President Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, explored building nuclear power plants across the Middle East in 2015 — yet another detail that was left out during his security clearance screening, The Associated Press reports. Flynn was fired after just weeks on the job when it was revealed he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his meeting with the Russian ambassador. Flynn was also discovered to have accepted money from foreign governments, including Turkey, without following the proper legal process.
Flynn's former business associates disclosed the Mideast trip to lawmakers. Flynn reportedly had contact with Israeli and Egyptian government officials as part of the 2015 trip, and House Democrats are now pushing to learn if he met with representatives from any other nations. His travel was reportedly on the behalf of ACU Strategic Partners, but the proposal to build reactors seemingly never went beyond planning stages.
In his security clearance questionnaire, Flynn would have been specifically required to list any meetings abroad or with foreign government officials over the past seven years, The Associated Press notes. Flynn had his security clearance renewed in 2016, being the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and apparently listened to sensitive intelligence briefings with Trump as late as January 2017.
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Regarding Flynn's Middle East trip, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) wrote: "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." Read the full report at Bloomberg, and more about why Trump is so intensely obsessed with protecting Flynn here at The Week.
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