WASHINGTON (NYTIMES) - Top Trump administration officials have pushed to build nuclear power plants throughout Saudi Arabia over the vigorous objections of White House lawyers who question the legality of the plan and the ethics of a venture that could enrich Trump allies, according to a new report by House Democrats released on Tuesday (Feb 19).
The report is the most detailed portrait to date of how senior White House figures - including Mr Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump's first national security adviser - worked with retired military officers to circumvent the normal policymaking process to promote an export plan that experts worried could spread nuclear weapons technology in the volatile Middle East.
Administration lawyers warned that the nuclear exports plan - called the Middle East Marshall Plan - could violate laws meant to stop nuclear proliferation, and raised concerns about Mr Flynn's conflicts of interest.
Mr Flynn had worked on the issue for the company promoting the nuclear export plan and kept pushing it once inside the White House.
But even after Mr Flynn was fired, the proposal appears to have lingered. The initial discussions took place during the chaotic early months of the Trump administration, according to the 24-page report from the House Oversight and Reform Committee, but House Democrats on Tuesday cited evidence that as recently as last week, the White House was still considering some version of the proposal. Democrats said they had begun a full-scale inquiry.
"Further investigation is needed to determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interest of the United States or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in US foreign policy," committee staff wrote in the report.
The Trump administration's relationship with Saudi Arabia has already been examined by federal investigators, including special counsel Robert Mueller. But House Democrats could expand the inquiry into whether the prospect of business deals might have had a direct effect on American foreign policy in the oil-rich Persian Gulf region.
In this case, it was US nuclear energy companies and the retired generals and other former government officials working with them who stood to benefit financially if the federal government signed off on their coalition IP3's proposal for building of the nuclear power sites.
