title: Michael Flynn

text: Michael Thomas Flynn (born December 24, 1958) is a retired United States Army lieutenant general and conspiracy theorist who was the 24th U.S. National Security Advisor for the first 22 days of the Trump administration. He resigned in light of reports that he had lied regarding conversations with 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.


title: Michael Flynn

text: 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.


title: Michael Flynn

text: 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 January 22, 2017, Flynn was sworn in as the National Security Advisor. On February 13, 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 Russian ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak. Flynn's tenure as the National Security Advisor is the shortest in the history of the position.


title: Michael Flynn

text: In December 2017, Flynn formalized a deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller to plead guilty to a felony count of "willfully and knowingly" making false statements to the FBI about the Kislyak communications, and agreed to cooperate with the Special Counsel's investigation. In June 2019, Flynn dismissed his attorneys and retained Sidney Powell, who on the same day wrote to attorney general Bill Barr seeking his assistance in exonerating Flynn. Powell had discussed the case on Fox News and spoken to President Trump about it on several occasions. Two weeks before his scheduled sentencing, in January 2020 Flynn moved to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming government vindictiveness and breach of the plea agreement. At Barr's direction, the Justice Department filed a court motion to drop all charges against Flynn on May 7, 2020. Presiding federal judge Emmet Sullivan ruled the matter to be placed on hold to solicit "amicus curiae" briefs from third parties. Powell then asked the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to compel Sullivan to drop the case, but her request was denied.


title: Michael Flynn

text: On November 25, 2020, Flynn was issued a presidential pardon by Trump. On December 8, 2020, Judge Sullivan dismissed the criminal case against Flynn, stating he probably would have denied the Justice Department motion to drop the case.


title: Michael Flynn

text: On July 4, 2020, Flynn pledged an oath to the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory, and as Trump sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in which he was defeated, Flynn suggested the president should suspend the Constitution, silence the press, and hold a new election under military authority. Flynn later met with Trump and their attorney Powell in the Oval Office to discuss the president's options. Trump denied reports that Flynn's martial law idea had been discussed. On January 8, 2021, Twitter permanently banned Flynn, Powell and others who promoted QAnon. Flynn has since become a prominent leader in a Christian nationalist movement, organizing and recruiting for what he characterizes as a spiritual and political war.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Michael Thomas Flynn was born and raised in Middletown, Rhode Island, one of nine siblings born to Helen Frances (née Andrews), who worked in real estate, and Charles Francis Flynn, a small-town banker, both Catholics of Irish descent. Flynn's family has a long tradition of serving in the armed forces; Helen's brother was a Navy submarine captain and their father an officer in World War II, Charles's father, Henry E. "Harry" Flynn, served in the Army during World War I, and Charles himself served in World War II and fought during the Battle of the Bulge while traveling under General George S. Patton. Flynn's younger brother, Charles A. Flynn, is a four-star general.


title: Michael Flynn

text: On July 24, 1972, after a local girl climbed into a car and accidentally released the parking brake, Flynn and a friend of his rushed to save two toddlers in its path; he was honored by the local town council for this act of heroism. Flynn served time in juvenile detention for what he has described as "serious and unlawful activity" in his youth, the records of which were expunged after he served a year of supervised probation. While at Middletown High School, Flynn met Lori Andrade, daughter of a prominent Portuguese family on Aquidneck Island, whom he married in 1981.


