#Flynn was covert agent for Turkey

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+ Tr*mp’s move marks a full embrace of the retired general he had ousted from the White House after only 22 days on the job — and a final salvo against the Russia investigation that shadowed the first half of his term in office. +  The pardon he granted Flynn, an early backer of his 2016 White House bid, underlines how Tr*mp has used his clemency power to benefit allies and well-connected offenders. White House officials said Tr*mp has been considering other pardons before leaving office, including possibly other former aides who were convicted of crimes as part of the special counsel probe of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.

[libertariantaoist]

A few libertarians and other principled opponents of the warfare state assured us we likely would sleep easier with Donald Trump, rather than any neoconservative or humanitarian interventionist, in the White House. How’s that working out? Not so well. I’m hoarding melatonin and buying stock in Lunesta.

In its opening days, the Trump administration has rattled the saber at Iran, China, and North Korea. This is hardly comforting, considering that pronouncements from Trump and his closest advisers could have come from the foreign-policy establishment he supposedly upended. If this is disruption, I’d hate to see what an embrace of The Consensus would look like. The possible appointment of Elliott Abrams, the quintessential neoconservative — architect of and apologist for mass murder in the Middle East — as deputy secretary of state is just one more sign that Peaceniks for Trump have been gulled.

What about Trump’s position on Russia? they will ask. What about it? Not taking Bill O’Reilly’s bait (transcript here) doesn’t count as being pro-peace, especially when Trump had his UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, warn that sanctions against Russia won’t be removed until Vladimir Putin relinquishes Crimea. Haley’s declaration was a reversal of Trump’s earlier, better (though flawed) position that sanctions would be tied to a mutual reduction of both countries’ nuclear arsenals. Now we’re back to the Obama position. One need not defend Russia’s move on Crimea (even if most inhabitants favored it) to see the context: the U.S.-engineered coup (backed by neo-Nazi elements) against Ukraine’s elected president in favor of a neocon favorite — not to mention the larger context, the decades-long expansion of NATO to the Russian border and incorporation of former Russian allies into the U.S-led sphere. Provocation begets counter-moves, which in the Ukrainian case were hardly surprising, considering the historical and strategic importance of Crimea to Russia. The Soviet Union is not being reconstructed.

As we’ll see, whatever good Trump has in mind regarding relations with Russia will be undercut by other attitudes he harbors, particularly his bellicosity toward Iran, Russia’s ally. When it comes time to choose between detente with Russia or confrontation with Iran, I have no confidence Trump will make the right choice.

It is fascinating, I will concede, to see the elite’s and its news media’s hysteria over Trump’s reference to America’s lack of innocence when discussing Putin’s alleged homicidal conduct. Presidents are not supposed to refer to such things (even if they are true). Unfortunately, Trump does not appear disturbed by the U.S. government’s lethal record and did not vow to change things. Moreover, “[t]he president wasn’t just suggesting that government is a morally gray business that always involves some violence and wrongdoing,” Jacob T. Levy writes. “In his comments, he seemed to give up on the idea that there is such a thing as wrongdoing at all.”

Trump’s amoralism aside, are we all really supposed to believe — or is it pretend — that government’s hands were not blood-stained from day one in America, notwithstanding sugared words? Is that what the civil religion requires — that we ignore the crimes against American Indians, Africans, Filipinos, Japanese, Germans, Koreans, Vietnamese, Latin Americans, Afghans, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Yemenis, Libyans, Somalis, and Syrians? And those are just direct victims of official U.S. atrocities. The list of atrocities merely enabled by American presidents and their henchmen is much longer. (For two examples see the cases of Bangladesh and East Timor.) The list of regime changes (Iran, 1953, most relevantly) and assassinations is also long. (I have not ventured into the government’s many domestic crimes, such as biological, chemical, and psychological experimentation on unwitting Americans.) A self-styled exceptional nation, a global empire, and the world’s arms merchant is bound to get its hands soiled.

