Attorney General Jeff Sessions denied knowing that former national security adviser Michael Flynn lobbied on behalf of Turkey and allegedly discussed with Turkish officials the possibility of the kidnapping of a U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, while serving on the Trump campaign, TPM news portal reported on Tuesday.
The network of Fethullah Gülen was one of the masterminds of last year's failed coup attempt.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) grilled Sessions on his awareness of Flynn’s Turkey dealings in a taut exchange during a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing Tuesday.
The California representative first asked Sessions, who oversaw the Trump campaign's foreign policy team, if he knew either before or after the 2016 election about Flynn's lobbying work to 'discredit' CIA-linked Fethullah Gülen. The attorney general said he didn’t believe he ever obtained such information, the TPM reported.
Lofgren then moved on to two 2016 meetings Flynn reportedly had with Turkish government ministers to discuss the forcible removal of Gülen. I've read that in the paper recently, but I don’t recall ever being made aware of that before this recent release in the paper," Sessions said of Flynn's conversations, according to the report.
The Wall Street Journal reported Friday an alleged December 2016 meeting in which Flynn was offered $15 million to successfully evacuate Gülen. Flynn’s lawyer strenuously denied the Journal's report. The newspaper first broke the news of these discussions back in March with a report on a separate September 2016 meeting Flynn held with Turkish representatives on the same topic.
Sessions did acknowledge Lofgren that extraditing Gülen remained one of Turkish give highest priorities, the report said. "I'm aware that the Turkish government continued to press the federal government with regard to seeking the return of Mr Gülen to Turkey," Sessions said. "And our department had a role to play in that though I’m not at liberty to discuss the details of that."
NBC has reported that Trump administration officials asked the FBI to conduct a new review of the Gülen situation after the inauguration, but that the FBI denied it because Turkey provided no new evidence to bolster its case, the report said.