title: Michael Flynn

text: He attended the University of Rhode Island where he initially struggled academically, earning a 1.2 GPA during his freshman year, however he was later awarded a three-year scholarship by the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) and ultimately decided not to drop out. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in management science in 1981 and was a Distinguished Military Graduate of the ROTC. Flynn later earned a Master of Business Administration in Telecommunications from Golden Gate University, a Master of Military Art and Science from the United States Army Command and General Staff College, and a Master of Arts in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College. He is a graduate of the Military Intelligence Officer Basic Course, Ranger School, Military Intelligence Officer Advanced Course, Army Command and General Staff College, the School of Advanced Military Studies, and Naval War College.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn was commissioned in the U.S. Army as a second lieutenant in military intelligence in 1981. His military assignments included multiple tours at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, with the 82nd Airborne Division, XVIII Airborne Corps, and Joint Special Operations Command, where he deployed for the invasion of Grenada and Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti. He also served with the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana, and the Army Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Initially, Flynn was not going to be deployed to Grenada in 1983, but he was able to convince a superior officer to have him included. While serving there, Flynn took a 40-foot leap off a cliff to retrieve two soldiers stranded in the ocean and bring them back to shore to be airlifted. Though he was reprimanded for his unauthorized actions, Flynn garnered respect among his fellow soldiers for what he did.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn served as the assistant chief of staff, G2, XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, from June 2001 and the director of intelligence at the Joint Task Force 180 in Afghanistan until July 2002. He commanded the 111th Military Intelligence Brigade from June 2002 to June 2004 and was the director of intelligence for Joint Special Operations Command from July 2004 to June 2007, with service in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom) and the Iraq War (Operation Iraqi Freedom). He and his superior, General McChrystal, streamlined all intelligence so as to increase the tempo of operations and degrade the networks of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. He served as the director of intelligence of the United States Central Command from June 2007 to July 2008, as the director of intelligence of the Joint Staff from July 2008 to June 2009, then the director of intelligence of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan from June 2009 to October 2010. Flynn was reprimanded for sharing classified U.S. intelligence information on the Haqqani network to Pakistani officials in 2009 or 2010. The network, which had been accused of attacking American troops, was a proxy ally of Pakistan.


title: Michael Flynn

text: On November 10, 2015, Flynn gave an interview to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) Lessons Learned project. "Washington Post" published an audio recording of the interview and SIGAR's summary as part of the Afghanistan Papers.


title: Michael Flynn

text: In September 2011, Flynn was promoted to Lieutenant General and assigned as assistant director of national intelligence in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. On April 17, 2012, President Barack Obama nominated Flynn to be the 18th director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Flynn took command of the DIA in July 2012. He simultaneously became commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, and chair of the Military Intelligence Board.


title: Michael Flynn

text: In October 2012, Flynn announced plans to release his paper "VISION2020: Accelerating Change Through Integration", a look at changes he believes are necessary for the DIA in the future.


title: Michael Flynn

text: In June 2013, Michael Flynn became the first U.S. officer to be allowed inside the Russian military intelligence (GRU) headquarters in Moscow, where he arrived at the invitation of the GRU chief General Igor Sergun. His follow-up trip to visit the GRU HQ as Director of DIA was not allowed. Flynn also wanted to invite high-ranking GRU officials to the U.S., but this idea was rejected by the director of national intelligence, James Clapper.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Stefan Halper, who worked for three Republican presidents and was a longtime informant for the American intelligence community, had a February 2014 encounter with Flynn at a London intelligence conference. Halper became so alarmed by Flynn's close association with a Russian woman that a Halper associate expressed concerns to American authorities that Flynn may have been compromised by Russian intelligence.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Colleagues were concerned with Flynn's chaotic management style and increasingly hard-edged views about counterterrorism, and his superiors viewed him as insubordinate, according to Pentagon officials. In mid-2014, his two-year term at the DIA was not extended.


title: Michael Flynn

text: On April 30, 2014, Flynn announced his retirement effective later that year, about a year earlier than he had been scheduled to leave his position. He was reportedly effectively forced out of the DIA after clashing with superiors over his allegedly chaotic management style and vision for the agency. In a private e-mail that was leaked online, Colin Powell said he had heard in the DIA (apparently from later DIA director Vincent R. Stewart) that Flynn was fired because he was "abusive with staff, didn't listen, worked against policy, bad management, etc." According to "The New York Times", Flynn exhibited a loose relationship with the truth, leading his subordinates to refer to Flynn's repeated dubious assertions as "Flynn facts".


