One of the Trump administration’s first decisions about the fight against the Islamic State was made by Michael Flynn weeks before he was fired – and it conformed to the wishes of Turkey, whose interests, unbeknownst to anyone in Washington, he’d been paid more than $500,000 to represent. 
 
 The decision came 10 days before Donald Trump had been sworn in as president, in a conversation with President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, who had explained the Pentagon’s plan to retake the Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa with Syrian Kurdish forces whom the Pentagon considered the U.S.’s most effective military partners. Obama’s national security team had decided to ask for Trump’s sign-off, since the plan would all but certainly be executed after Trump had become president. 
 
 Flynn didn’t hesitate. According to timelines distributed by members of Congress in the weeks since, Flynn told Rice to hold off, a move that would delay the military operation for months. 
 
 If Flynn explained his answer, that’s not recorded, and it’s not known whether he consulted anyone else on the transition team before rendering his verdict. But his position was consistent with the wishes of Turkey, which had long opposed the United States partnering with the Kurdish forces – and which was his undeclared client. 
 
 Trump eventually would approve the Raqqa plan, but not until weeks after Flynn had been fired. 
 
 [READ MORE: Trump will arm Syrian Kurds to fight ISIS, over Turkey’s fierce objections] 
 
 Now members of Congress, musing about the tangle of legal difficulties Flynn faces, cite that exchange with Rice as perhaps the most serious: acting on behalf of a foreign nation – from which he had received considerable cash – when making a military decision. Some members of Congress, in private conversations, have even used the word “treason” to describe Flynn’s intervention, though experts doubt that his actions qualify. 
 
 But treason or not, Flynn’s rejection of a military operation that had been months in the making raises questions about what other key decisions he might have influenced during the slightly more than three weeks he was Trump’s national security adviser, and the months he was Trump’s primary campaign foreign-policy adviser. 
 
 Even three months after he was fired, for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about a call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, his role in the White House resonates. 
 
 With word that the president may have asked FBI Director James Comey to drop any criminal probe of Flynn – failure to register as a foreign agent is a federal crime – there is renewed focus on getting to the bottom of what Flynn did, and what Trump knew. 
 
 Despite the Trump administration’s attempts to downplay the red flags, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the administration was repeatedly warned about Flynn’s foreign involvement. 
 
 “This was a serious compromise situation that the Russians had real leverage,” former acting Attorney General Sally Yates said in an interview with CNN on Tuesday, after White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer downplayed her warning about Flynn’s interactions with Russian officials as just “a heads up.” 
 
 [RELATED: Flynn rejects Senate subpoena, won’t testify in Russia probe] 
 
 Flynn’s actions were also the subject of discussion just last week at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on national security threats, with Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., zeroing in on the 18 days that passed between Yates’ warning that Flynn might be subject to Russian blackmail and Flynn’s forced resignation. 
 
 “Blackmail, by an influential military official, that has real ramifications for global threat,” he said. “So this is not about a policy implication, this is about the national security adviser being vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians.” 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Flynn’s connections to Russia have been widely discussed. In 2015, he was paid more than $33,000 to speak at a gala dinner in Moscow where he was seated next to President Vladimir Putin. That alone may have exposed him to criminal charges: As a retired U.S. military officer, Flynn was required to seek permission to travel and to receive payment from a foreign entity, something the State Department and the Pentagon have told Congress he did not do. 
 
 But it is his paid work on Turkey’s behalf that offers the clearest evidence of his role as a foreign agent – and of his legal problems, since he did not declare his foreign agent status till weeks after he’d left the Trump administration. 
 
 After he was fired, Flynn disclosed work as foreign agent 
 
 It was a fact Flynn disclosed himself in a declaration to the Foreign Agent Registration Unit of the Justice Department in early March. According to Flynn’s paperwork, he was paid $530,000 for work that “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.” The contract ended last November. 
 
 Under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, U.S. citizens who lobby on behalf of foreign governments or political entities must disclose their work to the Justice Department within 10 days. 
 
 Ekim Alptekin, the Turkish businessman whose company paid Flynn, disputes that he was “taking directions from anyone in the government” of Turkey. But Flynn’s filing shows he set up a meeting with Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, and energy minister, Berat Albayrak, who is President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law, at a New York hotel last September. 
 
