Michael Flynn

Michael Thomas Flynn
Professional / Career Details
Name	Michael Thomas Flynn
Previous positions	25th U.S. National Security Advisor  (2017-01-22 to 2017-02-13) Director, Defense Intelligence Agency  (2012-07-24 to 2014-08-07) See also "Military Service" (below)
Military Service
Allegiance	United States
Branch or service	U.S. Army
Years of service	1981-2014
Rank	Lieutenant General  (3-star)
Unit	Defense Intelligence Agency Joint Functional Component Command for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance
Battles / Wars	Invasion of Grenada Operation Uphold Democracy War in Afghanistan Iraq War
Awards	Defense Distinguished Service Medal Defense Superior Service Medal  (x4) Legion of Merit  (x2) Bronze Star Medal  (x4) Meritorious Service Medal  (x6) Joint Service Commendation Medal Army Commendation Medal  (x5)
Personal Details
Name	Michael Thomas Flynn
Born	1958-12-24
Birthplace	Middletown, Rhode Island, U.S.A.
Spouse	Lori Andrade (m. 1981)
Marital status	Married
Children	2 Son: Michael G. Flynn (Michael Flynn, Jr.)
Parents	Father: Charles Francis Flynn (small-town banker) Mother: Helen Frances (née Andrews; realtor)
Siblings	One of 9 siblings Brother: Charles A. Flynn  [U.S. Army general (4-star)]
Nationality	American
Education	University of Rhode Island  (B.S.) Golden Gate University  (M.B.A.) United States Army Command and General Staff College  (M.M.A.S.) Naval War College  (M.A.)
Founder of	Flynn Intel Group  (founded 2014; closed 2016) Subsidiaries: FIG Cyber, Inc. FIG Aviation
Profession	Business Lobbyist  (Flynn Intel Group; ...) Public speaker
Known for	Proponent of numerous conspiracy theories, notably QAnon Military expertise in propaganda (false information; deception) and psychological warfare Trumpism As President Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election, Flynn suggested Trump should suspend the Constitution, silence the press, and hold a new election under military authority.
Controversies	Close associations with Russian politicians, state security agents and propaganda media Associations and other authoritarian regimes (Turkey; ...) Islamophobia Neoconservative and neofascism views Permanently banned (2021-01-08) on Twitter
Religion	Parents (both): Catholics of Irish descent
Political party	Democratic Party
Associations	QAnon
Political position	Trumpism
Ideology	Neoconservatism Neofascism

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Background

Michael Thomas Flynn (born December 24, 1958) is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who was the 25th U.S. National Security Advisor for the first 22 days of the Trump administration. Flynn resigned in light of reports that he had lied regarding conversations with Sergey Kislyak. Flynn's military career included a key role in shaping U.S. counterterrorism strategy and dismantling insurgent networks in the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, and he was given numerous combat arms, conventional, and special operations senior intelligence assignments. Flynn became the 18th director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2012-07, until his forced retirement from the military in 2014-08. During his tenure he gave a lecture on leadership at the Moscow headquarters of the Russian military intelligence directorate GRU, the first American official to be admitted entry to the headquarters.

After leaving the military, in 2014-10 Michael Flynn established Flynn Intel Group, which provided intelligence services for businesses and governments, including in Turkey. In 2015-12, Michael Flynn was paid $45,000 to deliver a Moscow speech at the ten-year anniversary celebration of RT [Russian propaganda TV network] - a state-controlled Russian international television network - where Flynn sat next to Russian president Vladimir Putin at his banquet table.

In 2016-02, Michael Flynn became a national security advisor to Donald Trump for Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. In 2017-03, Flynn retroactively registered as a foreign agent, acknowledging that in 2016 he had conducted paid lobbying work that may have benefited Turkey's government. On 2017-01-22, Flynn was sworn in as the U.S. National Security Advisor. On 2017-02-13, he resigned after information surfaced that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and others about the nature and content of his communications with Russian ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak. Flynn's tenure as the National Security Advisor is the shortest (24 days) in the history of the position.

