By Michelle R. Smith | Related Press
BATAVIA, N.Y. — The gang swayed on its ft, arms pumping, the beat of Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” thumping of their chests. The folks below the revival tent hooted as Michael Flynn strode throughout the stage, bopping and laughing, singing the chorus into his microphone and inspiring the viewers to sing alongside to the transgressive rock anthem.
“We’ll battle the powers that be simply/Don’t choose our future ’trigger/You don’t know us, you don’t belong!”
The emcee launched him as “America’s Common,” however to these within the viewers, Flynn is excess of that: martyr, hero, chief, patriot, warrior.
The retired lieutenant common, former nationwide safety adviser, onetime anti-terrorism fighter, is now centered on his subsequent process: constructing a motion centered on Christian nationalist concepts, the place Christianity is on the heart of American life and establishments.
Flynn introduced his battle — a battle he calls each religious and political — final month to a church in Batavia, New York, the place hundreds of individuals paid wherever from just a few dollars to as much as $500 to listen to and take in his message that the US is dealing with an existential menace, and that to avoid wasting the nation, his supporters should act.
Flynn, 63, has used public appearances to energise voters, together with political endorsements to construct alliances and a community of nonprofit teams — one among which has projected spending $50 million — to advance the motion, an investigation by The Related Press and the PBS collection “Frontline” has discovered. He has drawn collectively election deniers, masks and vaccine opponents, insurrectionists, Proud Boys, and elected officers and leaders in state and native Republican events. Alongside the way in which, the AP and “Frontline” documented, Flynn and his corporations have earned lots of of hundreds of dollars for his efforts.
This story is a part of an ongoing investigation from The Related Press and “Frontline” that features the upcoming documentary “Michael Flynn’s Holy Battle,” premiering Oct. 18 on PBS and on-line.
The AP and “Frontline” spoke with greater than 60 folks, together with Flynn’s household, mates, opponents, and present and former colleagues, for this story. The information organizations additionally reviewed marketing campaign finance data, company and charity filings, social media posts and related open-source data, and attended a number of public occasions the place Flynn appeared. Reporters examined dozens of Flynn’s speeches, interviews and public appearances. Flynn himself sat down for a uncommon on-camera interview with what he calls the mainstream media.
“I don’t even know why I’m speaking to you, actually,” Flynn mentioned because the interview acquired underway.
All through 2021 and 2022, Flynn made greater than 60 in-person speeches in 24 states, in accordance with a rely by the AP and “Frontline.” When he speaks, the previous prime adviser to then-President Donald Trump spreads baseless conspiracy theories, stoking worry and fueling anger and division and grievance.
Flynn is “some of the harmful people in America right now,” mentioned Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian and knowledgeable on authoritarianism and fascism who wrote the e-book “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Current.”
“He's spearheading the assault on our democracy, which is coming from many quarters, and he's affiliated with many of those sectors, from the navy to Christian nationalism to election denial to extremist teams,” she mentioned. “All of this comes collectively to current a really stay menace. And he’s on the heart.”
Flynn has, with combined success, supported like-minded candidates across the nation, and has mentioned his quick objective is to affect this 12 months’s elections. In Sarasota, Florida, the place he lives, he has labored in live performance with members of the extremist group the Proud Boys to affect native politics. Their favored candidates in August gained management of the county faculty board.
“Native motion has a nationwide influence” is his mantra.
“We have to take this nation again one city at a time, one county at a time, one state at a time, if that’s what it takes,” he informed a crowd in Salt Lake Metropolis.
THE ULTIMATE INSIDER
Flynn’s advocacy of falsehoods and conspiracy theories hardly makes him distinctive in a fact-challenged America, however his pedigree, navy profession and high-powered Washington contacts set him aside. He’s a retired three-star common who lower than twenty years in the past developed wartime methods for countering insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.
His choice as Trump’s first nationwide safety adviser made him the last word insider, giving him nominal management — if just for a matter of weeks — of the administration’s nationwide safety technique. When he later discovered himself in authorized hassle on suspicion that he had lied to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the US, he cooperated with the identical authorities institution he now crusades in opposition to.