 As then-candidate Trump’s national security adviser, Flynn sat in on classified briefings in the summer and fall of 2016. According to the filing, he signed the contract with Alptekin’s firm on Aug. 9. Trump received his first classified intelligence briefing on Aug. 18 – a meeting that Flynn attended. As Trump’s national security adviser in the White House, Flynn had access to even more highly classified intelligence. He sat in on most, if not all, of Trump’s phone conversations and meetings with foreign leaders. 
 
 How much Trump knew about Flynn’s paid foreign-agent work is uncertain. When Flynn’s firm filed the Justice Department paperwork in March, the White House said Trump was unaware that Flynn had been paid to lobby on Turkey’s behalf. But Flynn’s lawyer has said he called Trump’s transition team before the inauguration, asking whether Flynn should register as a foreign agent. 
 
 Met w/General Flynn,who will assume the position of National Security Advisor, and other officials at a working breakfast in Washington D.C. — Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu (@MevlutCavusoglu) January 18, 2017 
 
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 When asked why the call had not been an obvious indication to act quickly, the White House tried to smooth it over by saying their legal counsel had considered it a private decision the transition team should not get involved in. 
 
 “No, it’s not a question of raising a red flag,” Spicer said at a news briefing. “It is not up to – nor is it appropriate, nor is it legal – for the government to start going into private citizens seeking advice and telling them what they have to register or not.” 
 
 Flynn’s lobbying work also involved a meeting on Oct. 27 with a representative of the House Homeland Security Committee, according to the filing. 
 
 Despite Alptekin’s denials that he had hired Flynn to lobby on behalf of the Turkish government, in an interview published in Hurriyet newspaper on Nov. 14 he said he had conversations with Trump officials about Syria. 
 
 “We have spoken with his advisers and security team to understand what their vision is for the Middle East and Syria,” Alptekin was quoted as saying. He said he was optimistic that the Trump administration would be more sympathetic to Turkish interests. 
 
 “It is not just that we were in disagreement with some Obama policies like Syria . . . (but) on the Trump side, we saw a willingness to look at these things differently,” he said. 
 
 The view from Ankara 
 
 Turkey has angrily objected to U.S. support of Syrian Kurdish fighters, arguing that to arm the YPG is to help a group that is carrying out attacks on a key ally and fellow NATO member. The YPG has ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, considered a terrorist group by Turkey as well as the U.S. and the European Union. However, the U.S.-led coalition considers the YPG the most effective military partner against ISIS in Syria. 
 
 Turkey has insisted that the only feasible option to retake the terrorist group’s capital of Raqqa is for its own forces to participate in the U.S.-led coalition. The promise has been viewed skeptically by the Pentagon, where it’s been dismissed as “Erdogan’s ghost army.” 
 
 The plan to arm the Kurdish fighters had been seven months in the making when it was presented to Flynn. 
 
 “Don’t approve it,” Flynn said, according to an account in The Washington Post that was included in a timeline prepared by the office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. “We’ll make the decision.” 
 
 Whether Flynn consulted with anyone before making the decision is also unknown. The White House did not respond to questions about whether Trump or his secretary of defense nominee, Jim Mattis, signed off on the decision. 
 
 What is known is that a few days later, Flynn again met with Cavusoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, for a breakfast at which they discussed U.S.-Turkish interests, according to a copy of the invitation. Cavusoglu attended Trump’s inauguration. 
 
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 After Trump made Flynn his national security adviser, there were high hopes in Ankara that the new administration would give in to Turkey’s wishes “since many of Turkey’s views overlap with the incoming president,” in the words of an article in the Daily Sabah, a pro-government newspaper. In interviews with visiting foreign journalists in March, Turkish officials repeatedly expressed optimism about working with the Trump administration after years of withering relations with the Obama administration. 
 
 Turkey would finally have someone who listened to the two things they wanted: to nix any plans of working with the YPG once and for all, and to extradite Fethulah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in exile in Pennsylvania. Erdogan’s government suspects Gulen and his followers of masterminding a failed coup attempt last July. 
 
 SHARE COPY LINK Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates said that Gen. Michael Flynn misled Vice President Mike Pence with false information and created a “compromised situation" during her testimony on the Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. 
 
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 In the September meeting with Turkish officials, they discussed with Flynn how to remove Gulen without going through the extradition process, according to former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey. 
 
