August 16, 2019

Michael Flynn Wants a Judge to Allow Him to Travel to a Conference Held by a QAnon Fan

The disgraced former Trump adviser and his lawyer are flirting with a bizarre conspiracy theory to raise money.

Michael Flynn leaves court on June 24, 2019 in Washington.Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images

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Michael Flynn wants a judge to allow him to travel to Atlanta to raise money at an event organized by a QAnon supporter. 

Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, briefly served as President Donald Trump’s national security advisor before he was forced to resign after reports that he’d misled officials about his private conversations with Russia’s ambassador. He pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to FBI agents about those conversations. While he awaits sentencing, Flynn is subject to travel restrictions and other conditions.

This week, Flynn’s lawyer, Sidney Powell, asked US District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan to allow Flynn to travel freely in the United States, so that he can go to locations including Georgia, where he plans “to fundraise for his Legal Defense Fund.” That is an apparent reference to Flynn’s scheduled appearance at the upcoming “Digital Soldiers Conference” on September 14 in Atlanta. Tickets range from $49 to $2,500 and the majority of the proceeds will benefit Flynn’s defense fund, according to the event’s website, which notes the conference will offer “social media warriors” a chance to prepare for a “digital civil war” against “censorship and suppression.”

The main sponsor and organizer of the event is Yippy, Inc., which markets a search engine it claims is free of the censorship it alleges other tech companies impose on conservatives. Yippy CEO Rich Granville is a vocal supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which posits that Trump is secretly battling a ring of powerful pedophiles that includes many prominent Democrats and is protected by the so-called deep state. Granville told Mother Jones he believes this theory is “good for America.”

The conference’s website features an American flag with the stars arranged to form a “Q.” Granville claimed that the flag is not an intentional QAnon reference.

In May, an FBI intelligence bulletin specifically cited QAnon in warning that “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists” are likely “to carry out criminal or violent acts.” QAnon believers have so far been linked to multiple violent incidents or threats.

In an interview on Thursday, after Mother Jones first reported on the conference, Granville described his company as an “intelligence enterprise” with high-level White House ties. “You don’t know who you’re fucking with,” he warned.

“I don’t give a fuck about the deep state,” he said. “If I could, I would shoot them in the head and throw them in shallow graves and let the dogs dig them up. But I can’t, because that’s illegal.” At one point during the conversation, Granville abruptly asserted that his IQ is 172.

Granville said he is working with Powell, Flynn’s attorney, to organize the “Digital Soldiers” event. Powell wrote a 2014 book accusing Andrew Weissmann, a lead prosecutor under Special Counsel Robert Mueller, of prosecutorial misconduct while he led a task force investigating the Enron scandal. She is also a vocal critic of Mueller. On shows like Lou Dobbs Tonight on the Fox Business Network, Powell has pushed far-right claims that Trump was unfairly targeted by a deep-state conspiracy. As Media Matters has detailed, she has also ventured further afield, touting articles from Infowars, the website of Alex Jones, who has promoted conspiracy theories such as the claim that the 2012 massacre of children in Newtown, Connecticut was a “false flag” attack. And Powell has regularly retweeted accounts that promote QAnon. In May 2018, she included “#TheStormIsComing” and “#TheStorm” in a tweet. QAnon adherents use these phrases to reference what they believe to be Trump’s impending takedown of the deep state and the international ring of pedophiles it is purportedly shielding.

Is Powell knowingly promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory? She did not respond to inquiries.

In addition to Flynn, his son, Michael Flynn Jr., is scheduled to speak at the “Digital Soldiers” conference. Flynn Jr., who in 2016 lost a job with the Trump transition team for promoting the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, hung up when reached by phone. Also slated to speak is George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign foreign policy aide who in 2017 pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents about his contacts with suspected Russian agents. Papadopoulos, who did not respond to requests for comment, has promoted claims that he was set up by western intelligence agencies and wrote a book titled “Deep State Target.”

Read Flynn’s motion: 



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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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