Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served as national security advisor to former President Donald Trump, spoke with The Western Journal in an exclusive interview on Friday about a recent article alleging that he has worked with “extremist” groups.
Flynn directly addressed and refuted the Associated Press article that argued he is “building a movement centered on Christian nationalist ideas” and included him being described by an “expert on authoritarianism and fascism” as “one of the most dangerous individuals in America today.”
In approximately 4,300 words, the article made the claim that Flynn “has drawn together election deniers, mask and vaccine opponents, insurrectionists, Proud Boys, and elected officials and leaders in state and local Republican parties.”
Flynn argued that two of the AP’s named sources were presented as having a familiarity with the general that just isn’t there.
One of the sources, retired Brig. Gen. Steven M. Anderson, who reportedly served with Flynn in Iraq, is, according to Flynn, virtually unknown to him.
Flynn explained, “I don’t know who Anderson is. Maybe if I saw him I would recognize him. But they make it sound like he was some sort of deputy that I worked with on the battlefields of Iraq. I worked with tens of thousands of people, and a lot of them were colonels and generals and sergeants and privates.
“So I don’t even know that guy. And if he walked in this door right now into this room that I’m in, I would go, ‘Can I help you?’” Flynn added.
The second source Flynn referred to was presented by the AP as “Doug Wise, a former CIA and military officer who knew Flynn for decades and briefly served as Flynn’s deputy at the Defense Intelligence Agency.”
But according to the general, there’s a small problem with that description. While the AP acknowledged that Wise served only “briefly” as Flynn’s deputy, Flynn said he held that role for less than a week.
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Flynn described his relationship with Wise.
“The other guy is a former CIA officer, and he came in in the very last week. So I had like five days left at the Defense Intelligence Agency, and he came in to be the new deputy,” he said. “What’s interesting, he’s really, really disparaging.”
“I have an email from him after Trump won in 2016 that was essentially begging me for a job, to come back into the government, to work for Trump, right? To work in the National Security Council. This is after I was appointed,” Flynn said.
“He’s been one of the sort of talking heads out there, one of the ‘former intel leaders’ that has been completely disparaging, not only me but also everything that happened that we now know is totally false — the Russia hoax, the impeachments, all that.”
“But that’s who they go to. And they go, ‘formerly worked with Gen. Flynn,’” Flynn said.
“They just wanted somebody that says, ‘Oh, I know Gen. Flynn. He’s a crazy guy.’ And they can print that. Right? That’s how they personally attack,” he explained.
Flynn continued, “They don’t attack what I am standing for. They don’t attack what my issues are. When it comes to national security or government reform or domestic reform or the problems with drugs on the streets, the problems with the border invasion.
“They don’t want to attack the issues that I am actually out there speaking about. They want to attack me personally.”