That even hinting at this bloody history is forbidden tells us a lot about “secular” America. Trump’s blasphemy was especially egregious because he was discussing Russia, the anti-America. (For a more reasonable, realistic take on Russia, see the British conservative writer Peter Hitchens’s “The Cold War Is Over.”) The news media and the high priests of America’s civil religion could not condemn Trump’s insult to the Holy National Church — the American State — in harsh enough terms. (For details on America’s civil religion, see chapter 2 of William Cavanaugh’s The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict.) Trump may want to strip the citizenship from and imprison those who burn the sacred flag, but that’s not enough for the defenders of the American faith, who contradictorily accuse him of endorsing both moral equivalence and moral relativism. (He can’t be doing both.) He must show he believes that America (i.e., the American State) is innocent — that all violence committed in its name was done so in a holy cause, unlike that of other nations (excluding Israel, of course, the other exceptional nation).

Not that Trump — who tries hard to look like a serious man who knows what he’s talking about — shows any sign of understanding this history (remember, he wants to make America great again) or of having any inclination to reverse course. When O’Reilly asked Trump to defend his statement that “We’ve got a lot of killers [too],” — O’Reilly had accused Putin of being a “killer” and therefore unworthy of Trump’s respect — all Trump could do was feebly name the “mistake” of the 2003 Iraq invasion (which he favored in the run-up). O’Reilly replied that mistakes are not comparable. Trump said: “A lot of mistakes, but a lot of people were killed. A lot of killers around, believe me.” Again, Trump didn’t condemn those killers. But also, Iraq was no mistake. It was a war of aggression and a violation of the Nuremberg principles. (Trump once said Americans were lied into Iraq, but then wimpily backed down when confronted by an offended veteran in South Carolina.)

Trump’s reply to O’Reilly was so bad it destroyed what might have been a valuable teaching moment. Instead, Trump looked like an idiot. He certainly did not help his objective to “get along with Russia.”

What he should have said is that the dramatic indignation at Putin’s crimes (whatever they are; evidence of his complicity is scant, although the number of killings is ominous and his regime is hardly liberty-friendly) is highly selective, that the U.S. government has a record of embracing brutal rulers (Egypt’s al-Sisi and Turkey’s Erdogan some to mind), and that Russia has a nuclear arsenal to match America’s, so the two countries ought to cooperate in getting rid of those monstrous weapons. When O’Reilly said, “I don’t know of any [American] government leaders that are killers,” Trump might have pointed out that, to take but one recent example, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Barack Obama drew up a list of people to be killed by drones every week. Trump might have also said that the botched raid in Yemen put him in the class of “government leaders that are killers.”

As noted, after Russia, it’s all downhill with Trump. He and his closest advisers are obsessed with Iran, which represents no threat to Americans and with whom, by the way, the U.S. government is tacitly allied in Iraq against the Islamic State. Iran has no nuclear-weapons program — never had one — and not much of a military, yet it has been continually threatened and subjected to covert warfare by the United States and Israel, the Middle East’s sole nuclear power. Saudi Arabia also has missiles that could hit Iran. So Iran’s claim that the mid-range missiles it’s testing are for deterrence is credible, and they violate no UN resolution. But Trump used the missile test as an occasion for saber-rattling: once again an American president has said that for Iran “all options are on the table.” If Trump is supposed to be such a disrupter of establishment foreign policy, why doesn’t he see that his demonization of Iran is absurdly dangerous and contrary to the interests of most Americans? Is it in part because the Israeli government needs to demonize the Islamic Republic in order to divert attention from its continued usurpation of Palestinian-owned land? Does it have something to do with keeping close relations with Saudi Arabia, the cradle of “radical Islamic terrorism”?

Now Trump is carrying his anti-Iran animus over to pathetic Yemen, scene of a two-year-old U.S.-enabled Saudi onslaught and siege, which is inflicting mass starvation among other unspeakable consequences. There is no excuse for the United States’ helping Saudi Arabia and its gulf allies to pulverize the poorest country in the Middle East. While on the one hand, the United States strikes at al-Qaeda there (the recent botched raid killed many noncombatants and cost one American Navy SEAL’s life), on the other it helps al-Qaeda by enabling the Saudi war on the Houthis, who are misleadingly portrayed as Iran’s agents. (The Houthis have in fact acted contrary to Iran’s wishes.) Trump national-security adviser Michael Flynn recently described a Houthi attack on a Saudi warship as an “Iranian action,” and press secretary Sean Spicer went further by charging, until corrected, that the attack was on an American ship. What advantage does Trump see in a confrontation and perhaps war with Iran?

