I’m sure you have also forgotten to mention casual brunches with the King of Jordan on your SF86, so let’s not jump to conclusions. But boom. Boom is coming.
Buzzfeed broke the news Friday afternoon that Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, Mike Flynn and Jordan’s King Abdullah II had a secret meeting on January 5th, 2017, during the time Flynn was trying to broker his U.S./Russia nuclear deal.
“Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner, and Steve Bannon met with King Abdullah II while Flynn was reportedly pressing for a controversial, for-profit deal to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East,” Jason Leopold, Chris McDaniel, and Anthony Cormier reported in Buzzfeed.
The secret meeting took place in the days leading up to Trump’s inauguration. “The meeting — details of which have never been reported — is the latest in a series of secret, high-stakes contacts between Trump advisers and foreign governments that have raised concerns about how, in particular, Flynn and senior adviser Jared Kushner handled their personal business interests as they entered key positions of power. And the nuclear project raised additional security concerns about expanding nuclear technology in a tinderbox region of the world. One expert compared it to providing “a nuclear weapons starter kit.â€
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The nuke deal with Russia that retired U.S. General and fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was pushing is “like giving a country a nuclear weapons starter kit,” Buzzfeed reports Alexandra Bell, senior policy director at the nonprofit Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, telling them. So, kind of a big deal.
Three individuals close to each of the Trump advisers denied that the nuke deal came up during the meeting. However, and this is the key part in addition to the news that this secret meeting happened, “But the source familiar with the law enforcement document said participants talked about Israeli-Palestinian relations, intelligence sharing between America and Jordan on Syria, the Islamic State — and the nuclear proposal.”
A source familiar with the law enforcement document.
The Wall Street Journal confirmed on the 13th that Flynn did actually promote the nuke deal from inside the Trump White House even though Flynn’s disclosure forms claimed that he stopped working on this deal in December of 2016.
Flynn was pushing the nuke deal that could be a “nuclear weapons starter kit” on January 5th, in a secret meeting.
Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti pointed out that false disclosures or material omissions in disclosures would be the most straight forward charges for Mueller to prove:
False disclosures or material omissions in disclosures would be the most straightforward charges for Mueller to prove. Likely a focus. https://t.co/QkVXdGk4GR
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) September 15, 2017
And in case you still think this is much ado about nothing, Ben Wittes, the Editor in Chief at Lawfare, weighed in:
Boom!https://t.co/Wucgakj7g0 pic.twitter.com/7fqF9tcJTC
— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) September 15, 2017
Boom indeed.
The House Democrats’ probe into Flynn’s failure to disclose is bearing fruit.
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