title: Michael Flynn

text: According to what Flynn had said in one final interview as DIA director, he felt like a lone voice in thinking the United States was less safe from the threat of Islamic terrorism in 2014 than it was prior to the 9/11 attacks; he went on to believe he was pressed into retirement for questioning the Obama administration's public narrative that Al Qaeda was close to defeat. Journalist Seymour Hersh wrote that "Flynn confirmed [to Hersh] that his agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings ... about the dire consequences of toppling [Syrian President] Assad." Flynn recounted that his agency was producing intelligence reports indicating that radical Islamists were the main force in the Syrian insurgency and "that Turkey was looking the other way when it came to the growth of the Islamic State inside Syria". According to Flynn, these reports "got enormous pushback from the Obama administration", who he felt "did not want to hear the truth". According to former DIA official W. Patrick Lang: "Flynn incurred the wrath of the White House by insisting on telling the truth about Syria ... they shoved him out. He wouldn't shut up." In an interview with Al Jazeera, Flynn criticized the Obama administration for its delay in supporting the opposition in Syria, thereby allowing for the growth of Al-Nusra and other extremist forces: "when you don't get in and help somebody, they're gonna find other means to achieve their goals" and that "we should have done more earlier on in this effort, you know, than we did."


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn, with his son Michael G. Flynn, ran the Flynn Intel Group Inc, which provided intelligence services for businesses and governments. The company was founded in the fall of 2014, restarted in June 2015 as a Delaware company, and closed in 2016.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn was paid more than $65,000 by companies connected to Russia in 2015, including $11,250 each from Volga-Dnepr Airlines and the U.S. subsidiary of Kaspersky Lab. Other clients included Palo Alto Networks, Francisco Partners, Brainwave Science and Adobe Systems.


title: Michael Flynn

text: While working as a consultant, Flynn served on the board of several organizations, including GreenZone Systems, Patriot Capital, Brainwave, Drone Aviation and OSY Technologies. Subsidiaries of the Flynn Intel Group included FIG Cyber Inc, headed by Timothy Newberry, and FIG Aviation.


title: Michael Flynn

text: In July 2016, he addressed the Republican National Convention where he referred to Hillary Clinton and led a general chant of "Lock Her Up"


title: Michael Flynn

text: In July 2018, the consulting firm Stonington Global LLC announced that Flynn was joining the firm as its director of global strategy, though Flynn's attorneys disputed that there had ever been a partnership several hours later.


title: Michael Flynn

text: In July 2016, Flynn spoke at a meeting of ACT! for America when the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was underway. He spoke favorably of the coup participants, saying that Erdoğan had been moving away from a secular state and towards an Islamist state, and that participants in the coup wanted Turkey to be and to be seen as a secular state—a goal "worth clapping for".


title: Michael Flynn

text: By the end of September 2016, Flynn's consulting company was hired by Inovo BV, a company owned by Kamil Ekim Alptekin, the Chair of the Turkish-American Business Council, which is an arm of the Foreign Economic Relations Board of Turkey (DEIK). The company has links to President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Flynn was paid $530,000 by Alptekin for Flynn's lobbying work. Flynn only registered as a foreign agent with the Justice Department later on March 8, 2017, for the work completed by November 2016. Flynn acknowledged his work may have benefited Turkey's government.


title: Michael Flynn

text: On November 8, 2016 (election day in the United States), an op-ed written by Flynn was published by "The Hill", now calling for U.S. backing for Erdoğan's government and criticizing the regime's opponent, Fethullah Gülen, alleging that Gülen headed a "vast global network" that fit the description of "a dangerous sleeper terror network". At the time, Flynn did not disclose that his consulting firm had received funds from a company with ties to the Turkish government. After Flynn's ties had been disclosed by "The Daily Caller", Politico, and others, the editor of "The Hill" added a note to Flynn's op-ed, stating that Flynn had failed to disclose that he had been engaged at the time in "consulting work that might have aided the government of Turkey", that his firm had received payments from a company with close ties to the Turkish government, or that the company had reviewed the draft of the op-ed before it was submitted to "The Hill".


