helped to spread a false rumor about Hillary Clinton.
A D.C. pizza shop had been accused without any evidence of running a child sex ring on Clinton’s behalf. The conspiracy theory, known as Pizza Gate, led a deranged 28-year-old to ‘self investigate,’ bringing a rifle to the restaurant and firing it in a quest for answers.
Flynn Jr served as chief of staff to his father, Mike Flynn Sr, at the Flynn Intel Group and traveled with him to Moscow in 2015. He continued to work with his father in the transition but was pushed out of Trump’s orbit for spreading fake news
Flynn Jr is being looked at as party of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into collusion between President Trump’s campaign and the Russian government
No one was hurt during the incident. The man was arrested on assault charges.
After the incident, the younger Flynn tweeted: ‘Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it’ll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many ‘coincidences’ tied to it.’
Flynn had a transition team email address, but the head of the transition, Vice President Mike Pence, said after the Pizza Gate scandal that he ‘has no involvement in the transition whatsoever.’
NBC’s revelation means that both Mike Flynns are now under federal investigation. Both are being probed as part of the Russia investigation.
Flynn the younger traveled with his father to Moscow to attend a dinner celebrating Russia Today, a Kremlin-funded news outlet. The Russian government paid for Flynn Sr, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, to attend the engagement.
The elder Flynn is also under investigation for half a million dollars of business dealings with the Turkish government. He was not registered as a foreign lobbyist at the time, though he retroactively turned in paperwork asking for the status.
His son was heavily involved in the operations of Flynn Intel Group, having served as chief of staff.
House Intelligence Committee Democrats also say they are sending corporate information to Mueller that they say shows Mike Flynn Sr ‘violated federal law.’
Flynn failed to initially disclose foreign contacts related to a 2015 trip to the Middle East to pursue a deal between financed by the Saudi government and backed by a Russian entity, the lawmakers say, citing letters they got from companies who were part of the deal.
The deal was to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East by partnering with Russia’s nuclear power agency, and including meetings with Middle East officials to discuss it.
‘It appears that General Flynn violated federal law by omitting this trip and these foreign contacts from his security clearance renewal application in 2016 and concealing them from security clearance investigators who interviewed him as part of the background check process,’ wrote Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland Eliot Engel in the new letter.