Now congressional investigators are zeroing in on the previously undisclosed business dealings of former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn in the Middle East.
The letter from Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee, and Engel, the ranking Democrat on the House foreign affairs committee, is the latest to call attention to potential problems with what Flynn reported to the US government about his foreign travel, contacts and business after he left the Defense Intelligence Agency in August 2014.
House Democrats are demanding that Michael Flynn disclose more information about an alleged trip to Saudi Arabia to promote a possible joint U.S.
"It does not appear that General Flynn disclosed this trip or any foreign contacts as part of his security clearance renewal process", Engel and Cummings say of the first trip in the summer of 2015.
The letter questions why he failed to mention one trip, and underreported a second, on a January 2016 application for the renewal of his federal security clearance.
The letter does not directly state that Flynn could face jail time for failing to provide this information, but does quote a federal criminal law regarding the federal security clearance applications, explaining that "knowingly falsifying or concealing a material fact is a felony which may result in fines and/or up to five years imprisonment".
The letter from the Democrats otherwise does not raise the president's trip or attempt to link the visit to Flynn's conduct.
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Shortly after the trip, Saudi Arabia and Russian Federation announced a $100 billion agreement to build 16 nuclear power plants in the country. The letter does not indicate whether Flynn received any payment for the deal. Flynn failed to report the trip during his request to renew his security clearance, they say.
Flynn did report a later trip in October 2015, but left out major details, including who paid for it and the identity of a "friend" with whom he traveled.
Flynn reported that he went on the six-day trip with a friend, who was also American, to speak at a conference, stayed at a hotel called the King Khaled International Hotel and had the trip paid for by a "work sponsor". They also could not find any evidence of a conference that Flynn would have attended during the time frame, noting that three speakers' bureaus affiliated with Flynn did not report being involved with the trip or a conference in Saudi Arabia.
As the Cummings-Engel letter on Monday noted, "According to a financial disclosure form that General Flynn submitted after he was sacked as National Security Advisor, he did not begin advising X-Co Dynamics Inc./IronBridge Group until August 2015", two months after his trip to Israel and Egypt. To the contrary, the project Flynn was involved in at the time was expressly created to put such deals in the hands of a USA -led global consortium under strict safety and security controls.
Flynn, who was sacked after serving for only 24 days as national security adviser, has been a central figure in the Russian Federation probe. Back in April, this same committee said Flynn probably broke federal law by failing to disclose on a 2016 security clearance application that he had done business with Russian Federation in 2015.
Cummings's and Engel's letter does not impose a deadline, nor does it have the signatures of their committee chairmen, Reps.
Flynn is said to have provided documents to the House and Senate investigations into allegations that Russian Federation meddled in the USA elections. Flynn was also involved in talks "with [Egyptian President Abdel Fattah] el-Sissi's government", Cochran said.
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