title: Michael Flynn

text: On March 24, 2017, former Director of the CIA James Woolsey said that in September 2016 Flynn, while working for the Trump presidential campaign, had attended a meeting in a New York hotel with Turkish officials including foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and energy minister Berat Albayrak, son-in-law of Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and had discussed abducting Fethullah Gülen and sending him to Turkey, bypassing the U.S. extradition legal process.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn sat in on classified national security briefings with then-candidate Trump at the same time that Flynn was working for foreign clients, which raises ethical concerns and conflicts of interest. Flynn was paid at least $5,000 to serve as a consultant to a U.S.-Russian project to build 40 nuclear reactors across the Middle East, which Flynn's failure to disclose was flagged by Representatives Elijah Cummings and Eliot Engel as a possible violation of federal law.


title: Michael Flynn

text: On December 10, 2015, Flynn attended a gala dinner in Moscow in honor of RT (formerly "Russia Today"), a Russian government-owned English-language media outlet, on which he made semi-regular appearances as an analyst after he retired from U.S. government service.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the dinner, leading journalist Michael Crowley of "Politico" to report that "at a moment of semi-hostility between the U.S. and Russia, the presence of such an important figure at Putin's table startled" U.S. officials. As part of the festivities, Flynn gave a talk on world affairs for which he was paid at least $45,000. Flynn defended the RT payment in an interview with Michael Isikoff.


title: Michael Flynn

text: On February 1, 2017, the ranking Democratic members on six House committees sent a letter to Secretary of Defense James Mattis, requesting a Department of Defense investigation into Flynn's connection to RT. The legislators expressed concern that Flynn had violated the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution by accepting money from RT.


title: Michael Flynn

text: According to Representative Elijah Cummings of the House Oversight Committee, Flynn in February 2016 had told the Defense Department that he had not received money from foreign companies, and had had only "insubstantial contact" with foreigners. Glenn A. Fine, the acting Defense Department Inspector General, confirmed an investigation of Flynn was opened in April 2017, though it was placed on hold for more than three years while the Justice Department prosecuted Flynn on unrelated charges. After Trump pardoned Flynn in November 2020, the Justice Department notified the Pentagon that the inspector general's investigation could resume. The investigation was completed on January 27, 2021, and its findings forwarded to acting Secretary of the Army John Whitley.


title: Michael Flynn

text: In May 2022, the Army notified Flynn it would seek to recoup over $38,000 of the compensation he had received for the Moscow speech. Flynn was found to have violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which applies to military retirees.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Having already been consulted regarding national security by Carly Fiorina as well as other candidates, including Scott Walker, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump, Flynn was asked in February 2016 to serve as an adviser to the Trump campaign.


title: Michael Flynn

text: In July 2016, it was reported he was being considered as Trump's running mate; Flynn later confirmed that he had submitted vetting documents to the campaign and, although a registered Democrat, was willing to accept the Republican vice-presidential nomination if chosen. However, Trump instead selected Indiana Governor Mike Pence.


title: Michael Flynn

text: As one of the keynote speakers during the first night of the 2016 Republican National Convention, Flynn gave what the "Los Angeles Times" described as a "fiery" speech, in which he said: "We are tired of Obama's empty speeches and his misguided rhetoric. This, this has caused the world to have no respect for America's word, nor does it fear our might." He accused Obama of choosing to conceal the actions of Osama bin Laden and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Flynn went on to criticize political correctness and joined the crowd in a chant of "U-S-A! U-S-A!". During the chants, he told those in the audience, "Get fired up! This is about our country."


