A former business partner of President Donald Trump's first national security advisor, Michael Flynn, and another man have been indicted on conspiracy charges related to efforts to smear and win the extradition of an exiled Turkish cleric at the behest of the government of Turkey, CNBC reported.

That conspiracy allegedly included a scathing op-ed article that Flynn wrote about the cleric, Fethullah Gulen, which was published on Election Day 2016.

Bijan Kian, 66, and Kamil Alptekin were charged in U.S. District Court in Eastern Virginia with acting as unregistered agents of the Turkish government, according to court documents made public Monday.

Alptekin, a 41-year-old Turkish national who currently is in Turkey, also was charged with four counts of making false statements to the FBI, according to the indictment, issued by a grand jury last Wednesday.

Kian, an Iranian-American who is a resident of San Juan Capistrano, California, appeared Monday morning in court in Alexandria, Virginia, and was released without bail. Kian served on Trump's transition team, in the division related to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The two men are accused by federal authorities of attempting to "covertly and unlawfully" influence U.S. politics and public opinion in favor of extraditing Gulen, who was blamed by Turkey's president, Recep Erdogan, for an attempted coup in 2016. Cabinet-level officials in Turkey approved the budget for the project, according to prosecutors.