Defending Michael Flynn is apparently burning through the legally dubious payments he received from Russia and Turkey, requiring a new source to keep his legal team fighting.
The family of former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn has set up a legal defense fund for him, soliciting donations to ease the “tremendous financial burden” from the ongoing investigations into his actions and the 2016 presidential campaign.
Though the fund was set up by Flynn’s brother and sister, this family oriented account doesn’t mention Michael G. Flynn, son of the former national security advisor, who in addition to his Twitter-support for white nationalists, has become another focus of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
The inquiry into Flynn is focused at least in part on his work with his father's lobbying firm, Flynn Intel Group, three of the officials said. It's unclear when the focus on Flynn began.
Flynn took apparent delight in the “lock her up” chants that so often swept through Trump campaign rallies, and answered a question about the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s email practices on NBC’s “Meet the Press” last year by saying that “when you are given immunity, that means that you have probably committed a crime.”
This does seem to be a case where Flynn is speaking out of personal knowledge.
The U.S. Office of Government Ethics has quietly reversed its own internal policy prohibiting anonymous donations from lobbyists to White House staffers who have legal defense funds.
The new fund for Flynn says that it will not be accepting foreign contributions, or contributions from the Trump campaign fund—which is funding the legal fees of Donald Trump Jr.
However, funds such as the one set up to support Flynn can already accept money from anonymous donors, and there are no rules to prohibit either Flynn’s friends at RT or Donald Trump from slipping some cash to the ex-general without anyone being the wiser. The claims that the fund won’t take these contributions, requires that you take Michael Flynn at his word.