Mike Flynn has long pushed QAnon. But now, the conspiracists are coming after him.
Will Sommer at The Bulwark:
Flynn-kensteinâs Monster
FEW AMERICANS HAVE DONE MORE to mainstream conspiracy theories than Michael Flynn, the retired Army general who served as national security advisor for the first few days of Donald Trumpâs first term. After being indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Flynn became a martyr for the MAGA right. QAnon believers, in particular, came to revere himâa reverence that Flynn eventually embraced. Flynn posted a video of himself and his family members taking the QAnon oath, and appeared at a QAnon convention, where he helped auction off items like a QAnon quilt. He did all that, itâs worth noting, despite privately saying that the conspiracy theory was âtotal nonsense.â
But now, after having spent years fanning political conspiracies, Flynn finds himself the victim of one: a yarn weaved by a group of Trump supporters that Flynnâs family and associates actually orchestrated the January 6th attacks on the Capitol. Itâs gotten bad enough that Flynn has urged them to stop, saying his family wants to be left alone. âSpeaking for myself, the Flynn Family is done being a fâing pin cushion for the mob,â Flynn posted on X on April 17. Flynn didnât respond to a request for comment. This is some weird shit. We get it. And we can help you understand it, too! The conspiracy theory currently targeting the Flynns revolves around Earl Matthews, a former lawyer for the D.C. National Guard whoâs been nominated to be the Pentagonâs general counsel.
While Matthews is a Trump supporter, his beef with the Flynn family dates back to late 2021, when he filed a whistleblower complaint claiming that Flynnâs younger brother, then-Lt. Gen. Charles Flynn, lied to Congress about the militaryâs handling of January 6thâspecifically, a meeting about how the military should respond to the riot in which the younger Flynn participated as the Armyâs deputy chief of staff for operations. Charles Flynn retired from the Army as a full general last year.
When Matthews first filed his report, some QAnon influencers embraced his claims. Some of the most prominent were the hosts of the popular, Q-friendly âMG Show,â who have fallen out with Michael Flynn after years of internal QAnon feuds. As they saw it, Matthews had provided proof that the Flynn family somehow conspired with other figures like the Proud Boys to lead unwitting grassroots Trump supporters into a trap on January 6th. Thatâs a big change for QAnonâs treatment of Flynn. Roy Davis, a QAnon clue âdecoderâ who dedicated a book about the conspiracy theory to Flynn, said Flynn and his associatesâdubbed the âFlynnstonesâ by believersâwere once heroes to Q theorists. âFlynn was always painted in a good light,â said Davis, who still supports Flynn. Flynnâs supposed reasons for tricking Trump supporters into committing major felonies remain unclear. Matthewsâs complaint largely boiled down to an internal Defense Department dispute about who was to blame for the slow military response to the riot.
The 2023 complaint may have passed largely unnoticed if not for right-wing activist Laura Loomer. This month, fresh off successfully recommending a purge of the National Security Council, Loomer targeted Matthews for alleged disloyalty to Trump. In an April 9 post on social media, Matthews shot back that Loomer herself was working on behalf of shadowy forces who were out to undermine Trumpââonly doing what others have asked her to do,â he exclaimed. Then Matthews ramped it up, in a way thatâs pretty wild for a guy whoâs still awaiting confirmation to be the top lawyer at the Defense Department. On X, he reposted an âMG Showâ episode alleging that Flynn and other supposed January 6th schemers were panicking over his nomination.
Then, even stranger, he reposted a rap song from an X user named âCaptain Chaosâ about the âFlynn network.â The song, which comes with a blurry AI-generated picture of what appears to be Matthews, takes shots at a wide range of pro-Trump personalities for supposedly covering up the âtruthâ about January 6th. It portrays Flynn as the mastermind of a plot against Trump. âMichael Flynnâs crew, they playing it slick,â the song goes, adding, âEarlâs truth cuts deep, exposing their sins.â
The song includes several more jabs at Flynn, with verses about how the âFlynn networkâ is ânervous,â âshook,â and has ânowhere to hide.â Like we said, weird shit. Like the rest of the âFlynn networkâ conspiracy theory, the song doesnât explain why Flynn would concoct these schemes. Instead, it points to Flynnâs real ties to various far-right Trump world figures, and just implies an anti-Trump plot to orchestrate the January 6th riot. Matthewsâs embrace of the unsettling rap irritated Flynnâs MAGA allies. On X, right-wing media figure Jack Posobiec asked why Matthews was âattacking a patriot like Gen. Flynn?â As you might imagine, Flynn himself has been less than thrilled to be accused of being an anti-Trump operative. He responded, predictably enough, by posting a conspiracy theory of his own on social media, asking whether the rapâs creator made the hip-hop song as a distraction to somehow benefit China.
Traitor Michael Flynnâs championing of QAnon and other conspiracy theories has come back to haunt him, as the same conspiracists he praised are now turning on him.

