In 2017-12, Michael Flynn formalized a deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller to plead guilty to a felony count of "willfully and knowingly" making false statements to the FBI about the Kislyak communications, and agreed to cooperate with the Special Counsel investigation (2017-2019). In 2019-06, Flynn dismissed his attorneys and retained Sidney Powell, who on the same day wrote to Attorney General Bill Barr seeking his assistance in exonerating Flynn. Sidney Powell had discussed the case on FOX News and spoken to President Trump about it on several occasions. In 2020-01, two weeks before his scheduled sentencing, Flynn moved to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming government vindictiveness and breach of the plea agreement. At Barr's direction, the Justice Department filed a court motion on 2020-05-07 to drop all charges against Flynn. Presiding federal judge Emmet Sullivan ruled the matter to be placed on hold to solicit amicus curiae briefs from third parties. Sidney Powell then asked the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to compel Judge Sullivan to drop the case, but her request was denied. On 2020-11-25, Flynn was issued a presidential pardon by Trump. On 2020-12-08, Judge Sullivan dismissed the criminal case against Flynn, stating he probably would have denied the Justice Department motion to drop the case.

Michael Flynn and QAnon

In the days leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign,   Michael Flynn - then a top surrogate for Donald Trump  [campaign surrogate: a politician or person of influence campaigning for a presidential candidate], and later Trump's National Security Advisor - posted multiple tweets on Twitter containing conspiratorial material regarding Hilliary Clinton. They alleged that Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta, drank the blood and bodily fluids of other humans in , which Politico says "soon morphed into the pizzagate conspiracy theory involving Comet Ping Pong" (a pizzeria, restaurant, and concert venue located on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C.'s Chevy Chase neighborhood). On 2016-11-02, Michael Flynn tweeted a link to a story with unfounded accusations and wrote, "U decide - NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc ... MUST READ!" The tweet was shared by over 9,000 people, but was deleted from Flynn's account sometime during 2016-12-{12-13}.

After the shooting incident at Comet Ping Pong, Michael Flynn Jr. - Michael T. Flynn's son, and also a member of Donald Trump's transition team - tweeted: "Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many 'coincidences' tied to it." On 2016-12-06 Michael Flynn Jr. was forced out of Trump's transition team. Spokesman Jason Miller did not identify the reason for his dismissal, however, The New York Times reported that other officials had confirmed it was related to the tweet.

Some of Pizzagate's proponents, including David Seaman and Michael G. Flynn (Michael Flynn's son), evolved the pizzagate conspiracy into a broader government conspiracy called "Pedogate". According to this conspiracy theory, a "satanic cabal of elites" of the New World Order operates international child sex trafficking rings. By 2020-06, the conspiracy theory found renewed popularity on TikTok, where videos tagged #Pizzagate were reaching over 80 million views (see Pizzagate: global spread and merger with QAnon).

Michael Flynn was a scheduled speaker for a Digital Soldiers Conference" in Atlanta in 2019-09, along with other Trump associates including George Papadopoulos and Gina Loudon. The stated purpose was to prepare "patriotic social media warriors" for a coming "digital civil war." The announcement for the event prominently displayed a "Q" spelled in stars on the blue field of an American flag, and the host of the event had numerous references to QAnon on his Twitter account.

On Independence Day 2020, Flynn tweeted a video of himself leading others in an oath to the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory. Michael Flynn's attorney, Sidney Powell, denied the oath related to QAnon, saying it was merely a statement engraved on a bell on John F. Kennedy's sailboat. However, during preceding days numerous QAnon followers had taken the same so-called "digital soldier oath" on Twitter, using the same #TakeTheOath hashtag as Flynn had. Following his 2020-11 pardon, Flynn deepened his involvement with QAnon by endorsing merchandise and launching a website to promote "digital soldiers" who are "pushing back against the rise of fake news." As Flynn appeared on podcasts popular with QAnon followers such as "Bards of War," some QAnon stories predicted that he would lead a military assault to capture the Obamas, Clintons, and Bidens, while others held that Flynn was "Q".

[2020-07-07] On 2020-07-04 President Trump's former National Security Advisor,   Michael Flynn, posted a video of himself using phrases and slogans that are from the baseless QAnon   conspiracy movement.  [Source]

Michael Flynn: Neo-fascist Rhetoric / Ideology

In 2020, as President Trump sought to overturn the results of the 2020 United States presidential election - in which Trump was defeated - Michael Flynn suggested the president should suspend the Constitution, silence the press, and hold a new election under military authority. Flynn later met with Trump and their attorney Sidney Powell in the Oval Office to discuss the president's options. Trump denied reports that Flynn's martial law idea had been discussed.