Within the weeks after the November 2020 presidential election, Flynn picked up a presidential pardon — granted to forgive his responsible plea to mendacity to the FBI. He instantly turned a chief promoter of the “Cease the Steal” effort and championed bogus claims about overseas interference and poll tampering that weren’t supported by credible proof. However for some voters, Flynn’s standing as a retired common and prime intelligence officer gave weight to the empty theories.
He falsely mentioned Trump gained, referred to as the election consequence a part of “a coup in progress,” steered Trump ought to seize voting machines and mentioned Trump might order up the navy in some states and rerun the election. In December 2020 he even made his means into the Oval Workplace to push his concepts on to Trump.
Referred to as earlier than a congressional committee investigating the Capitol rebellion of Jan. 6, 2021, Flynn refused to say whether or not he believed the violence was justified and even whether or not he believed within the peaceable transition of energy. He invoked his Fifth Modification proper to not incriminate himself.
Retired Brig. Gen. Steven M. Anderson, who served with Flynn in Iraq, referred to as Flynn’s concepts antithetical to core values of the American navy and the nation itself.
Anderson worries that Flynn is “a task mannequin for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of troopers and former troopers,” and that his concepts can empower them to take actions that harm the nation.
“We’ve acquired a retired three-star, former NSA, who says we will overthrow the election, use our navy,” Anderson mentioned. The considering goes, he mentioned, “Effectively, then sure, signal me up for the Proud Boys.”
Flynn makes use of the three stars he earned within the navy as his image, a shorthand that reminds folks he got here from the best ranges of the nation’s energy construction — and that means he has a particular information of how issues work within the shadowy world of Washington and international affairs.
“It’s a crying disgrace that basically he has developed into the particular person he's now,” mentioned Anderson, who described his former colleague as a “subservient buffoon that sadly has forsaken his oath of workplace.”
Doug Smart, a former CIA and navy officer who knew Flynn for many years and briefly served as Flynn’s deputy on the Protection Intelligence Company, mentioned even within the navy, Flynn usually pushed the envelope of what was permissible and demonstrated “excessive considering.” He believes Flynn hasn’t reworked, he’s simply develop into extra comfy performing on the anger that burns inside him.
“I perceive the the explanation why he gravitated to the suitable wing as a result of as his conduct and beliefs turned more unusual, I believe they have been very welcoming. As a result of who wouldn’t desire a extremely revered Military three-star to hitch your group?” Smart mentioned.
“I believe he believed, post-government, and he was proper on this … that he was too well-connected to fail,” Smart mentioned. “And he acquired pardoned.”
Flynn sees conspiracies in nearly each nook of American life.
He’s repeated falsehoods about Black Lives Matter and mentioned that so-called globalists created COVID-19. He tells the tens of hundreds of people that have paid to see him converse that there are 75 members of the Socialist Social gathering in Congress, and has mentioned the left and Democrats are attempting to destroy the nation. He asserts, above all else, that the US was based on Judeo-Christian values. The bedrock, he warns, is crumbling.
The nation, Flynn usually says in speeches and interviews, is within the midst of a “religious warfare,” and he goes after most of the establishments and concepts that stand as pillars of American democracy.
He has informed audiences he doesn’t belief the U.S. authorities or authorities establishments that oversee the rule of regulation. He referred to as the media “the No. 1 enemy” and mentioned it has finished a “horrible, horrible disservice to the nation by simply always mendacity and attempting to deceive us.” He says elementary colleges are instructing “filth” and “pornography.” He continues to say, ignoring all proof on the contrary, that elections can’t be trusted. He says, again and again, that a few of his fellow Individuals are “evil.”
“They costume like us and so they discuss like us, however they don’t suppose and act like us,” he informed a podcaster lately. “They usually positively don't want what it's that we wish.”
