Retired Lt. General Michael Flynn, who was briefly national security adviser during Donald Trump’s first White House term, is under fire for a social media post that could be interpreted as a threat to former President Barack Obama.
Flynn was responding to a message directed at him on X, “Never Forget who these people are and what they did!”
“I’m like an elephant, except I’m an Irish elephant,” Flynn said on Nov. 8. “Not only will I never forget, I will never forgive. People must be held accountable.”
He continued, singling out the former president for retribution.
“And you all know precisely who you are. (Obama) yup, starts with you,” Flynn said. “You tried to destroy my family as well as (Trump) and his family along with our country…unforgivable.”
He went on to claim Newsmax, a Trump-friendly cable news network, has “all the receipts.”
Investigative journalist Dave Troy flagged Flynn’s comments the following day in a post on X.
“No big deal,” Troy wrote. “Just a Putin-aligned retired general threatening a former president,” Troy wrote, tagging the Secret Service. “What do you say (Secret Service), does he get a doorknock, or are we no longer in that business? The public wants to know.”
Flynn, once a highly respected military strategist who played a key role in attempting to disable radical Islamist networks in Afghanistan and Iraq, served under Obama for two years as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was fired in 2014 for issues related to his temperament and managing style.
When Trump took office in 2017, Obama administration officials warned him against hiring Flynn due to his close relationship with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Trump hired the retired general anyway but fired him 22 days later after he misled Vice President Mike Pence about conversations he had with the ambassador regarding sanctions.
Following his forced retirement, Flynn started an intelligence consulting firm and lobbied for Turkish interests. He also took $45,000 from RT, Russia’s state-controlled television network, to give a speech marking its 10th anniversary. At the banquet that followed, Flynn was seated next to Russian President Vladamir Putin.
In 2017, Flynn struck a deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller to plead guilty to one felony count of lying to the FBI about his discussions with Kislyak. He agreed to cooperate with the Mueller investigation but, in 2020, moved to retract his plea, citing a vindictive government. By that point, he had racked up nearly $5 million in unpaid legal bills.
He has remained fiercely loyal to Trump while becoming a hero to MAGA nation. He even expressed solidarity with the controversial Q-Anon movement, which believes the country is controlled by a cabal of elitist pedophiles that only Trump can stop.
Flynn regularly traffics in conspiracy theories and was a leading proponent of Trump’s false claims about a stolen election in 2020.
His animus towards Obama remains strong. In an angry screed posted on X just before Christmas in 2023, Flynn blamed America’s divisions on his former boss.
“Sir, you are the ‘raw sewage,’ you are the greatest of all disinformation mouthpieces,” Flynn wrote. “Instead of speaking for strong black men and strong black families and all American families during your 8 years in office, you furthered us on this horrible path of race baiting and name calling.”
“You and your many lefty associates used words and phrases like deplorable, irredeemable, racist, cultist, far-right, conspiracy theorists, dictator, confederates, election deniers, COVID deniers…all of these and many more, chosen intentionally to destroy the fabric of our culture and our society,” he continued. “Americans have awakened to the destructive nature of your presidency and thank God, that good will triumph over evil.
Lately, he’s ratcheted up his rhetoric even more, mimicking Trump’s thirst for vengeance.
Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, he said, was an “enemy of America,” adding Republicans were at “war” with Democrats. He took it a step further, providing a chilling answer when asked whether he would like to head a military tribunal and, if so, whether he would advocate imprisonment or even execution for members of “the swamp.”
“There’s a way to get after this, but we have to win first,” Flynn said. “These people are already up to no good, so we gotta win first. We win, and then [Katie] Bar the door. Believe me, the gates of hell, my hell will be unleashed.”
