An ex-deputy to former national security adviser Michael Flynn has said the disgraced retired general should never be able to escape the "shame" of his conviction for lying to the FBI regarding improper contact with foreign nations, a crime for which he was pardoned by President Donald Trump in November.
Flynn has recently returned to the fore after his pardon, and has been openly calling for Trump to take military action to cancel the results of the presidential election and hold a second vote. The New York Times has reported that Trump considered a proposal from Flynn to declare martial law, a report Trump has dismissed as "fake news."
The report drew condemnation from across the political spectrum. With just weeks left of Trump's term, his critics fear the president will take drastic action to push back against his electoral loss, now confirmed by the electoral college.
Douglas Wise, who served with Flynn as deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2014 until 2016, is among those sounding the alarm over Flynn's national resurgence, and the Trump team's efforts to whitewash his crimes and rehabilitate him in the public eye.
"A pardon allows Flynn to escape punishment, but he can't escape the shame," Wise wrote on Twitter late Sunday. "@GenFlynn is a traitor to American ideals & core values. He deserves to have millions of Americans, veterans & GO colleagues know him for what the criminal he is."
Flynn—who was forced to resign from his post just one month after Trump's inauguration—has become a cause célèbre for Trump supporters, who argue that the former general is a victim of "deep state" campaigns against the Trump campaign and administration.
Flynn admitted to "willfully and knowingly" making "false, fictitious and fraudulent statements" about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Flynn also worked as a lobbyist for Turkish interests, including during the 2016 campaign and the transition period before Trump took office.
Flynn has recently become one of the most vocal supporters of the baseless conspiracy theories surrounding Trump's election defeat. On Sunday, Flynn tweeted a series of claims of electoral fraud, including one declaring: "If you can't tell, #WeThePeople are not happy about the fraud perpetrated against us."
Last week, Flynn told the right-wing pro-Trump Newsmax channel that the president should consider martial law to remain in power. "He could order the, within the swing states, if he wanted to, he could take military capabilities, and he could place those in states and basically rerun an election in each of those states," Flynn said.
"I mean, it's not unprecedented. These people are out there talking about martial law like it's something that we've never done. Martial law has been instituted 64 times."
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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David Brennan is Newsweek's Diplomatic Correspondent covering world politics and conflicts from London with a focus on NATO, the European ... Read more
