Michael Flynn Was Paid by Russian-Linked Firms, Letter Shows.
The fees were apparently for speaking engagements by Mr. Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The engagements occurred before he became an official adviser to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.
The letter and supporting documents provide new details about a trip Mr. Flynn took to Moscow in December 2015 on behalf of RT. As part of that trip, RT paid him more than $45,000 to deliver a speech at an opulent gala hosted by the network, where he sat next to the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin.
In October 2015, Mr. Flynn was paid another $11,250 by the firm, Kaspersky Government Security Solutions, which was founded by Eugene Kaspersky. Mr. Kaspersky’s Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab has long been suspected of having ties to Russian intelligence services.
Mr. Kaspersky founded the lab with his wife in their Moscow apartment in 1997, and since then, it has grown into one of the most well-known and respected cybersecurity firms in the world. That prominence would make interactions with Russian intelligence unavoidable, although no concrete evidence has yet to surface showing any formal cooperation, experts and current and former American officials said.