Special counsel Robert Mueller has amassed enough evidence to charge President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn and his son as part of his investigation into Russia interfering in the 2016 presidential election, NBC News reported on Sunday.
Trump fired Flynn in February after just 24 days on the job when news reports revealed he had been in contact with a top Russian ambassador during the campaign and kept the White House in the dark about those meetings.
Federal agents are talking to witnesses in the next few days about Flynn’s lobbying work and whether he laundered money or lied to investigators about his foreign contacts, NBC reported, citing sources.
Mueller’s team is also probing Flynn’s involvement in trying to remove a foe of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from the US in exchange for $2 million, the report said.
Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, and his longtime business associate Rick Gates were hit with 12-count indictments last Monday on charges of tax fraud and money laundering while they worked for a pro-Russian politician in Ukraine.
They were the first indictments from Mueller’s investigation.
It was also revealed last week that George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, pleaded guilty for lying to FBI agents about his contact with Russian officials during the election.
The court documents were unsealed last Monday after Manafort and Gates were indicted.
They show that Papadopoulos, 30, emailed a “Campaign Supervisor,” later identified as Sam Clovis, in March 2016 that he had a conversation with a London-based professor who knew the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.”
If Flynn is charged, he would be the first current or former administration staffer formally accused in the Russia investigation by Mueller.
The FBI is looking into claims made by former CIA Director James Woolsey that Flynn and Turkish officials discussed a plan to forcibly remove Fethullah Gulen from the United States.
Erdogan blames Gulen, a Muslim cleric living in Pennsylvania, from orchestrating a coup to overthrow him in July 2016.
They’re also investigating a 2016 request by Turkey to extradite Gulen to determine if it came through regular diplomatic channels at the State Department or Flynn.
Flynn, a retired Army general, founded a lobbying firm, the Flynn Intel Group, where his son, Michael, was involved in its daily operations, served as his father’s chief of staff and even met with prospective clients, NBC said.
The elder Flynn was paid $530,000 last year for work on the Turkish government’s behalf while he worked on the Trump presidential campaign as a top national security adviser.
He retroactively registered as a foreign lobbyist only after his ouster from the Trump administration.
Lawyers for the father and son refused to comment to NBC News.
But the younger Flynn posted on Twitter that he won’t be going to jail.
”The SJW are out in full this morning….the disappointment on your faces when I don’t go to jail will be worth all your harassment…,” he wrote on Twitter, referring to the social justice warriors.