BREAKING: Michael Flynn's business partner Bijan Kian was convicted on both charges
Source: Marshall Cohen CNN reporter
BREAKING: Michael Flynn's business partner Bijan Kian was convicted on both charges of illegally lobbying for the Turkish government, per @FossumSamuel. Case appeared to be on very thin ice but jurors in Virginia returned 2 guilty verdicts. Case originated from the Mueller probe.
Read more: Link to source
Every case from Mueller has led to a plea or a conviction .
Significant that 2 guilty verdicts were reached WITHOUT the testimony of Michael Flynn. Previously Flynn has been named Co-conspirator..what is the DOJ about to do with this? More corrupt, illegal, treasonous activity proven. this administration is a global criminal syndicate masquerading as a government.
Now, what about Flynn? Or did Barr sweep that one under the rug?
Another Trump Administration employee convicted as a foreign agent. I'm just waiting to find a Trumper who ISN'T a turncoat. Flynn should be in jail too.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)The judge pretty much already accused him of treason. I could see five to ten years easy, maybe more. Let's hope.
DeminPennswoods
(15,290 posts)She brought up reports that the prosecutors might be thinking about changing their recommendation of no jail time for Flynn.
George II
(67,782 posts)watoos
(7,142 posts)Flynn got a new Fox News lawyer who convinced him not to cooperate with Mueller in the hopes that Kian would not be convicted. Flynn is waiting to be sentenced for his own crimes, I wonder if Mueller is going to ask for leniency now that Flynn stabbed him in the back? Flynn's sentence just got a bit longer I believe.
Fucking traitors who were picked by trump.
waddirum
(979 posts)and has no say.
PNW-Dem
(244 posts)CousinIT
(9,257 posts)Trump transition adviser convicted on foreign-agent charges
The verdicts, returned by jurors in Alexandria, Va., after a weeklong trial and only about four hours of deliberation, amount to a belated courtroom victory for special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated the $600,000 lobbying and public relations contract at the heart of the case and then handed the matter off to other federal prosecutors after Flynns guilty plea to a false-statement charge in 2017.
Rafiekian, 67, faces up to 15 years in prison on the two felony counts against him: acting as an unregistered foreign agent in the U.S., and conspiracy to violate that law as well as to submit false statements to the Justice Department in a foreign-agent filing. Defendants are typically sentenced in accord with federal sentencing guidelines that result in far less than the maximum.
Flynn, who would go on to serve 24 days as President Donald Trumps national security adviser, had been expected to be a key witness at Rafiekians trial, offering testimony that would incriminate his former partner in a scheme to avoid disclosing that the Flynn Intel Groups lobbying and public relations effort was actually directed and controlled by Turkish government officials.
nitpicker
(7,153 posts)(snip)
According to court records and evidence presented at trial, Bijan Rafiekian, 67, of San Juan Capistrano, California, along with his co-conspirator, Kamil Ekim Alptekin, 42, of Istanbul, a Turkish national with close ties to the highest levels of the Government of Turkey, were involved in a conspiracy to covertly influence United States politicians and public opinion against a Turkish national, Fethullah Gulen, who is an imam, writer, and political figure living in the United States. The Government of Turkey had filed two extradition requests for Gulen, and has been trying to convince the Department of Justice to extradite Gulen back to Turkey since 2015. The plot included using the Flynn Intel Group (FIG), a company founded by Rafiekian and Michael T. Flynn, which provided services based upon Flynns national security expertise.
According to court documents, the purpose of the conspiracy was to use FIG to delegitimize the Turkish citizen in the eyes of the American public and United States politicians, with the goal of obtaining his extradition, which was meeting resistance at the U.S. Department of Justice. At the same time, the conspirators sought to conceal that the Government of Turkey was directing the work. However, not only was Rafiekian told by Alptekin that Turkish cabinet-level officials had approved the budget for the project, but Alptekin also told Rafiekian that he provided the Turkish officials updates on the work. Rafiekian understood that Alptekin was relaying the Turkish officials directions on the work to Rafiekian, Flynn, and others at FIG.
According to court documents, the scheme included using a Dutch shell company, Inovo, owned by Alptekin to act as FIGs client. FIG was paid $600,000 in three installments from an account in Turkey in Alptekins name. After Alptekin made the payments to FIG, FIG kicked back 20 percent of the payments to Alptekins company in the Netherlands, with two such kickbacks being made.
(snip)