 The idea was “a covert step in the dead of night to whisk this guy away,” Woolsey told The Wall Street Journal. 
 
 In the disclosures filed by Flynn, the meeting was “for the purpose of understanding better the political climate in Turkey at the time.” 
 
 Flynn also wrote an opinion piece in The Hill on Election Day titled “Our ally Turkey is in crisis and needs our support,” slamming the Obama administration for not taking Turkey’s Gulen concerns seriously. He described Gulen as a “shady Islamic mullah” he compared to Osama bin Laden. 
 
 “We need to adjust our foreign policy to recognize Turkey as a priority,” he wrote. “In this crisis, it is imperative that we remember who our real friends are.” 
 
 Asked about Flynn’s work for the Turkish government in an interview on March 9, the day the news broke of his Justice Department registration, Turkey’s justice minister just laughed. 
 
 It “wouldn’t be appropriate . . . to make any revelation,” Bekir Bozdag said through a translator. 
 
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 In another indication of the close ties between the new administration and Turkey under Flynn, the Turkish-U.S. Business Council’s annual summit, which is chaired by Alptekin, moved its meeting to the Trump International Hotel in Washington this year. The summit, which is in its 36th year, had in previous years been at the Ritz-Carlton. The new location was announced the day before Flynn was fired. 
 
 Is it treason? 
 
 Treason is the only crime that is defined in the Constitution, where it’s described as levying war against the U.S. or “adhering to” an enemy – helping them, in other words. An enemy is a nation or organization against whom the U.S. has declared war, according to Carlton Larson, a law professor at the University of California at Davis who specialized in treason. Non-state actors like ISIS probably fit the definition, Larson wrote in the Washington Post. 
 
 Flynn’s action not to support a specific group against them does not appear to legally fit the bill. Even at the height of the Cold War, when Julius and Ethel Rosenberg handed over nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union, they were tried and executed not for treason but for espionage. 
 
 [READ MORE: Democrats want to investigate if Flynn’s paid Russia speech violated Constitution] 
 
 However, given Flynn’s many connections to Russia and Turkey, with documented payments, Democrats have dusted off a chain of little-known ways he could have violated the Constitution. 
 
 In February they asked the Pentagon to look into whether he had violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause by accepting money for his 2015 Moscow speaking engagement at a gala marking the 10th anniversary of the state-owned RT television channel. The clause prohibits former military officers from accepting gifts from foreign governments without the approval of Congress. 
 
 After he was fired, many Democrats also pointed to the Logan Act, an obscure 1799 statute that bars private citizens from interfering with diplomatic relations between the U.S. and foreign governments. 
 
 Matthew Schofield contributed to this report. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. 
 
 / Updated By Ken Dilanian 
 
 Former national security adviser Michael Flynn was attending secret intelligence briefings with then-candidate Donald Trump while he was being paid more than half a million dollars to lobby on behalf of the Turkish government, federal records show. 
 
 Flynn stopped lobbying after he became national security adviser, but he then played a role in formulating policy toward Turkey, working for a president who has promised to curb the role of lobbyists in Washington. 
 
 White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Friday defended the Trump administration’s handling of the matter, even as he acknowledged to reporters that the White House was aware of the potential that Flynn might need to register as a foreign agent. 
 
 When his firm was hired by a Turkish businessman last year, Flynn did not register as a foreign lobbyist, and only did so a few days ago under pressure from the Justice Department, the businessman told The Associated Press this week. 
 
 Attempts by NBC News to reach the Turkish businessman, Ekim Alptekin, were unsuccessful Friday. 
 
 Price Floyd, a spokesman for Flynn, said the retired general would have no comment. 
 
 Flynn was fired last month after it was determined he misled Vice President Mike Pence about Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States. His security clearance was suspended. 
 
 Related: Trump National Security Adviser Pick Flynn Has Medals — And Baggage 
 
 When NBC News spoke to Alptekin in November, he said he had no affiliation with the Turkish government and that his hiring of Flynn’s company, the Flynn Intel Group, had nothing to do with the Turkish government. 
 
 But documents filed this week by Flynn with the Department of Justice paint a different picture. The documents say Alptekin "introduced officials of the Republic of Turkey to Flynn Intel Group officials at a meeting on September 19, 2016, in New York." 
 
