Flynn's firm, Flynn Intel Group, was hired in 2016 by Ekim Alptekin, a Turkish businessman and former chair of the Turkey-U.S. Business Council, to do research and lobbying focused on Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic cleric living in exile in Pennsylvania who runs a group that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed for an attempted 2016 coup.
Rafiekian, a former board member of the U.S. Export-Import Bank and the point man for the project, was convicted of a conspiracy to act as an agent of Turkey in 2016 without disclosing it to the U.S. government.
During the trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Gillis made clear that to establish a conspiracy, the government didn't need to prove that Rafiekian ever did any lobbying or that Turkey paid for it, and it didn't even matter that FIG eventually registered as a foreign lobbyist.
Alptekin claimed the project initially was supposed to be run by the Turkish government, but that they eventually dropped it and he hired FIG for a separate, but very similar project that he ran himself on behalf of Turkish businesses.
The Rafiekian case demonstrated that the government "Not only can indict a ham sandwich, but can convict it too," commented Sidney Powell, a former prosecutor who is now Flynn's attorney, riffing on the quote of former New York Chief Judge Sol Wachtler, who famously said in 1985 that government prosecutors have so much influence on grand juries, that "By and large" they could get them to "Indict a ham sandwich."
Technically, the Mueller team seemed to argue that if, for example, a cab driver drives a Russian official and runs a red light, he or she becomes an "Agent of a foreign government" unless informing the attorney general of the cab ride.
She called the Rafiekian case an "Egregious abuse of government power designed to cover own abuses of the surveillance system."
https://www.theepochtimes.com/flynn-intel-group-case-highlights-muellers-lack-of-collusion-evidence_3030853.html
Rafiekian, a former board member of the U.S. Export-Import Bank and the point man for the project, was convicted of a conspiracy to act as an agent of Turkey in 2016 without disclosing it to the U.S. government.
During the trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Gillis made clear that to establish a conspiracy, the government didn't need to prove that Rafiekian ever did any lobbying or that Turkey paid for it, and it didn't even matter that FIG eventually registered as a foreign lobbyist.
Alptekin claimed the project initially was supposed to be run by the Turkish government, but that they eventually dropped it and he hired FIG for a separate, but very similar project that he ran himself on behalf of Turkish businesses.
The Rafiekian case demonstrated that the government "Not only can indict a ham sandwich, but can convict it too," commented Sidney Powell, a former prosecutor who is now Flynn's attorney, riffing on the quote of former New York Chief Judge Sol Wachtler, who famously said in 1985 that government prosecutors have so much influence on grand juries, that "By and large" they could get them to "Indict a ham sandwich."
Technically, the Mueller team seemed to argue that if, for example, a cab driver drives a Russian official and runs a red light, he or she becomes an "Agent of a foreign government" unless informing the attorney general of the cab ride.
She called the Rafiekian case an "Egregious abuse of government power designed to cover own abuses of the surveillance system."
https://www.theepochtimes.com/flynn-intel-group-case-highlights-muellers-lack-of-collusion-evidence_3030853.html
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