title: Michael Flynn

text: During the speech, Flynn attacked Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton; he encouraged the crowd to chant "Lock her up!"; saying "Damn right! Exactly right! There is nothing wrong with that!" He called for Clinton to withdraw from the race, claiming that "if I did a tenth -a tenth- of what she did, I would be in jail today." He repeated in subsequent interviews that she should be "locked up". While campaigning for Trump, Flynn also referred to Clinton as the "enemy camp". Six days after the speech, Flynn stirred up a controversy by retweeting anti-Semitic remarks, which he later apologized for and claimed were unintentional. During the campaign, Flynn also posted links to false articles and conspiracy theories relating to Clinton on Twitter, including the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn was once opposed to waterboarding and other torture techniques that have now been banned. However, according to an August 2016 "Washington Post" article, he said, in the context of Trump's apparent openness to reinstating such techniques, that he "would be reluctant to take options off the table". In May 2016, an Al Jazeera reporter asked Flynn if he would support Trump's stated plan to "take out [the] families" of people suspected of being involved in terrorism. In response, Flynn said, "I would have to see the circumstances of that situation." In an interview with Al Jazeera, Flynn criticized the U.S. reliance on drones as a failed strategy, saying "what we have is this continued investment in conflict. The more weapons we give, the more bombs we drop, that just... fuels the conflict."


title: Michael Flynn

text: On August 16, 2016, the FBI opened a case on Flynn as part of its Crossfire Hurricane investigation. The purpose of the investigation was to find out if Flynn was knowingly or unknowingly "involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation which may constitute a federal crime or threat to the national security" of the United States. A review of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, done by Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, was completed in December 2019. It concluded that "the quantum of information articulated by the FBI to open" the individual investigation on Flynn "was sufficient to satisfy the low threshold established by the [Justice] Department and the FBI". The review "did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open" the investigation against Flynn.


title: Michael Flynn

text: The Trump transition team during the campaign, chaired by Chris Christie, opposed Flynn serving as National Security Adviser or in any other high-level position because he was viewed as "a loose cannon".


title: Michael Flynn

text: During the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign of Donald Trump, and subsequently, Flynn and Jared Kushner were engaged in promoting IP3 International's plan to transfer nuclear technology from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia, for use in a proposed joint U.S.-French-Russian-British project, in possible violation of the law.


title: Michael Flynn

text: On November 18, 2016, Flynn accepted Trump's offer for the position of National Security Advisor. During their meeting in the Oval Office two days after the election, Obama expressed "profound concerns" about placing Flynn in a sensitive, high-level national security post, and warned President-elect Trump against hiring Flynn. On January 4, 2017, Flynn informed transition team counsel Don McGahn, soon to become the White House Counsel, that he was under federal investigation for secret lobbying work he had done for Turkey during the campaign. Trump later questioned in May 2019 why he had not been told Flynn was under investigation so he could have removed Flynn from his team. Sean Spicer questioned why the Obama administration, if they believed Flynn to be a national-security risk, had failed to revoke Flynn's security clearance.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Prior to his appointment, media sources including "The Washington Post" and Associated Press had criticized his alleged close relations with Russia, and his alleged promotion of anti-Clinton conspiracy theories and fake news during the 2016 presidential campaign.


title: Michael Flynn

text: In December 2016, Flynn met with Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of the right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), at Trump Tower in New York.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Ten days before the inauguration of Donald Trump, Flynn told then-National Security Advisor Susan Rice not to proceed with a planned invasion of Raqqa using Kurdish People's Protection Units. Flynn's decision would delay the campaign—which had taken seven months to plan—for several more months, but was consistent with Turkish objections to working with Kurdish troops.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn's history with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak dated to 2013; they met when Kislyak coordinated Flynn's trip to Moscow for Flynn's work with the Defense Intelligence Agency.


title: Michael Flynn

text: On November 30, 2016, Flynn joined a meeting between Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner and Kislyak at Trump Tower. U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted Kislyak's report to Russian officials about the meeting. Kislyak wanted Russian generals to discuss the topic of American policy in Syria with the Trump transition team on a secure channel; however, Flynn said the Trump transition team did not possess such channels in their offices. Kushner wanted to use secure channels at the Russian embassy, but Kislyak declined.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn and Kislyak then spoke by phone several times in late December and January. On behalf of the Israeli government, Trump and his transition team called several foreign governments, urging them to oppose or delay a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in Palestine. Flynn was tasked by Kushner with talking to Kislyak about this, and they spoke on December 22 and 23. Russia ultimately chose not to oppose the resolution.