Isn’t the incoherent and seemingly pointless intervention in Yemen just the sort of irrational policy Trump criticized in his campaign, however inarticulately? (Maybe it’s not really pointless: see Gareth Porter’s “Trump’s Hard Line on Iran Will Give Saudis Free Hand in Yemen.”) Enabling this destruction is yet another stain on America, and it supports Trump’s statement about the country’s lack of innocence — yet he’s the one now carrying it on.

We must also wonder if he has overlooked the fact that Russia, with which he says he wants to cooperate, is Iran’s ally and benefactor and that Iran is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s ally. Laying off Assad and concentrating on the Islamic State, which Trump says he wants to do, will benefit Iran, just as the intervention in Iraq does. Then what? Has no adviser pointed out the collision course Trump is on?

Contrary to assurances from Trump’s pro-peace cheerleaders, his narcissism, petulance, and conceit provide strong grounds to fear his conduct of foreign policy. He has vowed to make America so powerful (at what price?) that “no one will mess with us.” But rather than being reassuring, that kind of talk should make us worry about what he will do when he believes that some head of state is testing him. Russia and Iran are not the sorts of countries that take well to being assigned their place in the world by any American president.

I’m not one for quoting Madison, but among his keenest insights was that war is the gravest of all threats to liberty because it contains the germs of all the others. Or as Randolph Bourne put it, “War is the health of the State.” Therefore stripping the U.S. government’s capacity to operate a global empire and to wage war anywhere everywhere should be our priority. Trump’s taunting of the foreign-policy establishment is so far unmatched by deeds; on the contrary, his conduct to date undermines the better parts of his message. Trump provides no reason to expect anything else.

[harrythegreekblr]

Judge, prosecutors, CIA fixed second Flynn Intel case

Prosecutors never intended on winning their case against against former Flynn Intel CEO and CIA operative:

Bijan Kian Rafiekian.

Neither did the trial judge, Anthony Trenga of the Federal District Court of Eastern Virginia, Alexandria.

They will prove both prosecutor and judge were in on the fix on Thursday.

That is when the deadline expires for the prosecution to refile a motion for a new trial.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-men-charged-conspiracy-and-acting-agents-foreign-government

In fact, the Judge tipped his hand that the fix was in the day the case was filed.

He signed an order approving destruction of the evidence.

The court order is imaged here:

Bijan Kian Rafiekian (center) with Mike Flynn (right). Person to the left is unidentified.

Primary source on the Prosecutor fixing the case:

https://brassballs.blog/home/doj-prosecutor-gillis-bijan-kiani-kian-rafiekian-flynn-intel-group-mike-flynn-fara-judge-trenga-alexandria-virginia

Prosecutor James Gillis (above)

Primary source on the Judge fixing the case:

https://brassballs.blog/home/will-judge-trenga-rule-to-cover-up-flynn-alleged-corruption-by-dismissing-rafiekian-case-on-june-28th-14-fourteen-turkey

Judge Anthony Trenga (above)

Kian was convicted by a jury for conspiring to create a fake narrative to cover up his role as a Turkish spy with:

Mike Flynn

https://brassballs.blog/home/michael-mike-flynn-wore-wire-in-cia-trump-coup-attempt-robert-mueller-special-prosecutor-fbi-director-covert-law-enforcement-activities-plea-deal-november-30th-30-2016-sidney-powell-september-10th-10-2019

Mike Flynn (above) with his son Mike Jr., left of center behind his father. Mike Jr. was Chief-of-Staff of Flynn Intel Group (FIG).

Ekim Alptekin

https://brassballs.blog/home/fbi-cia-turkish-spy-diplomat-flynn-bijan-kian-kiani-rafiekian-erdogan-nato-flynn-intel-george-bush-dog-barney-ekim-alptekin-eclipse-aviation-aerospace-ea-putin-sierra-nevada-cheney-vladimir-russia-kristen-verderame-ratio-oil-israel-papdopoulos-fara

Turkish Government Official, Ekim Alptekin (above)

Kristen Verderame

https://brassballs.blog/home/michael-mike-flynn-cia-bijan-kian-rafiekian-kristen-verderame-to-launder-money-from-netherlands-inovo-group-bv-kiancousa-hayden-cia-mcchrystal

https://brassballs.blog/home/mike-michael-flynn-intel-group-new-bijan-rafiekian-kiani-kian-trial-conspirator-co-fig-brian-mccauley-james-woolsey-bob-robert-kelley-jr-cia-fbi-turkey-kristen-verderame-ekim-alptekin-billion-dollar-saudi-arabia-nuclear-deal-uranium-two-ip3-ratio-oil

The jury, however found the defendant guilty.

