Flynn’s rise was rapid, his fall was even faster
Trump’s favourite general known for his ‘Lock her up’ attacks on Clinton
WASHINGTON — Michael Flynn was U.S. President Donald Trump’s favourite general.
He was rapidly vaulted to prominence by his fiery speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention about jailing Hillary Clinton and by Trump’s decision to reward him with a plum job as his top national security aide. Flynn’s plunge was even faster. He was fired by Trump after just a month in the White House and left to contend with a mounting criminal probe that led to his decision to plead guilty Friday to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.
Flynn, 58, is the first person who served in the Trump White House to be charged in the wideranging investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller into possible co-ordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Flynn came to the fore as the stern, hawkish persona of the tough national security image Trump sought to project to the nation and the world during last year’s campaign.
Trump admired “my generals,” as he described the military men he brought into his campaign.
Flynn was a familiar presence on the Trump campaign trail.
At campaign events, and at the Republican convention, Flynn led cheers of “Lock her up” about the Democratic candidate and her email practices.
Flynn’s vaunted military career as an intelligence specialist had ended in a forced dismissal by senior Obama administration officials.
As a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, he had to scramble for opportunities advising cybersecurity companies and starting up his own consulting firm.
But Trump’s growing admiration provided Flynn with the promise of a pivotal national role and a public forum for his increasingly defiant screeds against “radical Islam” and the Obama administration.
Trump lauded Flynn as an “invaluable asset” in November 2016 as he named him his national security adviser. And even after Trump fired him in February, the president continued to hold Flynn in high esteem, grousing that such a “wonderful man” had been laid low by leaks and pesky media.
Flynn had a phone conversation with the Russian ambassador to the United States that was recorded by the U.S. government and that swiftly caught the attention of the Justice Department.
He was interviewed by FBI agents on Jan. 24 about his communications with the ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, and about whether they had discussed sanctions imposed on Russia following its election interference.
Days later, then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates warned White House counsel Don McGahn that Flynn had been compromised because of discrepancies between the White House public narrative — that Flynn and Kislyak had not discussed sanctions — and the reality of what occurred.
White House officials took no immediate action against Flynn, and he was not forced to resign his position until after news reports indicated he had discussed sanctions and Justice Department officials had raised concerns.
In the weeks after his firing, Flynn registered retroactively with the Justice Department , disclosing that $530,000 worth of lobbying his company did for a Turkish businessman could have benefited the government of Turkey. Flynn’s business partner, former Export-Import Bank board member Bijan Kian , also registered.
In the filings, both men laid out a contract Flynn signed in the final months of the presidential campaign that called for his firm, the Flynn Intel Group, to gather information that could support a criminal case against a Turkish cleric living in the U.S.
The cleric, Fethullah Gulen, has been accused of being behind a failed coup last year, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for his extradition. The U.S. has rebuffed those calls for lack of evidence.
But Flynn’s retroactive disclosure of the work did not satisfy federal prosecutors. A grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia soon began investigating, and FBI agents began asking questions about how much Flynn and Kian knew about Ekim Alptekin, the Turkish businessman who hired them.
When Mueller was appointed in May, he incorporated that investigation.
The Turkish contract landed by Flynn’s consulting firm was the first significant promise of business success since he had left the military. Flynn had won plaudits as a military intelligence officer in combat zones in Afghanistan and Iraq and was rewarded in July 2012 with a post as director of the Defence Intelligence Agency, the military’s spy organization.
He lasted two years, criticized by Obama administration officials for his management and temper, and was forced to retire in August 2014.
Flynn’s post-military career was a succession of consulting gigs and directorships at small defence contractors. He travelled to the Mideast in 2015 to lend credibility to a proposal for a U.S.-Russia private nuclear partnership that has yet to work out. And he took payments from several foreign firms that have come back to haunt him.
Congressional committees investigating Flynn earlier this year found that he had been paid more than $37,000 by RT, a Russian state-sponsored television station, to attend its anniversary gala in Moscow in December 2015.
Flynn’s rise in prominence in conservative circles came as he became an outspoken critic of President Barack Obama’s handling of terrorism.
Flynn called for a more aggressive campaign against the Islamic State group and turned his fire on Islam itself, calling it a “cancer” and a “political ideology” that “definitely hides behind being a religion.”