On 2021-01-08, Twitter permanently banned Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, and others who promoted QAnon.

In 2021-02 Media Matters published analysis finding that QAnon adherents had praised the February 2021 Myanmar coup d'état in which the Myanmar military overthrew the democratically elected government, and advocated a similar coup in the United States. Michael Flynn addressed a Dallas QAnon conference in 2021-05 when an audience member stated, "I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can't happen here." Flynn responded, "No reason, I mean, it should happen here. No reason. That's right." After his words were reported, Flynn asserted he had "not at any time called for any action of that sort" and accused the press of "boldface fabrication based on twisted reporting."

Michael Flynn became active on speaking tours in 2021. Will Sommer of The Daily Beast observed that a prayer Flynn gave in 2021-09 bore a striking resemblance to one by Elizabeth Clare Prophet, leader of the Church Universal and Triumphant, an anticommunist doomsday cult. Some QAnon supporters alleged the prayer was Satanic because Flynn used terms they considered antithetical to Christian doctrine. While speaking before a "ReAwaken America" audience in 2021-11, Michael Flynn caused outrage when he stated, "If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God."

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Additional Reading

Michael Flynn - a right-wing   conspiracy   theorist who served as the United States National Security Advisor to former President Donald Trump - spoke at a campaign rally 2022-03-05 for Make America Great Again (MAGA) pastor Jackson Lahmeyer  [see also, Wikipedia: 2022 United States Senate election in Oklahoma] in Oklahoma, where Michael Flynn falsely claimed that "the word 'Creator' appears in the Constitution of the United States four times."

Michael Flynn, who was a key player in so-called "Stop the Steal" campaign and continues to travel the country promoting the "Big Lie" that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump  [Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election], has endorsed Jackson Lahmeyer - a fellow right-wing conspiracy theorist - in Flynn's bid to unseat Oklahoma Senator James Lankford (R-OK) in the Republican primary  [Wikipedia: 2022 United States Senate election in Oklahoma]. On 2022-03-05, Flynn used his time at Jackson Lahmeyer's campaign rally to deliver a rambling speech insisting that this nation is locked in "a spiritual war" against the likes of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) - who Flynn called "a demon" - and therefore needs elected leaders like Jackson Lahmeyer, who realize that the rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and the United States Bill of Rights come from God.

"Democracy is always a fragile type," Michael Flynn said. "You read The Federalist Papers, you read writings - because this is all about the people that we're talking about tonight running for office, and others that are out there - you read all these things, you study the history of this country, you study how it was founded. That's why the word 'Creator' is in the Constitution four times. 'We are endowed by our Creator.'"

As a matter of fact, the word "Creator" appears zero times in the U.S. Constitution. The phrase "endowed by their Creator" actually appears in the Declaration of Independence. But Michael Flynn wasn't done. "When you go home, look at the Bill of Rights and lay the Ten Commandments right down next to them," Flynn continued. "Put them right next to each other, and you'll get a sense of how they developed the Bill of Rights. The rights that the Creator gave us. These are God-given rights; these are not man-given rights." "Then you take two other documents, our Constitution and for those who study the Bible, and you look at those two documents because there's so much ," Flynn added. "The Constitution and the Bible, those two documents are the fulfillment of the promises in the Bill of Rights and the Ten Commandments. That is what gives us our ability to be able to be this free, just unbelievable country that we are."

We, the undersigned, are alumni of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) who have collectively served both Republican and Democratic administrations. Each of us proudly took an oath to defend the Constitution and pursue the evenhanded administration of justice free from partisan consideration.

Many of us have spoken out previously to condemn President Trump's and United States Attorney General   William Barr's political interference in the Department [United States Department of Justice]'s law enforcement decisions, as we did when Attorney General Bill Barr overruled the sentencing recommendation of career prosecutors to seek favorable treatment for President Trump's close associate, Roger J. Stone Jr.. The Attorney General's intervention in the Stone case to seek political favor for a personal ally of the President flouted the core principle that politics must never enter into the Department's law enforcement decisions and undermined its mission to ensure equal justice under the law. As we said then, "Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies."

