A new congressional report says President Trump’s former national security adviser Mike Flynn worked with a group of retired U.S. generals to push a plan to build dozens of nuclear power reactors in Saudi Arabia.
Flynn’s work with the retired military officials, who had formed a private company to promote the plan, was detailed in a report by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Citing whistleblowers, the report said Derek Harvey, whom Flynn hired to oversee Middle East affairs on the National Security Council, ignored several legal and ethical warnings from career White House staff about the proposal.
The National Security Council’s top lawyer even ordered the team to stand down, but they went ahead working to get the proposal on Trump’s agenda during a call with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the president’s May 2017 trip to Riyadh as part of a Middle East tour.
An unnamed official in the House report referred to the proposal as “a scheme for these generals to make some money.”
Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said the panel would be making requests for documents from the White House and other agencies as it continues to investigate the matter.
“Based on this snapshot of events, the Committee is now launching an investigation to determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump Administration are in the national security interests of the United States or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy,” the report said.
In February 2017, two weeks into the fledgling Trump administration, Flynn resigned from the White House after it was revealed that he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S.
He pleaded guilty in December 2017 to a lying to the FBI about his two contacts with the Russian ambassador and agreed to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Flynn participated in 19 interviews with prosecutors, who called his cooperation “substantial.” In exchange, Mueller recommended no prison time for the former Trump aide.
He was due for sentencing in December but a judge postponed it, asking both sides to update him on the case in March.
