Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is reportedly preparing to interview people hired by former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn to work on an unfinished documentary financed by Turkish interests.
The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Mueller’s team of investigators is looking into Flynn’s work on the film attacking Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, whom the Turkish government has blamed for a failed 2016 coup.
According to the Journal, the film was at the center of Flynn’s work on behalf of Turkish interests while he also served as a top adviser to President Trump’s 2016 election campaign.
{mosads}
Mueller is also investigating Flynn and his son’s involvement in an alleged plot to forcibly remove Gülen from his home in Pennsylvania and return him to Turkey. Gülen has denied any involvement in the coup attempt.
One freelance journalist hired to film interviews for the unfinished documentary, David Enders, said that Flynn’s consulting group, the Flynn Intel Group, tried to hide its involvement in the documentary. He said Flynn’s business partner, Bijan Kian, told him that they did not want anyone to know that the consulting firm was working on the film.
“He said: ‘We don’t want anyone to know the Flynn Intel Group has anything to do with this,’ ” Enders told the Journal earlier this year.
The revelation that Mueller’s team is preparing to interview consultants hired for the film came a day after The New York Times reported that Flynn and his lawyers stopped sharing information and cooperating with President Trump’s attorneys — a development that suggests Flynn may be working with Mueller as part of the special counsel investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election.
Flynn has long been at the center of the investigation into Russian efforts to meddle in the election, as well as possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.
He resigned from the White House in February — 24 days after he started — after it was revealed that he misled Vice President Pence and other White House officials about his conversations with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the month before Trump took office.
Since then, he has faced scrutiny for his financial ties to Turkey and Russia. Flynn registered as a foreign agent with the Justice Department in March.