ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment Monday charging two business associates of Michael T. Flynn with acting as agents of the Turkish government and described in remarkable detail how the three attempted to shape U.S. policy and public opinion to advance that country’s interests.

Throughout the fall of 2016, while Flynn served publicly serving as a key surrogate and foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, prosecutors say he and business partner Bijan Kian took hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Turkish government to push for the extradition from the U.S. of dissident cleric Fethullah Gulen. Their efforts, prosecutors said, were directed by Kamil Ekim Alptekin, a Turkish businessman with close ties to the country’s leadership.

U.S. law enforcement has time and time again rejected Turkey’s bid to send the cleric back to his home country – despite intense pressure from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who believes Gulen responsible for a failed 2016 coup attempt. By prosecutors’ account, the foreign government found a powerful and enthusiastic ally in Flynn – one who was willing on the eve of the presidential election to pen an op-ed pushing for Gulen’s expulsion.

That piece in The Hill, which called Gulen “a “radical cleric … running a scam,” was the culmination of a months-long public and private lobbying campaign for which the Turkish government agreed to pay Flynn’s consulting firm $600,000, according to the indictment.

The money was funneled through a company run by Turkish businessman Ekim Alptekin, who also arranged meetings and delivered guidance from his country’s leaders, according to the indictment.

Kian and Alptekin are charged with conspiracy and acting as agents of a foreign government; Alptekin is also accused of making false statements. Kian made his first appearance in Alexandria federal court Monday morning; Alptekin remains in Turkey.

While Flynn’s efforts to have cleric Fethullah Gulen extradited from the United States were previously known, the indictment demonstrates the extent to which he was secretly working to advance the interests of his Turkish clients.

Negotiations began in July 2016, according to the court records, after the Justice Department told the Turkish government that Gulen could not be extradited without more evidence of wrongdoing.

“We are ready to engage on what needs to be done,” Kian wrote Alptekin, on July 27.

“I just finished in Ankara after several meetings today” with Turkish ministers, Alptekin wrote back to Kian – who also goes by Rafiekian – and Flynn the next month, according to the indictment. “I have a green light to discuss confidentiality, budget, and the scope of the contract.”

That contract, drawn up in September 2016, required the Flynn Intel Group to “deliver findings and results including but not limited to making criminal referrals” against Gulen.

That same month, according to the indictment, Flynn, Kian, and Alptekin met with high-level Turkish officials in New York to discuss the campaign. Over the next two months Flynn’s firm lobbied a member of Congress, a congressional staffer and a state government official, according to the indictment. But in October, Alptekin complained that there had been no “smoking gun.” Kian, according to prosecutors, in response produced a draft of the op-ed, which compared Gulen to Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini and argued the U.S. should not provide a “safe haven” for the cleric.

“The arrow has left the bow!” Kian emailed Alptekin on Nov. 4, 2016. “This is a very high profile exposure one day before the election.”

Flynn’s op-ed was published in The Hill on Nov. 8, the day Trump was elected. It prompted concern in the Justice Department’s national security division and criminal division, where officials wondered why Flynn, aspiring to be national security adviser to the next president, was parroting the talking points of the Turkish government.

Flynn is set to be sentenced Tuesday for lying to FBI agents as part of a special counsel investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. Prosecutors asked that he receive no prison time, citing his “substantial assistance.” As part his plea, Flynn agreed that he took part in this scheme. But the case is being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorneys James Gillis and Evan Turgeon in the Eastern District of Virginia, not the special counsel.

Alptekin also co-chaired a conference on U.S.-Turkey relations at Trump’s Washington hotel in 2017. While the event was being held, there was a violent clash between Turkish guards and protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington.

Flynn Intel Group wired $40,000 to Alptekin’s company in the Netherlands and described it as a “consultancy” fee. In reality, according to the indictment, it was a kickback for Alptekin’s pretending he and not the Turkish government was the client for the work Flynn’s company was doing.

The Flynn Intel Group based in Alexandria, Virginia, registered retroactively with the Justice Department as a foreign agent in March 2017, disclosing that Alptekin’s firm, Inovo BV, had paid it more than $500,000 for work that could benefit Turkey.

But according to the indictment, Kian and Alptekin lied about the involvement of Turkish government officials in the project, claiming it was done on behalf of an Israeli company seeking to do business in Turkey. Prosecutors say the men falsely claimed that Flynn wrote the op-ed on his own and that Alptekin opposed its publication, and that the $40,000 payment to Alptekin’s firm was a refund for unperformed work.

The Flynn Intel Group also falsely claimed that a meeting in New York with Turkish officials on Sept. 19, 2016, was just for background on the country, prosecutors say.

Flynn left the White House in February 2017 after it was revealed that he had lied about his conversation with a Russian ambassador. But Flynn had informed the incoming White House legal counsel during the transition that he might need to register as a foreign agent, and that apparently raised no alarms – even though he would soon become Trump’s national security adviser. Flynn’s firm is now defunct.

Following a phone call between Erdogan and President Trump last week, Turkish officials told reporters that the U.S. president said possible tax violations by Gulen were being reviewed. But administration officials dispute that there is a justifiable legal case for returning him to Turkey.

A statement released by The Alliance for Shared Values, a nonprofit affiliated with Gulen, said the indictment “shows just how far the Erdogan government will go in breaking US law.”

Kian was allowed out on a personal recognizance bond Monday, with one condition: That he keep the probation office abreast of his movements. Defense attorney Robert Trout told a magistrate judge that Kian is in the process of relocating from California to the D.C. area. Trout declined to comment after the proceeding.

The Washington Post’s Devlin Barrett, Karen DeYoung, Rosalind S. Helderman, David Fahrenthold and Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.

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