A clip from a new PBS documentary has shown former national security adviser Michael Flynn losing his temper with a reporter who asked if he had contact with his brother, a general, on 6 January 2021.
Mr Flynn, who is a popular figure among QAnon followers and who suggested Mr Trump impose martial law to facilitate a do-over of the 2020 election, had the encounter on camera during the shooting of the Mike Flynn’s Holy War, which takes a look at the former general’s post-Trump administration activities across the country.
The clip shows Mr Flynn in a terse exchange with the Associated Press’s Michelle Smith, who asks him if he remains in touch with his brother, serving US Army General Charles Flynn – and specifically whether they communicated in advance of the 6 January Capitol attack.
“Because of this interview,” he responds, “I will never talk to AP again. I am so sick of it. It’s so fake, it’s so targeted, it’s all about ‘we’re gonna get this guy’.”
Mr Flynn also accuses the Associated Press – “a horrendous organisation” – of tanking the Dow Jones with a false story about him.
According to Ms Smith, no such story was ever published.
The documentary focuses not just on Mr Flynn’s continuing embrace of falsehoods about the 2020 election, but his enthusiastic embrace of hardcore Christian nationalism – a term he disavows in the footage released.
Mr Flynn’s time as a Trump administration appointee was both brief and turbulent, and ended just weeks after it began when it emerged he had lied to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador after the 2016 election. Mr Flynn pleaded guilty to the offence, but was pardoned by Mr Trump in November 2020. He has since pivoted to claiming he was forced into a “perjury trap”.
Since he became entangled with the law in early 2017, he has been a leading figure in hardcore conspiracy theory movements, including the world of QAnon.
Some followers have long believed he is one of the “white hats” fighting a satanic child-abusing cannibal cabal at the heart of the “deep state”; some adopted his off-the-cuff coinage “digital soldiers” to describe themselves and their frenetic online activities as they collectively fleshed out the unhinged, racist and sometimes violent belief system. Mr Flynn later trademarked the phrase.
Mr Flynn’s appearances around the country in front of conspiracy theory-minded audiences have raised serious concerns about his potential incitement of violence.
At one appearance at a fringe church in California last year, he was presented with a semi-automatic rifle painted in camouflage – and joked about using it to assassinate “somebody in Washington, DC”.
