'It was very hush-hush': Michael Flynn's lobbying firm didn't 'want anyone to know' about its work for Turkey

The businessman, Ekim Alptekin, is a member of a Turkish economic-relations board run by an appointee of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He is also the head of Inovo, a consulting firm.

Flynn's firm was tasked with lobbying the US government to extradite Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in Pennsylvania who Erdogan believes is responsible for planning last year's attempted coup and, more generally, fomenting dissent inside Turkey.

Alptekin paid the Flynn Intel Group over $500,000 to produce a documentary about the dangers of Gulen that he had hoped would be "a small, '60 Minutes' kind of a thing, where these conclusions are brought to the public," he told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. "We thought that might have a good effect."

David Enders, a former Vice News correspondent who was hired to work on the documentary, told The Journal that he was instructed to conceal Flynn Intel Group's involvement in producing the film.

Enders recalled the head of the firm, Bijan Kian, telling him at the time, "We don't want anyone to know the Flynn Intel Group has anything to do with this." Enders told The Journal that Kian asked him to hide the film equipment from the staff of the hotel in which they were doing interviews.

"It was very hush-hush," Enders told The Journal. "They were like Keystone Kops."

The film was never finished. Neither Enders nor Kian responded to a request for additional comment.

Flynn raised eyebrows when he wrote an op-ed for The Hill, published on November 8, alleging Gulen helmed a "vast global network" that had "all the right markings to fit the description of a dangerous sleeper terror network."

Flynn's op-ed seemed out of place amid his work with Donald Trump's campaign. His work for Inovo did not come to light until after he registered as a foreign agent with the Department of Justice in March — four months after his contract with Alptekin ended.

In his Foreign Agent Registration Act filing, Flynn said his firm had conducted research for Inovo that "focused on" Gulen. But it may have gone further than that: Flynn met with Turkish government ministers in September, where he discussed removing Gulen from US soil, according to former CIA Director James Woolsey, who was at the meeting.

Price Floyd, who was a spokesman for Flynn, strongly denied that such a discussion ever took place, telling Business Insider at the time that Flynn was contracted by Inovo partly "to gather information on Gulen and turn it over to legal authorities to take action."

Alptekin did not respond to a request for comment, but he told The Associated Press earlier this year that he did not agree with Flynn's decision to register as a foreign agent for his work with Inovo.

"It would be different if I was working for the government of Turkey, but I am not taking directions from anyone in the government," Alptekin said.

Still, Flynn said in his filing that his work for Inovo "could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey."

'It was very hush-hush': Michael Flynn's lobbying firm didn't 'want anyone to know' about its work for Turkey

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