‘HEAVY ARMAMENTS’
Survey information exhibits many Individuals imagine what Flynn says — that the 2020 election was stolen — and have purchased into COVID-19 misinformation and different conspiracy theories that he spreads, mentioned Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of historical past at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who research the evangelical motion.
“Any of those components alone could possibly be thought of harmful. However all of them collectively and the mistrust it's sowing in our democracy,” Du Mez mentioned. “I believe it’s extraordinarily harmful on this second.”
She factors to Flynn’s position as headliner of a multicity roadshow generally known as the ReAwaken America tour, an occasion that may be a potent mixture of politics, faith and commerce that has develop into a main instance of the Christian nationalist motion.
Flynn helped discovered the tour in 2021 with Clay Clark, an entrepreneur from Oklahoma who had been operating enterprise conferences earlier than the pandemic. In his interview with the AP and “Frontline” in February, Flynn mentioned he thought of himself a “senior chief” of the staff that’s operating it.
The thread of Christian nationalism runs by way of a lot of Flynn’s occasions. At one fundraiser, a preacher prayed over him saying that America would keep a Christian nation and that Flynn was “heavy armaments” within the Lord’s quiver. On the Christian Patriot’s Rally at a church in Northern California, Flynn was offered with an assault-style rifle on stage. In Virginia in July, he mentioned pastors “have to be speaking concerning the Structure from the pulpit as a lot because the Bible.” In Texas final November, Flynn informed a crowd “this can be a second in time the place that is good versus evil.”
“If we're going to have one nation below God, which we should, now we have to have one faith. One nation below God, and one faith below God, proper?” he mentioned.
Christian nationalism seeks to merge the identification of Christians and Individuals, in order that to be a “true” American is to be Christian — and a sure sort of Christian. The ideology pushes the concept the US was based on biblical rules and has a popular relationship with a Christian God, mentioned Samuel Perry, a sociologist on the College of Oklahoma who research conservative Christianity and politics.
It's distinct from the apply of Christianity, and Perry’s analysis has discovered that many Individuals who're inclined towards Christian nationalism don’t go to church.
“This has nothing to do with Christian orthodoxy. It has nothing to do with loving Jesus or desirous to be a very good disciple or loving your neighbor or self-sacrifice or something like that,” Perry mentioned. “It has all the pieces to do with Christian ethno-culture and particularly white Christian ethno-culture.”
Flynn casts himself as a sufferer of “the deep state” who paid a steep value for supporting Trump. Apart from Trump, his supporters say, nobody has been persecuted greater than Flynn.
Flynn’s rhetoric — us versus them, good versus evil, the concept God is on “our” facet — has been a staple amongst conservative Christians for many years, and is mainstream in conservative evangelicalism, Du Mez mentioned.
The considering, she mentioned, can gasoline violence.
“They’re out to get us. Due to this fact, we have to strike first. And the menace is all the time dire,” Du Mez says the considering goes. “And if the menace is dire, then the ends justify the means.”
“These values are usually not unconnected from the violence that we noticed on Jan. 6,” she added.
(When the AP and “Frontline” requested Flynn in February if he's ascribes to Christian nationalist views, he dodged. He first requested what the time period meant, then mentioned he was “an Irish Catholic” then a “follower of Jesus,” earlier than criticizing the reporter: “That was a silly query to ask me,” he mentioned, “as a result of that implies that you actually haven't studied Mike Flynn.”)
Final October, Flynn was the star attraction on the WeCANAct Liberty Convention, a gathering in Salt Lake Metropolis for Utah’s Platform Republicans PAC.
This system included dozens of audio system and exhibitors speaking a few seize bag of concepts and causes which have seized and panicked the suitable — about vaccines, human trafficking, elections and the QAnon conspiracy concept.
Among the many sponsors and exhibitors have been the John Birch Society; companies promoting all the pieces from texting companies for political campaigns to meals dehydrators; Ammon Bundy’s anti-government Folks’s Rights group; and America’s Frontline Docs, which has unfold false details about COVID-19 and promoted unproven remedies similar to ivermectin, a drug used to deal with parasitic infections. State lawmakers from Arizona and Utah spoke, and members of the Utah Republican Social gathering’s governing committee have been among the many organizers.