 In the documents, the Flynn Intel Group asserts that it changed its filings to register as a foreign lobbyist "to eliminate any potential doubt." 
 
 "Although the Flynn Intel Group was engaged by a private firm, Inovo BV, and not by a foreign government, because of the subject matter of the engagement, Flynn Intel Group's work for Inovo could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey," the filing said. 
 
 The firm was paid a total of $530,000 as part of a $600,000 contract that ended the day after the election, when Flynn stepped away from his private work, the documents say. 
 
 During the summer and fall, Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was sitting in on classified intelligence briefings given to Trump. 
 
 Spicer acknowledged Friday that Flynn’s lawyer called the Trump transition team inquiring about whether Flynn should amend his filing to register as a foreign agent. 
 
 Related: Michael Flynn Resigns As National Security Adviser 
 
 "That wasn’t the role for the transition," Spicer said. "This was a personal matter, it’s a business matter." 
 
 He did not explain whether anyone in the Trump operation dug into Flynn’s lobbying work. 
 
 It was well known that on Election Day, Flynn authored an op-ed in the Hill, a Washington newspaper, in which he lambasted Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish cleric residing in Pennsylvania who is blamed by the Turkish government for fomenting a July coup attempt there. 
 
 Previously, Flynn had seemed to praise the coup attempt. 
 
 According to the Justice Department filing, Flynn’s firm was hired to gather information about Gülen, and to produce a short film about its investigation. 
 
 "Flynn Intel Group was tasked to perform investigative research for a specified scope of work using its laboratory team of senior defense, diplomacy, development, and intelligence professionals over a three-month period," the filing said. "Flynn Intel Group was to retain an experienced filming and production crew in order to develop a short film piece on the results of its investigation, and a public affairs firm to utilize for public affairs as needed. Flynn Intel Group held weekly calls with the client to report engagement progress." 
 
 Even some Republicans were wondering how the White House allowed Flynn to take one of the most sensitive jobs in the government. 
 
 "Makes you wonder if an adequate background check has been done," Rep. Steve King of Iowa said on MSNBC. "I think we need to know a lot more." 
 
 Ethics experts say more information is needed to know whether Flynn may have run afoul of any conflict of interest rules. His receipt of a large sum of money on behalf of the Turkish government may have meant he should have avoided specific decisions regarding Turkey, but the details would be crucial. 
 
 It wasn’t immediately clear Friday whether Flynn recused himself from any matter while he was national security adviser, or whether he directly participated in decisions that had an impact on Turkey. ||||| FILE - In this Feb. 13, 2017 file photo, Mike Flynn arrives for a news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington. Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, who... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — An attorney for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn told President Donald Trump's transition team before the inauguration that Flynn might register with the government as a foreign agent, White House officials acknowledged. 
 
 According to a person with knowledge of the discussions, Flynn's representatives also had a second conversation with the White House counsel's office after the inauguration and made clear the national security adviser would indeed be registering with the Justice Department. 
 
 On Friday, the White House said it had no recollection of the second conversation. But on Saturday, a White House official said the post-inauguration conversation did occur. 
 
 Both the White House official and person with knowledge of the discussions insisted on anonymity in order to disclose the private conversations. 
 
 The disclosures Friday indicate that Trump transition lawyers did not view Flynn's lobbying work for a Turkish businessman as a liability for an official who serves as the president's closest adviser on security and international affairs. They also raise new questions about whether Trump's transition team, and later his White House lawyers, fully vetted Flynn. 
 
 Flynn's registration this week with the Justice Department disclosed lobbying by him and his firm that may have benefited the government of Turkey. 
 
 Trump fired Flynn last month on other grounds — that he misled Vice President Mike Pence and other White House officials about his conversations with Russia's ambassador to the U.S. Flynn's registration comes amid intense scrutiny over his and other Trump associates' potential contacts with Russia. The FBI is investigating, as are House and Senate intelligence committees. 
 
 Flynn registered with the Justice Department on Tuesday, citing $530,000 worth of lobbying. His work on behalf of a company owned by Turkish businessman Ekim Alptekin occurred at the same time he was advising Trump's presidential campaign. 
 
 Among those told of Flynn's potential Justice Department registration during the transition was Don McGahn, a campaign lawyer who has gone on to become White House counsel, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversations between Flynn's representatives and the transition team. 
 
