Michael Flynn met with Turkey at Donald Trump’s hotel. Guess who else attended? Devin Nunes.
By Bill Palmer | March 25, 2017
Earlier this week former Donald Trump campaign adviser James Woolsey publicly revealed that he had attended a meeting between Michael Flynn and the Turkish government which involved discussions so legally dubious that he reported it to the U.S. government. But guess who else tagged along for a meeting between Flynn and the Turkish government? House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, who this week inserted himself into the Trump-Russia scandal in bizarre fashion.
To be clear, these were two different meetings. Woolsey says the Flynn-Turkey meeting he attended, in which the kidnapping of Pennsylvania resident Fethullah Gülen was discussed, took place in the summer of 2016. But after Donald Trump was named the winner of the election, late in the transition team period, Flynn met with the Turkish government yet again. By this time James Woolsey had already resigned two weeks earlier. So instead, Flynn took another Trump transition team member with him, Devin Nunes.
It’s not publicly known what was discussed during the Flynn-Nunes-Turkey meeting on January 18th. But confirmation of the meeting has been hiding in plain sight all along. Earlier today respected political pundit T. R. Ramachandran posted a lengthy tweet storm (
link) which included a reference to a previously overlooked article from Turkish news publication Daily Sabah (
link). The article reports that “[Turkish] Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu met with designated U.S. National Security adviser Rt. Gen. Mike Flynn on Wednesday at Trump Hotel in Washington” and goes on to add that “House Intelligence Committee Congressman Devin Nunes, a Republican heavyweight, also attended the breakfast.”
James Woolsey now says that Michael Flynn offered to put him on his consulting payroll during their meeting with Turkey, an offer which Woolsey declined (source:
Wall Street Journal). Flynn has since admitted that he was on Turkey’s payroll to the tune of half a million dollars during the campaign. This newly unearthed revelation about Flynn and Nunes having also met with Turkey raises a number of new questions about the events we’ve all witnessed this week. What was the relationship between Flynn and Nunes? Did Flynn also offer money to Nunes, as he’d done with Woolsey? Did Nunes have his panicked meltdown this week because he saw his
own name in the classified eavesdropping intel that was fed to him?
And perhaps most keenly, why did James Woolsey go running to the media this week to reveal his six-months-ago meeting with Flynn and Turkey? Does he now suspect, as I do, that Flynn has
already cut a deal with the FBI against Donald Trump, and that these details are all going to come out soon anyway, and Woolsey wanted to make sure his side of the story was heard first? If so, what will Flynn reveal about the involvement of Devin Nunes with the Turkish government? And will it help us understand why Nunes is suddenly trying and failing to make Trump’s entire scandal go away? And if Flynn is blabbing, will anyone in Trump’s orbit be left standing when the smoke clears?
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