This system kicked off with an invocation by a preacher who introduced the gang to its ft as he described a “prophecy” of a “Nice Awakening” the place “Individuals are going to stand up and defeat the cabal.”
“We're in a religious warfare, and you may’t win a warfare with out attacking,” he mentioned.
The preacher ended by main the gang in what he referred to as a “new model of the Lord’s Prayer that matches the Nice Awakening.” The gang repeated after him as he mentioned: “Ship us from the cabal, and from Devil’s affect. For yours is the dominion, and the facility and the glory. Eternally and ever and ever. Amen.”
Flynn appeared just a few instances all through the day, at one level sitting within the viewers. Throughout the Salt Palace Conference Heart, folks jostled their seatmates to level him out and craned their necks to see him.
That night, he gave a meandering speech that he known as “an ass-chewing from a common.” He falsely declared as soon as once more that Trump had gained the 2020 election, mentioned “our authorities is corrupt,” and referred to as for the FBI to be abolished, a shocking applause line in October 2021 that has now being taken up extra broadly by some Republicans.
He referred to as the left “our enemies” and mentioned they're “godless” and “soulless.”
One in every of Flynn’s corporations, Resilient Patriot LLC, was paid $58,000 by the convention. An AP and “Frontline” assessment of state and federal marketing campaign finance filings documented almost $300,000 in funds to Flynn and his companies from candidates and political motion committees since 2021, for issues similar to talking charges, journey, e-book gross sales and marketing campaign consulting. (Florida congressional candidate Laura Loomer reported paying his firm $1,100 in Might for public relations companies.)
After Flynn’s keynote concluded, a podcaster serving to to wrap issues up for the night got here onstage and referred to as him “one of many new founding fathers of this republic.”
99 ENDORSEMENTS
As Flynn speaks and stumps to influence folks to hitch his motion, he has additionally been busy constructing a community of political candidates on the federal, state and native ranges.
The AP and “Frontline” discovered that Flynn has endorsed 99 candidates for the 2022 election cycle. (He subsequently withdrew a handful.)
The nation’s most influential Republican is paying consideration. Flynn’s brother Joseph informed an interviewer in Might that in a go to the Flynns made to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property this spring, Trump himself produced a listing evaluating the success of his endorsed candidates with Flynn’s.
A minimum of 80% of Flynn’s chosen candidates have publicly unfold lies or sown doubt about Trump’s 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden, and even participated in efforts to overthrow the election, the AP and “Frontline” discovered. A number of have steered they might use their energy if elected to alter the way in which elections are run and the way individuals are allowed to solid their vote.
About two dozen have been on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 5-6, 2021.
One-third have served within the navy.
A minimum of 38 have used Christian nationalist rhetoric. Keith Self, a congressional candidate in Texas, has mentioned he’s operating for Congress ” to defend the Judeo-Christian foundations of this nation.” Christine Villaverde, a congressional candidate in North Carolina, has vowed to battle to maintain America “a Christian nation.” Anthony Sabatini, a Florida state lawmaker who simply misplaced a bid for Congress, lately posted on Fb, “Solely when Christians arise & get loud, will we take this nation again.”
Flynn’s help is usually a sought-after prize. An AP and “Frontline” evaluation of Fb and Instagram advert information discovered advertisements from greater than 20 candidates selling their endorsements. Jackson Lahmeyer, an Oklahoma pastor who was defeated within the Republican main for U.S. Senate by Sen. James Lankford, talked about Flynn in 48 Fb and Instagram advertisements, greater than one-quarter of his complete purchase on the platforms.
Pastor Leon Benjamin, a Republican candidate for Congress in Virginia who denounced homosexuality and referred to as homosexual marriages unlawful in an August speech, mentioned in an interview that Flynn’s endorsement represents “that affirmation and that understanding that we’ve acquired to have the suitable candidates in, and it’s not all the time well-liked, not all the time goes together with the grain.”