The courtroom was packed with dozens of attorneys representing the defense and prosecution.

Most of the witnesses admitted they worked for the CIA.

The others tried to hide it.

The jury saw threw it.

The media was non-existent.

It proved to the jury that the fix was in.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-rafiekian-idUSKCN1UI2L2

The first Flynn criminal case concludes Dec. 18th.

Flynn plead guilty twice for lying to the FBI.

https://brassballs.blog/home/judge-to-determine-friday-whether-flynns-five-year-sentence-should-be-reduced

It is before Judge Emmett Sullivan, of the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia.

Flynn anticipates five years in prison.

His trial attorneys quit.

Flynn is left with attorneys with no criminal trial experience.

They are preparing his appeal.

https://brassballs.blog/home/attorney-sidney-powell-flim-flam-flynn-for-michael-mike-general-bijan-kian-kiani-rafiekian-28-500-pacer-official-record-federal-judiciary-judge-emmett-sullivan-district-of-columbia

The third case is a civil case also in D.C. District Court.

It is over the release of public documents.

Flynn’s attorneys have filed motion upon motion to block public disclosure of any documents with their client’s name on it.

https://brassballs.blog/home/third-flynn-case-yields-14-fourteen-documents-out-of-three-disc-drives-bijan-r-kian-kiani-rafiekian-sullivan-trenga-washington-post-wapo-sidney-powell-covington-burling-cov-dot-com-covcom

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“Court-appointed adviser in Michael Flynn case says Justice Dept. yielded to corrupt ‘pressure campaign’ led by Trump”

(an excerpt of story) by Spencer S. Hsu of The Washington Post. Published online 9-11-2020.

+ A retired federal judge accused the Justice Department on Friday (9-11-2020) of yielding to a pressure campaign led by Pres-ident Tr*mp in its bid to dismiss the prosecution of former national security adviser Michael Flynn for lying to federal investigators. + In a 30-page court filing in Washington, D.C., former New York federal judge John Gleeson called Attorney General William P. Barr’s request to drop Flynn’s case a “corrupt and politically motivated favor unworthy of our justice system.” + “In the United States, Presidents do not orchestrate pressure campaigns to get the Justice Department to drop charges against defendants who have pleaded guilty — twice, before two different judges — and whose guilt is obvious,” said Gleeson, who was appointed by the court to argue against the government’s request to dismiss the case. + Gleeson’s filing set the stage for a potentially dramatic courtroom confrontation Sept. 29 with the Justice Department and Flynn’s defense over

the fate of the highest-ranking Tr*mp adviser to plead guilty in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation. Friday’s filings echo earlier arguments from Gleeson, who called the Justice Department’s attempt to undo Flynn’s conviction a politically motivated and “a gross abuse of prosecutorial power.” U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the District of Columbia set the hearing date after a federal appeals court upheld his authority to review and rule on the government’s dismissal request on Aug. 31. The hearing before Sullivan was selected from three dates proposed by the parties and is scheduled the same day as the first presidential debate between Tr*mp and Democratic nominee Joe Biden. + Flynn’s lawyer Sidney Powell on Friday called Gleeson’s filing “predictable and meaningless,” saying again that Flynn’s investigation was “corrupt from its inception.” + The Justice Department has argued that the executive branch has sole constitutional authority over prosecutorial decisions and that courts cannot “look behind” its decision-making or motives. + Flynn, 61, awaits sentencing after pleading guilty in December 2017 to lying in an FBI interview on Jan. 24 that year to conceal conversations during the presidential transition with Sergey Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador to the United States. The conversations related to securing potential relief from U.S. sanctions once Trump took office. Flynn repeated the lie to White House staff and Vice President Pence, leading to the firing of Tr*mp’s first national security adviser three weeks later. + Although Flynn cooperated with the Mueller probe and was prepared to be sentenced December 2018, he switched course after Mueller’s investigation ended and Barr took office last year. Flynn then accused prosecutors and his former attorneys of coercing him into pleading guilty and concealing FBI misconduct, claims that the department and Sullivan rejected. (Remainder omitted.)

