begin quote from:
Flynn didn't initially disclose Russia income
His mid-February disclosures didn't include thousands of dollars in speaking fees from 3 Russian companies
Michael Flynn left Russian speaking fees off initial financial disclosures
Story highlights
- Flynn included the speaking fees in disclosure forms he filed Friday
- The speaking engagements include RT, Russia's state-funded television network
- The disclosures show Jared Kushner and other high-profile advisers held as much as $1.6 billion in assets
Washington (CNN)President
Donald Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, did not
include receiving thousands of dollars in speaking fees from three
Russian companies in initial financial disclosures to the Office of
Government Ethics, copies of the reports show.
Flynn's initial disclosures, which he submitted in mid-February,
left out that he received money from Russia's state-funded television
network, RT, for a speech in Moscow and from air cargo company
Volga-Dnepr Airlines and cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Government
Security Solutions Inc. for speaking engagements in the United States.
Flynn included the speaking fees in disclosure forms he filed Friday,
according to the documents. Both sets of filings were made public as
part of a White House release of financial disclosures of 180 White
House officials.
Flynn
attorney Robert Kelner said Flynn "had only just begun the financial
disclosure filing process at the time he left the White House.
"He
filed a draft form explicitly listing his speakers bureau contract,
and he expected to engage in the usual process of consultations with the
White House Counsel's Office and OGE (Office of Government Ethics)
regarding what he was expected to disclose. That process was suspended,
however, after he resigned. When the White House asked him this week to
complete the process and to itemize the specific speaking events, he did
so," Kelner said.
CNN has reported
extensively on the RT speech, but the existence of the other two
speaking engagements was disclosed last month by House Democrats.
Flynn
resigned just days after the date of the initial financial disclosure
after it became public that he misled Vice President Mike Pence about
his conversations with Russia's ambassador to the United States, Sergey
Kislyak.
The disclosure forms show Flynn made
as much as $1.5 million last year. According to his financial snapshot,
Flynn received $827,055 in salary and bonus from his firm, Flynn Intel
Group, alone.
The retired lieutenant general listed a speaking engagement for "RT TV," the Russian TV network, when asked in the form to disclose "compensation exceeding $5,000 in a year," but did not specify the amount.
CNN
previously reported that Flynn, according to a top Democrat on the
House Oversight Committee, was paid more than $45,000 by RT, formerly called Russia Today, for
a speech in Moscow in December 2015. The US intelligence community has
long assessed RT to be a propaganda tool of the Kremlin, writing in a
January report on Russian interference in the US election that the
organization had participated in disinformation campaigns aimed at the
US. Flynn initially said he was paid by his speakers bureau for the talk.
The
forms say Flynn received "compensation exceeding $5,000 in a year" from
the Russian airline and cybersecurity company for speaking engagements
in the United States. House Democrats last month also revealed the
existence of those two speeches, saying Flynn received $11,250 from the
airline and $11,250 from the cybersecurity firm.
The White House acknowledged
in March that Trump's transition team was aware before Flynn was tapped
to serve as national security adviser that he had engaged in work that
would likely require him to register his consulting firm as a foreign
agent.
Flynn's Justice Department
filing last month raised questions when it revealed that Flynn's firm
worked on behalf of a Turkish-owned company, Inovo BV, to improve US
confidence in Turkey's business climate.
Flynn
Intel Group received $530,000 in payments from the company and
acknowledged in its registration as a foreign agent that the work may
have benefited the Turkish government.
The
White House has many advisers who earned millions of dollars last year,
including President Donald Trump's daughter, Ivanka, whose assets
combined with her husband's could exceed $700 million.
Ivanka Trump and her husband, senior Trump adviser Jared Kushner, collected
about $195 million in income, according to a new financial snapshot of
about 180 of the men and women serving in Donald Trump's White House.
Other Trump aides with lucrative histories include Trump's top economic adviser Gary Cohn,
the former president of banking giant Goldman Sachs, who netted up to
around $75 million in the previous year. White House chief strategist
Steve Bannon made up to $2.5 million.
The
newly released financial disclosure forms list the assets the Trump
aides held when they walked in the doors of the White House in January
-- before administration counsel advised them to resign from various
postings, divest certain holdings or recuse themselves from future
decisions. But the documents nevertheless offer a portrait into the
lives of several key White House aides, especially those who came from
Wall Street or have other ties to the financial industry.
Kushner,
like Trump, a prominent real estate titan, held a position in 267
separate entities, ranging from the Trump transition team to dozens of
property holdings in New York and New Jersey.
Ivanka
Trump, who just this week formally said she would join the West Wing
after serving as an informal adviser to her father, has yet to file her
own disclosure forms. But the White House said earlier on Friday that
her documents would look largely similar to her husband's.
Bannon's
forms reveal numerous ties to various conservative organizations and
sources funded by the family of influential Trump donors Bob and Rebekah
Mercer, such as Breitbart News, which he led as executive chairman, and
Cambridge Analytica, a data firm used by many Republican clients. Other
income sources for him are Bannon Strategic Advisors, a consultancy
firm valued at as high as $25 million, along with Affinity Media
Holdings, which could have awarded him capital gains of as high as $1
million last year.
Bannon is also
in the process of selling some of his stake in Cambridge Analytica and
Glittering Steel, another Mercer-backed entity, according to the forms.
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