 A White House official said McGahn and others were not aware of the details of Flynn's work. It's not clear why the Trump advisers did not seek additional information once Flynn's lawyers raised the issue. 
 
 White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the president had not been aware Flynn might register as a foreign agent. He said that when Flynn's lawyer raised the possible filing with the transition team, Trump's attorneys responded that it was a personal matter and not something they would consult on. 
 
 "It's a business matter, it's not something that would be appropriate for a government entity to give someone guidance on when they should file as an individual," Spicer said. He dismissed questions about whether Flynn's work should have raised red flags for the new administration, saying the retired Army lieutenant general had "impeccable credentials." 
 
 In the filings with the Justice Department's Foreign Agent Registration Unit, Flynn and his firm, Flynn Intel Group Inc., acknowledged that his work for Alptekin's company "could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey." The lobbying on behalf of Inovo BV, a Dutch-based company owned by Alptekin, occurred from August through November. 
 
 Flynn's filing said that he and his firm were not certain whether Turkey's government was involved in Inovo's hiring of them as lobbyists. The firm said it was aware, however, that Alptekin "consulted with officials of the Republic of Turkey regarding potential work by Flynn Intel Group." 
 
 The firm also acknowledged that Alptekin introduced Flynn to two senior Turkish government officials in September, but it identified them only by their titles. The officials included in the meeting were Turkey's minister of foreign affairs, Mevlut Cavusoglu, and Turkish Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, who is President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's son-in-law. 
 
 In an interview with The Associated Press, Alptekin said Flynn and his firm filed the registration under pressure from Justice Department officials. Alptekin said he disagreed with the decision to register. He also said he had asked for some of his money back. 
 
 In an interview Thursday with Fox News, Pence said he was unaware of Flynn's foreign agent work until this week, but called the disclosure "an affirmation of the president's decision to ask Gen. Flynn to resign." 
 
 In November, Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, sent Pence a letter warning about conflicts created by Flynn's lobbying work. 
 
 "If the vice president had heeded my warnings, it's clear now he could have prevented the problems that occurred with Lt. Gen. Flynn," Cummings said Friday. 
 
 After Flynn joined the administration, he agreed not to lobby for five years after leaving government service and never to represent foreign governments. It appears that his work wouldn't violate the pledge because it occurred before he joined the administration. The pledge bars Flynn from ever doing the same type of work again in his lifetime. 
 
 Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, U.S. citizens who lobby on behalf of foreign governments or political entities must disclose their work to the Justice Department. Willfully failing to register is a felony, though the department rarely files criminal charges in such cases. It routinely works with lobbying firms to help them get back in compliance by registering and disclosing their work. 
 
 According to Flynn's filings, his firm's work involved research, informational materials and a video on the cleric Fethullah Gulen. Turkish President Erdogan has accused Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania, of orchestrating a botched coup last summer. Erdogan has called for Gulen's extradition, a request the Obama administration rebuffed. 
 
 Alptekin, the Turkish businessman, has denied having any ties to Erdogan's government. But he is a member of a Turkish economic relations board run by an Erdogan appointee. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Follow Chad Day at http://twitter.com/ChadSDay and Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
– Yet another twist in the Michael Flynn drama: President Trump's transition team knew weeks before the inauguration that Flynn was under federal investigation for links to a foreign power, but that was no obstacle to his hiring as national security adviser, sources tell the New York Times. The insiders say Flynn told the transition team's chief lawyer on Jan. 4 that he had been secretly working as a lobbyist for Turkey while advising Trump on national security issues during his campaign. He was hired in August by a Turkish businessman. Trump campaign officials—and the Justice Department—became suspicious after Flynn wrote an Election Day op-ed in the Hill criticizing a foe of the Turkish government. The Justice Department investigation of Flynn's Turkey links is separate from the FBI investigation of his ties to Russia, an investigation that President Trump allegedly asked former FBI chief James Comey to drop, Slate notes. Flynn was paid more than $500,000 for his work representing Turkish interests, and McClatchy reports that just 10 days into the Trump administration, Flynn rejected a plan that would have involved Kurdish forces helping to retake Raqqa, the de facto ISIS capital in Syria. The rejection, which was what Turkey wanted, halted an operation that had been months in the making. Trump revived the Raqqa plan weeks after Flynn was fired. (Flynn was warned about foreign payments years ago.)