Donald Trump secretly hired Michael Flynn’s partner, who was connected to Flynn’s foreign agent scandal

| 8:47 pm EDT May 4, 2017
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For those Americans who stand against Donald Trump, it turns out Michael Flynn is the gift that just keeps giving. Flynn’s antics with Russia and Turkey have become a consistent scandal for the Trump administration, even two-plus months after his resignation. Flynn has since registered as a foreign agent, essentially admitting his guilt, and has offered to testify in exchange for immunity. But now it turns out Flynn’s business partner also worked for the campaign, making the scandal even worse.

Here’s the short of it, according to a complex new story from the Washington Post: the Donald Trump campaign secretly hired a company run by Michael Flynn’s business associate Jon Iadonisi, concealing the hiring by routing the payments through a venture capital firm, which may or may not have been illegal but was certainly suspicious. Iadonisi also has another company, and Flynn hired that company to investigate a Turkish dissident living in Pennsylvania. Flynn was doing this because the government of Turkey was indirectly paying him half a million dollars (link). And based on what’s already known about the matter, it gets even worse.

Another Trump campaign adviser, James Woolsey, claimed in March that he witnessed Michael Flynn and Turkish government officials discussing a plan to kidnap the Turkish dissident in Pennsylvania and ship him back to Turkey (link). And now it turns out Flynn hired Iadonisi’s company as part of his efforts against that dissident.

Through all this, it’s entirely possible that Jon Iadonisi did nothing wrong. Flynn hired his company to work on the Turkey situation, but that doesn’t mean the company engaged in any wrongdoing, or knew there was any wrongdoing. And Iadonisi’s other company, the one the Trump campaign hired, appears to have been focused on making social media posts go viral, which is perfectly legal if that’s all it was. But the Trump campaign’s decision to hire Iadonisi in secret, paying him through a venture capital firm, casts suspicion on everyone involved. And so now Trump has a whole new scandal to contend with. Help fund Palmer Report