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US Jury Convicts Business Partner of ex-Trump Adviser of Secretly Lobbying
for Turkey

Reuters

   WASHINGTON - A jury on Tuesday convicted Bijan Rafiekian, who was the
   business partner of U.S. President Donald Trump's disgraced former
   national security adviser Michael Flynn, on charges of secretly
   lobbying for Turkey.

   Rafiekian, co-founder of the consultancy firm Flynn Intel Group, was
   accused of conspiring to lobby on Turkey's behalf to try to persuade
   the U.S. government to extradite Fetullah Gulen, whom Turkey has blamed
   for orchestrating a failed coup in 2016.

   Rafiekian was indicted in December, along with Ekim Alptekin, a
   Turkish-Dutch businessman, and was charged on two counts - conspiring
   to act as an agent of a foreign government and making false statements
   to the Justice Department, and acting as a foreign agent.

   A Justice Department spokesman, Joshua Stueve, said Rafiekian was found
   guilty on both counts, after a week-long trial in U.S. District Court
   for the Eastern District of Virginia. Sentencing was set for Oct. 18.

   Flynn, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general whose brief tenure in
   2017 as part of Trump's inner circle is still causing legal
   aftershocks, was not charged with Rafiekian.

   But the case could influence how U.S. District Court Judge Emmet
   Sullivan sentences Flynn later this year, following Flynn's guilty plea
   in December 2017 of having lied to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's
   investigators about his contacts with Russian officials.

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