(CNN) Prosecutors and defense attorneys spent the first day of the trial for retired Gen. Michael Flynn's ex-lobbying partner focused on a September 2016 meeting Flynn and others had with Turkish officials and an opinion piece Flynn published online on election day 2016.

Flynn's admitted crime of lying to federal authorities has hovered over the trial. It's likely Flynn's business efforts in 2016 -- at the same time he was working for Donald Trump's presidential campaign -- will become central to proceedings in a Virginia federal courtroom over the next week.

The case, a foreign lobbying trial for Flynn's ex-partner Bijan Kian, is also a major early test for a new Justice Department initiative to crack down on foreign lobbying crimes.

Kian, an Iranian-American who co-founded the Flynn Intel Group with Flynn, is contesting two criminal charges. Prosecutors say Kian, through the Flynn Intel Group, secretly worked for Turkey in 2016 and avoided disclosing the work to the Justice Department. The work allegedly was intended to smear a Turkish imam and political leader living in Pennsylvania who the Turkish government blamed for a 2016 uprising and whom the foreign power wanted to extradite.

Prosecutors on Monday laid out how they'll show the jury emails about a promised $600,000 in payments through an intermediary company for the Turkish government, and will discuss a Monopoly-like game board that Flynn Intel Group created about the self-exiled Turk, Fethullah Gulen. Prosecutors also described the September 2016 meeting between Flynn, Kian, Turkish ministers and others, and Flynn's Nov. 8, 2016, op-ed in The Hill newspaper about the US-Turkish relationship and Gulen.

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