“If we preserve doing the identical issues over and over, that’s the definition of madness,” he added. “So we acquired to do some various things to get completely different outcomes.”
Greater than 40 of Flynn’s endorsements have been for candidates in search of state and even native posts, the AP and “Frontline” discovered. Flynn endorsed two faculty board contenders in Camdenton, Missouri, candidates for sheriff in Florida, Nevada and Illinois and a metropolis council candidate in North Carolina. He endorsed candidates for the state legislature in Michigan, Ohio, Arizona, Florida, Texas and Missouri. In Arizona, Michigan, California and Colorado, he gave his approval to candidates for secretary of state, a place that sometimes includes the administration of elections.
A dozen gubernatorial candidates gained Flynn’s backing, together with Pennsylvania’s Republican nominee, Doug Mastriano, a state lawmaker whom Flynn launched at his marketing campaign launch. Mastriano, a retired U.S. Military colonel, floated a plan to undo Biden’s victory in his state, organized buses to the U.S. Capitol for Jan. 6 and was filmed strolling previous barricades and police traces that day. Mastriano has denied breaking the regulation and has not been charged with any crimes. One other Flynn endorsee, Dan Cox, who additionally organized buses for Jan. 6, gained the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Maryland.
Nonetheless, Flynn’s endorsement doesn’t assure a win. Josh Mandel, the Ohio U.S. Senate candidate, was defeated by JD Vance, who acquired a late endorsement from Trump. Some Flynn-backed candidates, together with gubernatorial candidate Joey Gilbert in Nevada and Colorado secretary of state candidate Tina Peters, made baseless claims of election fraud after they misplaced.
Flynn and his allies have steered he needs to get again into authorities, and the rising affect that flows from the community he’s constructing could assist him get there, mentioned Ron Filipkowski, a lawyer in Sarasota and longtime Republican activist who now tracks Flynn and different far-right figures on-line.
“He’s going to construct this grassroots motion, native elected officers beholden to him, loyal to him,” Filipkowski mentioned.
FINANCING ELECTION DENIAL
Flynn has expanded his affect additional by way of well-financed teams that advocate, amongst different issues, adjustments to the way in which elections are run, primarily based on the false premise that there's widespread voting fraud.
Flynn and Patrick Byrne, founding father of Overstock.com, final 12 months launched The America Venture, with Flynn’s brother Joseph as president. The group mentioned it deliberate to spend $50 million within the 2021 price range 12 months, in accordance with a submitting with North Carolina charity regulators. However Joseph Flynn and Byrne individually informed AP that it had spent tens of thousands and thousands much less, although every gave completely different totals.
Whereas Flynn himself just isn't listed amongst its officers, he's the face of the group, and it’s described as “Common Flynn and Patrick Byrne’s America Venture.” Byrne says Flynn is his closest adviser, telling the AP and “Frontline” that Flynn is his “Yoda” and “rabbi.”
In April 2021, Flynn was named chairman of America’s Future, one of many nation’s oldest conservative nonprofit teams. The group was based in 1946 and was beforehand led by ultra-conservative stalwarts, together with Phyllis Schlafly and retired Maj. Gen. John Singlaub. Since Flynn took over, the group employed his sister, Mary O’Neill, as government director and appointed Joseph Flynn to its board of administrators. The group had about $3 million in belongings on the finish of 2020, its most up-to-date IRS filings present. Flynn informed the AP and “Frontline” in February that he had raised an estimated $1.7 million for America’s Future since turning into chairman.
The 2 teams labored in shut coordination final 12 months, collectively donating greater than $4.2 million for a broadly criticized and misinformation-driven assessment of the 2020 presidential election outcomes commissioned by Arizona Republicans.
The America Venture has given about $5 million to “grassroots organizations” across the nation, Joseph Flynn mentioned in a July look on a web-based present.
Most of the teams they help again what they name “election integrity,” a time period usually utilized by election deniers to justify making it harder to vote primarily based on the falsehood that American elections are corrupt.
