Mike Flynn says he ‘put the fear of God’ into Obama
Pardoned former national security adviser Michael Flynn said he must have “put the fear of God” into President Barack Obama because Obama warned President Trump not to hire him in 2016.
Flynn, who was pardoned by Trump last month for lying to the FBI about his contacts with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak after the 2016 election, also said he will one day “lay out” everything he knows about the Russia investigation.
“I must have put the fear of God into Barack Obama and probably still do because of this four-year-long saga that they put me, my family through, President Donald J. Trump and his family and frankly the entire country,” Flynn told Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro on her show Saturday.
The retired Army lieutenant general, in his first interview since being pardoned, suggested Obama advised Trump against hiring him because Flynn would expose the Obama administration’s role in spying on the Trump presidential campaign.
“When he chose me to be the national security adviser, they knew that their little plan of spying on Donald Trump would fall apart and many other foreign policy blunders they got our country into, whether it was the Iran deal, issues going on in the Asian-Pacific theater, trade, all sorts of issues that were in play that the last administration did to frankly run this country right into the ground,” he told Pirro.
“They knew those were the types of things I was aware of. Let’s face it. Barack Obama appointed me twice. I was Senate-confirmed twice during the time I was in the military,” he continued. “So it’s amazing that would be what he would focus on during the transition for the United States of America. It’s outrageous, actually.”
Obama fired Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 over management issues.
Flynn served as Trump’s national security adviser for 25 days before the president ousted him after reports surfaced that Flynn had lied to FBI agents about his talks with Kislyak.
He pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to FBI agents but later tried to withdraw the plea, saying he did not intentionally lie.
In May, the Justice Department sought to drop Flynn’s case, arguing that because the FBI had no reason to interview him, anything he said to them, including lies, was not material.
But a federal appeals court in Washington declined to order the dismissal and the case was pending before US District Judge Emmet Sullivan when Flynn was pardoned.