Michael Catanzaro, who until early this year worked as a lobbyist for a coal-burning electric utility and an oil and gas company, among other clients. He is now the top White House policy official overseeing the rollback of the same environmental protection rules he had lobbied against.
.. But he also made clear that there should not have been a need for a confrontation before these waivers were made public.
Why Michael Flynn will keep haunting the Trump administration
But perhaps the most damning of all of Flynn’s troubles — and the one that could keep haunting the Trump administration — is something that has little to do with Russia: Flynn was working for the Turkish government while working for Trump, which means that he was advocating for policies that benefited Turkey while serving as Trump’s national security adviser. And Trump may have known about this.
.. Taken together, they’re damning because what Flynn did gets at the heart of being a democracy: He was on the payroll of a foreign government while in a powerful position in the U.S. government.
Lobbying for a foreign government while simultaneously working for the U.S. government crosses just about every ethical red line you can think of, experts say.
.. ““Can you imagine a U.S. senator saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m a U.S. senator and, at the same time, I’m lobbying on behalf of Mexico’?””
.. What Trump knew about Flynn’s dual roles will probably be of keen interest to the special counsel the Justice Department appointed Wednesday to lead the Russia investigation. Did Trump know Flynn was also working for a foreign government? And if so, what does that say about the administration’s intentions toward other governments, including Russia’s?
Staffers Can’t Save the President from His Own Bad Decisions
Imagine you’re an incoming president. You’ve got a guy who you like and trust who you would like to be your national-security adviser. But then he tells your transition team that he’s “under federal investigation for secretly working as a paid lobbyist for Turkey during the campaign.”
Are you still interested in having him serve as your national-security adviser? Aren’t you a little irked that he was working as a paid lobbyist for a foreign entity during the campaign? Don’t you feel like he should have tried to avoid this kind of financial entanglement with a foreign entity? Don’t you feel like he should have told you this during the campaign?
.. He will always carry the stigma of a conflict of interest because he was paid $600,000 over 90 days to promote the viewpoint of the Turkish government.
.. isn’t this the sort of problem that a streetwise, shrewd businessman would see coming a mile away and avoid?
Ex-CIA Director: Mike Flynn and Turkish Officials Discussed Removal of Erdogan Foe From U.S.
The cleric has been accused by turkey of orchestrating last summer’s failed military coup
Mr. Woolsey told The Wall Street Journal he arrived at the meeting in New York on Sept. 19 in the middle of the discussion and found the topic startling and the actions being discussed possibly illegal.
.. Mr. Woolsey said the idea was “a covert step in the dead of night to whisk this guy away.”
.. The filing said his firm’s fee, $530,000, wasn’t paid by the government but by Inovo BV, a Dutch firm owned by a Turkish businessman, Ekim Alptekin.
.. Mr. Erdogan has been trying for years to undermine Mr. Gulen, a onetime ally whom Turkey has now branded as a terrorist leader.
.. “It seemed to be naive,” Mr. Woolsey said about the discussion. “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.”
.. Mr. Woolsey said he also informed the U.S. government by notifying Vice President Joe Biden through a mutual friend.
.. Mr. Biden felt the Gulen matter should be handled through the courts.
.. “Gen. Flynn did discuss the Flynn Intel Group’s work for Inovo that included gathering information that could lead to a legal case against Mr. Gulen.”
.. Inovo hired Mr. Flynn on behalf of an Israeli company seeking to export natural gas to Turkey