Michael Flynn

Michael Thomas Flynn (born 24 December 1958) is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who served as the 24th U.S. national security advisor for the first 22 days of the first Trump administration. He resigned in light of reports that he had lied regarding conversations with Russian ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak. Flynn's military career included a key role in shaping U.S. counterterrorism strategy and dismantling insurgent networks in the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, and he was given numerous combat arms, conventional, and special operations senior intelligence assignments. He became the 18th director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in July 2012 until his forced retirement from the military in August 2014. During his tenure he gave a lecture on leadership at the Moscow headquarters of the Russian military intelligence directorate GRU, the first American official to be admitted entry to the headquarters. After leaving the military, in October 2014 he established Flynn Intel Group, which provided intelligence services for businesses and governments, including in Turkey. In December 2015, Flynn was paid $45,000 to deliver a Moscow speech at the ten-year anniversary celebration of RT, a state-controlled Russian international television network, where he sat next to Russian president Vladimir Putin at his banquet table. In February 2016, Flynn became a national security advisor to Trump for his 2016 presidential campaign. In March 2017, Flynn retroactively registered as a foreign agent, acknowledging that in 2016 he had conducted paid lobbying work that may have benefited Turkey's government. On 22 January 2017, Flynn was sworn in as the National Security Advisor. On 13 February 2017, he resigned after information surfaced that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and others about the nature and content of his communications with Kislyak. Flynn's tenure as the National Security Advisor is the shortest...