Free Republic

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (CN) – The case against a business associate of former national security adviser Michael Flynn went to the jury Monday, which will determine whether he illegally lobbied at the direction of Turkey without telling the federal government. During closing arguments Monday, prosecutors said 66-year-old Bijan Rafiekian tried to carefully mask who was behind a project he and Flynn worked on that aimed to discredit Fethullah Gulen, a cleric Turkish President Recep Erdogan has blamed for a 2016 failed coup against him. “They tried to subvert the American process so Erdogan could get his hands on Gulen,” U.S. Attorney...

“You are asking my client to lie,” Michael Flynn’s new defense attorney Sidney Powell charged in a contentious June meeting with federal prosecutors. Flynn would continue to cooperate with prosecutors, Powell stressed, but he could not provide the testimony the government sought at the July trial of Flynn Intel Group (FIG) co-founder Bijan Rafiekian, “because it is not true.” Soon after, the government filed a motion in Rafiekian’s case, branding Flynn a co-conspirator and informing the court that Flynn would no longer testify against his former business partner. While federal prosecutors are reticent to explain how Flynn went from being...

WASHINGTON — Two former business associates of Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s first national security adviser, have been indicted as part of a federal investigation into Turkey’s secret 2016 lobbying campaign to pressure the United States to expel a rival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Charges against the two former associates, Bijan Kian and Ekim Alptekin, were unsealed on Monday in an Alexandria, Va., courtroom. The two men were charged with a conspiracy to violate federal lobbying rules, and Mr. Alptekin also was charged with making false statements to F.B.I. investigators. The indictment is further evidence of a broad...