Now, Attorney General Barr has once again assaulted the rule of law, this time in the case of President Trump's former National Security Advisor   Michael Flynn. In 2017-12, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States. Subsequent events strongly suggest political interference in Flynn's prosecution. Despite previously acknowledging that he "had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI," President Trump has repeatedly and publicly complained that Flynn has been mistreated and subjected to a "witch hunt." The President has also said that Flynn was "essentially exonerated" and that he was "strongly considering a full pardon." The Department has now moved to dismiss the charges against Flynn, in a filing signed by a single political appointee and no career prosecutors. The Department's purported justification for doing so does not hold up to scrutiny, given the ample evidence that the investigation was well-founded and -- more importantly -- the fact that Flynn admitted under oath and in open court that he told material lies to the FBI in violation of longstanding federal law.

Make no mistake: The Department's action is extraordinarily rare, if not unprecedented. If any of us, or anyone reading this statement who is not a friend of the President, were to lie to federal investigators in the course of a properly predicated counterintelligence investigation, and admit we did so under oath, we would be prosecuted for it.

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Finally, in our previous statement, we called on Attorney General Barr to resign, although we recognized then that there was little chance that he would do so. We continue to believe that it would be best for the integrity of the Justice Department and for our democracy for Attorney General Barr to step aside. In the meantime, we call on Congress to hold the Attorney General accountable. In the midst of the greatest public health crisis our nation has faced in over a century, we would all prefer it if Congress could focus on the health and prosperity of Americans, not threats to the health of our democracy. Yet Attorney General Barr has left Congress with no choice. Attorney General Barr was previously set to give testimony before the House Judiciary Committee  [United States House Committee on the Judiciary] on 2020-03-31, but the hearing was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We urge the Committee to reschedule Attorney General Barr's testimony as soon as safely possible and demand that he answer for his abuses of power. We also call upon Congress to formally censure Attorney General Barr for his repeated assaults on the rule of law in doing the President's personal bidding rather than acting in the public interest. Our democracy depends on a Department of Justice that acts as an independent arbiter of equal justice, not as an arm of the president's political apparatus.

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• Related: [WashingtonPost.com, 2020-02-16] More than 1,100 ex-Justice Department officials call for Barr's resignation.  More than 1,100 former United States Department of Justice employees signed a public letter Sunday [2020-02-16] urging Attorney General William P. Barr to resign over his handling of the case of President Trump's longtime friend Roger Stone - and exhorted current department employees to report any unethical conduct.

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Michael Flynn,   President Donald Trump's former National Security Advisor, pulled out of a fundraiser for his legal defense fund that was organized by a supporter of the bizarre conspiracy theory known as QAnon, after Mother Jones   reported on the event's connection to the fringe group.

Michael Flynn's attorney, Sidney Powell, tweeted Saturday [2019-08-17] that "given recent reports and comments," Michael Flynn, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, would not be participating "in a conference in Atlanta on 2019-09-14." The conference referenced is the Digital Soldiers Conference, a one-day event that promises to prepare attendees to battle against "censorship and oppression" at the hands of "Big Tech Socialists" who have been "de-platforming those who dare violate their liberal sensitivities." The event's proceeds are to benefit a fund raising money for Flynn's legal defense, according to the conference website.

Earlier this month [2019-08], Mother Jones'  Dan Friedman and Ali Breland reported that Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos - who also aided the Trump campaign on foreign policy - were scheduled to appear at the event organized by a QAnon follower,   Richard S. Granville  [local copy  |  see also  |  local copy]. Granville told Mother Jones he was working with Powell, Flynn's attorney, to organize the "Digital Soldiers" event.

The event is being organized by Rich Granville  [local copy], the CEO of Yippy, Inc., who has a Twitter feed littered with references to QAnon, a conspiracy theory centered around the notion that Trump is secretly taking down an international ring of pedophiles that includes high-ranking Democrats. QAnon supporters believe that an anonymous person known as "Q" is dropping online clues about this supposed clandestine operation. The web page for Richard Granville's conference prominently features an American flag festooned with a Q.

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