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Former Trump Adviser Pushed Saudi Nuclear-Plant Plan, Report Says

Mike Flynn and others within the White House ignored repeated legal and ethical warnings, according to House report

Former national-security adviser Mike Flynn and others within the White House ignored repeated legal and ethical warnings as they pushed early in President Trump’s tenure a plan to build dozens of nuclear-power reactors in Saudi Arabia, according to a report released Tuesday by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The report describes how Mr. Flynn and Derek Harvey, whom Mr. Flynn brought to the National Security Council staff to oversee Middle East affairs, worked closely on the plan with a group of retired U.S. generals and admirals who had formed a private company to promote it.

Despite the warnings from career White House staff—and an order by the NSC’s top lawyer to stand down—the White House officials and their private-sector allies worked to place the idea on Mr. Trump’s agenda during a phone call with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, and to be discussed during the U.S. president’s May 2017 trip to Riyadh, his first overseas trip as president, the report says.

The Wall Street Journal first reported many of the details of the Saudi plan and Mr. Flynn’s efforts to advance it inside the White House in a series of articles in 2017.

The plan for U.S. companies to build nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia, part of an ambitious “Middle East Marshall Plan,” was billed by advocates as a way to revive the moribund U.S. nuclear industry, create jobs and reassert American influence in the region.

But one unnamed senior official quoted in the report derided the idea as “a scheme for these generals to make some money.”

.. Another key player in the Saudi nuclear effort was Tom Barrack, a Trump ally who chaired his Inaugural Committee. according to the committee’s report.

“Tom Barrack has been thoroughly briefed on this strategy and wants to run it for you. He’s perfect for the job,” Robert “Bud” McFarlane, a one-time adviser to President Reagan who was an adviser to IP3 International, a private firm pitching the nuclear plan, wrote to Mr. Flynn on Jan. 28, 2017.

.. Mr. Flynn’s involvement in the project was controversial because he had worked as a paid adviser to an IP3 subsidiary, Iron Bridge Group Inc., from June to December 2016, while a senior adviser to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.

.. On Jan. 30, 2017, the National Security Council’s top lawyer, John Eisenberg, instructed the NSC staff “to cease all work on the plan” because of potential conflicts of interest and other legal concerns, the report says.

Despite that order, and Mr. Flynn’s firing, “officials inside the White House continued to move forward on the IP3 nuclear plan,” the report says. It says that more than five individuals recall Mr. Harvey saying during a meeting on March 2, 2017, that “I speak with Michael Flynn every night.” That was more than two weeks after Mr. Flynn was fired.