Marketing campaign finance data present The America Venture has given greater than $150,000 to Conservatives for Election Integrity, a bunch that has supported a number of secretary of state candidates who've labored to undermine belief in 2020 election outcomes.
The America Venture gave $100,000 to a Colorado group, Residents for Election Integrity, which used it for advertisements and textual content messages attacking a Republican candidate for secretary of state who ran in opposition to Flynn’s endorsed candidate. In Michigan, The America Venture gave $100,000 in Might to Safe MI Vote, which has reportedly pushed to roll again voter entry.
In Georgia, they only introduced they’re backing an effort to problem voter registrations for tens of hundreds of individuals.
Joseph Flynn mentioned throughout a speech in Might that The America Venture additionally funded and suggested a lot of what he termed “audits” of elections across the nation, together with in Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin, although he didn't give specifics.
In February, Flynn stood in a burger joint in Orlando, Florida, to announce The America Venture’s most public initiative, “Operation Eagles Wings,” the objective of which is to mobilize and prepare ballot watchers and precinct captains, and to drive get-out-the-vote efforts.
“I believe each single particular person on this nation, each American citizen, now has to concentrate to politics. You recognize, when folks go, ‘I don’t get entangled. I don’t try this political stuff. That’s for the politicians.’ Effectively, that’s precisely why we're right here. OK?” Flynn informed the AP and “Frontline” throughout a contentious interview. “So, it’s one thing else that you simply gained’t write or discuss or it’ll be edited out.”
As a part of Operation Eagles Wings, The America Venture has created affiliate teams in no less than 9 states. Its Florida affiliate mentioned in a Fb put up final month it’s in search of “America First Ballot Watchers” and can prepare organizations totally free. State associates in Illinois and Virginia marketed trainings in July and August on grassroots social activism, ballot watching and how one can get out the vote. The promotions additionally promise to show attendees to “expose weaknesses,” “monitor and consider absentee voting” and conduct “investigative canvassing.”
The initiative has raised alarm bells with pro-democracy advocates.
“If individuals who tried to overturn the 2020 election, or who're fueled by election conspiracies, are attempting to recruit their followers or allies to be election staff or volunteers as a part of an election denial agenda, that poses actual dangers to honest and free elections,” mentioned Jacek Pruski, of the nonpartisan group Defend Democracy.
‘NOT ALONE’
Together with his speeches, endorsements and outreach teams, Flynn has constructed a legion of acolytes who're listening carefully to what he says and are able to take motion. They embrace Karen Ballash, 69, vice chair of the Summit County Republican Social gathering in Utah, who heard Flynn converse in Salt Lake Metropolis.
“I completely imagine in his message. We now have to be those who make the change,” she mentioned. “If we don’t do it, we gained’t have a rustic.”
They embrace neophytes like Delainna Prettyman, who mentioned she’s simply develop into politically engaged prior to now 12 months. “That despatched me deep down a rabbit gap. I don’t watch any information, any TV, something. And I do a ton of analysis,” mentioned Prettyman, who lives within the Salt Lake Metropolis suburbs.
She got here to like Flynn, and believed “all the pieces he says.”
“He’s acquired a whole lot of intel and perception about all the pieces that’s occurring. In fact, he can’t say all the pieces,” she mentioned. “We want extra folks like Common Flynn.”
Below the tent in Batavia, the gang thrilled to Flynn’s pronouncements from the stage. The overall they declare as their very own confirmed their feeling that the U.S. is altering, and never for the higher. He validated the idea that the group they've constructed collectively is below assault.
They know many individuals — a few of their very personal mates and family members, and even Biden — say they're a harmful power. However contained in the tent, Flynn assured them, they've discovered their tribe and they're in the suitable.
“We’re not alone in that is what I’m telling you. OK? We’re not alone in what it's that we're doing,” Flynn mentioned. “We’re not alone. I need you to know that.”
Related Press writers Richard Lardner, Eric Tucker, Helen Wieffering, and Aaron Kessler, photographer Carolyn Kaster, and “Frontline” producers Richard Rowley and Paul Abowd contributed to this report.