[malenipshadows]

“Report: Michael Flynn Discussed Covert Extradition Plan With Turkish Government.”

By Chuck Ross, reporter, The Daily Caller.  Published online 3-24-2017.   Michael Flynn, the Trump administration’s first national security adviser, met with Turkish government officials in September to discuss a covert and potentially illegal plan to excise a political enemy of Turkey’s president from the U.S., according to former CIA director James Woolsey.

Woolsey confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that he attended a Sept. 19 meeting in New York City in which Flynn and two Turkish government ministers discussed ways to obtain and remove Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric who has lived in the U.S. since 1999.

Woolsey, who served under Bill Clinton, told The Wall Street Journal that the plan was to make “a covert step in the dead of night to whisk this guy away.”

“It seemed to be naive,” Woolsey told the newspaper of the plan to remove Gulen, who lives in self-exile in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania. “I didn’t put a lot of credibility in it.  This is a country of legal process and a Constitution, and you don’t send out folks to haul somebody overseas.”

The Justice Department and federal court system would have final say over whether Gulen will be extradited.  Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, wants the extradition, as he believes the imam was behind a failed coup attempt in July.

Flynn and Woolsey met with the ministers, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and Berat Albayrak (Erdogan’s son-in-law), as part of a consulting contract that Flynn’s firm, Flynn Intel Group, signed with Inovo BV, a Dutch shell company operated by a businessman named Ekim Alptekin.

In August, Flynn Intel and Alptekin signed a $600,000 contract for three months of work on the Gulen issue.  Alptekin ended up paying Flynn Intel $530,000 for the work.

Woolsey said that specific tactics for the covert removal of Gulen were not discussed. If they had, he told The Journal that he would have openly questioned whether the plan was legal.

The Daily Caller first reported the arrangement between Flynn Intel Group and Inovo BV in November, several days after Flynn wrote an op-ed calling for Gulen’s extradition.

At the time of that first report, the depth of Flynn’s work on the Gulen issue was not known.  Alptekin denied in numerous interviews, including with TheDC, that he hired Flynn to work on the Gulen issue.

Flynn registered his lobbying activity only with the Senate, which has relatively lax disclosure requirements.  But earlier this month, the retired lieutenant general registered as a foreign agent of Turkey with the Justice Department.  In detailed disclosure reports he acknowledged that Flynn Intel’s work likely benefited the Turkish government because it dealt with the Gulen issue, which is a major area of interest for the Turkish government.

TheDC also reported that Flynn pledged in his contract with Inovo BV to create an “investigative laboratory” consisting of former intelligence officials, including Woolsey and former FBI assistant director Brian McCauley, to conduct research on Gulen and potentially make criminal referrals in the case.

Woolsey told TheDC, through a spokesman, that he did not authorize Flynn to list him as part of an investigative unit.  Flynn Intel paid McCauley $28,000 for consulting work, disclosure reports show.

Woolsey also told TheDC earlier this month that he received no compensation from Flynn Intel.  He told The Journal that he did not accept payment because of what he heard in the Sept. 19 meeting.

Price Floyd, a spokesman for Flynn, told The Journal that “at no time did Gen. Flynn discuss any illegal actions, nonjudicial physical removal or any other such activities.”

The White House has said that President Trump was not aware of Flynn’s work for the Turkish government.  Flynn, who served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Obama, was fired as Trump’s national security adviser after only 24 days on the job because he misled Vice President Mike Pence about phone calls he had with Russia’s ambassador in December.

 *** Update: Floyd, the spokesman for Flynn, sent TheDC the following statement after publication of this article. “The claim made by Mr. Woolsey that General Flynn, or anyone else in attendance, discussed physical removal of Mr. Gulen from the United States during a meeting with Turkish officials in New York is false.  No such discussion occurred.  Nor did Mr. Woolsey ever inform General Flynn that he had any concerns whatsoever regarding the meeting, either before he chose to attend, or afterwards.”

 ** Hyperlink: http://dailycaller.com/2017/03/24/michael-flynn-discussed-covert-extradition-plan-with-turkish-government.