Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is looking into an alleged Sept. 20, 2016 meeting between Michael Flynn and stridently pro-Kremlin Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) as part of their investigation into Russia’s interference in the presidential election, NBC News reported Friday.
The alleged meeting was set up by the former national security adviser’s lobbying firm, the Flynn Intel Group, and attended by some of his closest business associates, according to NBC. These include Flynn’s partners, Bijan Kian and Brian McCauley, and Flynn’s son, Michael G. Flynn.
The report does not expand on what exactly was discussed during that meeting in Washington, D.C., but investigators apparently learned about it while reviewing emails Flynn Intel Group sent to Rohrabacher’s staff thanking them for the conversation. The well-compensated lobbying work Flynn Intel Group did for foreign governments has come under close scrutiny by Mueller’s team.
Rohrabacher, who has been called “Putin’s favorite congressman,” shared the Trump campaign’s hopes for improved relations with Russia. Earlier this year he met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London to try to negotiate a deal in which Assange would be pardoned in exchange for providing what Rohrabacher said was definitive proof that Russia did not interfere in the U.S. election.
Flynn’s own foreign contacts are under investigation on a number of fronts. Prosecutors are looking into the contacts he had with Russian officials during the campaign, as well as his lobbying contract with a Turkish businessman.
As the Wall Street Journal and NBC reported earlier Friday, Flynn is also under scrutiny for his role in an alleged plot to ferry a Muslim cleric out of the U.S. to Turkey in exchange for millions of dollars.
Multiple sources have told NBC that Mueller’s team has accumulated sufficient evidence of wrongdoing to indict both Flynn and his son.
