Flynn Didn't Disclose Middle East Meetings, House Democrats Say

(Bloomberg) -- Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn may have violated the law by failing to make required disclosure of contacts with Saudi government officials and a trip to the Middle East on his January 2016 application for a renewed security clearance, two congressional Democrats said Monday.

Flynn, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general who briefly served as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, had disclosed an October 2015 trip to Saudi Arabia but didn’t detail any official contacts in his application, according to a letter written by Representatives Eliot Engel and Elijah Cummings. The letter seeks documents related to Flynn’s work “regarding Saudi Arabia, Russia and other countries.”

Newsweek magazine reported earlier this month that Flynn traveled to the Middle East in June 2015 to pursue a U.S.-Russian business venture to develop nuclear plants in Saudi Arabia. “It does not appear that General Flynn disclosed this trip or any foreign contacts as part of his security clearance renewal process,” Engel and Cummings wrote in their letter.

A lawyer for Flynn didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Flynn, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was a top adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign. He was forced to resign from his position as Trump’s national security adviser just weeks into the presidency after administration officials said Flynn misled Vice President Mike Pence about the content of his calls with the Russian ambassador during the transition. He has since become a focus of an FBI investigation, and Democrats have previously raised questions about Flynn’s contacts with the Russian government before the election.

Flynn is said to have provided documents to the House and Senate investigations into allegations that Russia meddled in the U.S. elections.

‘No Record’

In their letter Monday, Cummings and Engel said that in January 2016, just days after submitting the application to renew his security clearance, Flynn said during a lecture that he was speaking with many leaders in the Middle East as well as “a lot of folks in” leadership in Saudi Arabia.

“We have no record of General Flynn reporting this trip or any contacts with foreign officials,” said Engel and Cummings, who are the top Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees respectively.

In addition, in June 2015 -- four months before the October trip -- Flynn had also testified before Congress that he had recently returned from a “fairly extensive trip to the Middle East,” but he didn’t disclose the trip on his security-clearance application, the Democrats said.

Sponsorship Questions

Cummings has previously secured several documents pertaining to Flynn’s security clearance reauthorization and the routine investigation it prompted. In May, Cummings said Flynn may have lied on the application when he said that his paid speech at a Moscow gala for a Russian TV network had been “funded by U.S. companies.”

Flynn’s attorney, Robert Kelner, said in April that Flynn had briefed officials extensively regarding his speech to Russia’s government-controlled RT network “both before and after the trip, and he answered any questions that were posed by DIA concerning the trip during those briefings.”

The two Democrats also said in their letter Monday that Flynn told U.S. government investigators only that a “work sponsor” had paid for him to attend a conference during the October 2015 trip. He did not provide the identity of a U.S. citizen and friend who went on that trip with him, and he said he stayed at a hotel that does not appear to exist, although its name is close to that of the airport in Riyadh.

Three speakers’ bureaus that worked with Flynn said they had not been involved in the trip, the two Democrats said.

Their letter is addressed to Kelner, and to officials of two companies that were involved with Flynn’s June 2015 trip to Israel and Egypt, according to the Newsweek report.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Brody in Washington at btenerellabr@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joshua Gallu at jgallu@bloomberg.net, John Voskuhl, Laurie Asseo