title: Michael Flynn

text: On December 29, President Obama announced that in response to the Russian government's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, the United States would take retaliatory measures, including the expulsion of 35 suspected Russian intelligence agents. Trump and his transition team feared that the sanctions would damage Russia-U.S. relations, and Flynn spoke with Kislyak that day, urging Russia to only respond in a "reciprocal" manner to the sanctions and not escalate. Flynn conferred with incoming deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland both before and after calling Kislyak, and McFarland informed other Trump transition team members. On December 31, Kislyak called Flynn, informing him that Putin had not retaliated because Putin had accepted Flynn's request. The Obama administration was astonished by Russia's decision not to retaliate. U.S. intelligence agencies routinely monitor Kislyak's calls, and Obama administration officials discovered on January2 that Flynn had spoken to Kislyak multiple times during the previous few days.


title: Michael Flynn

text: On January 12, columnist David Ignatius, writing for "The Washington Post", made public that Flynn had called Kislyak on December 29 and questioned if Flynn had said anything to "undercut the U.S. sanctions". Flynn instructed K.T. McFarland to lie to "The Washington Post" that Flynn had not discussed the sanctions with Kislyak; McFarland did this, knowing it was false, and "The Washington Post" reported the denial. Flynn proceeded to lie about not discussing the sanctions with Kislyak to incoming chief-of-staff Reince Priebus, incoming press secretary Sean Spicer, and Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who repeated Flynn's falsehood to the media. The Mueller Report stated that Obama administration officials feared that these public falsehoods could result in "a compromise situation for Flynn because the Department of Justice assessed that the Russian government could prove Flynn lied".


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn's conversations with Kislyak were incidentally intercepted by American intelligence as part of routine surveillance of Russian agents. Per policy regarding American persons, Flynn's identity was masked before accounts of his conversations were distributed to high-level government officials. Some officials, notably national security advisor Susan Rice, were so concerned by the accounts that they requested Flynn's identity be unmasked, per procedure. After the unmasking was reported by the press, Trump and his allies insisted it was evidence the Obama administration was spying on him and his associates for political purposes. In May 2020, Justice Department spokesperson Kerri Kupec announced on the program of Fox News host Sean Hannity that attorney general Bill Barr had appointed U.S. attorney John Bash to investigate. She also stated that John Durham, whom Barr had appointed to investigate the origins of the FBI Crossfire Hurricane investigation, had also been examining the unmasking issue. The Bash investigation was quietly closed five months later, with no public announcement or report, reportedly finding nothing improper. Bash's 52-page report, previously classified top secret, was released in May 2022. Bash wrote he had found no evidence that any unmasking requests were made for any political or otherwise improper reasons during the 2016 election period or the ensuing presidential transition.


title: Michael Flynn

text: When he was national security adviser, Flynn urged the U.S. Department of Defense to set up a military communication channel with Russia to protect American and Russian air forces from each other in Syria, and possibly cooperate to take on the Islamic State, reported "The Daily Beast" website in July 2017. The Department of Defense and U.S. Central Command rejected the idea, reported the website. The National Defense Authorization Act, from 2015, had banned the U.S. from cooperating in military matters with Russia unless the Secretary of Defense allowed an exception.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn was an important link in the connections between Putin and Trump in the "Ukraine peace plan", an unofficial plan "organized outside regular diplomatic channels... at the behest of top aides to President Putin". This plan, aimed at easing the sanctions imposed on Russia, progressed from Putin and his advisors to Ukrainian politician Andrey Artemenko, Felix Sater, Michael Cohen, and Flynn, where he would have then presented it to Trump. "The New York Times" reported that Sater delivered the plan "in a sealed envelope" to Cohen, who then passed it on to Flynn in February 2017, just before his resignation.<ref name="Dreyfuss_4/19/2018"></ref>


title: Michael Flynn

text: In January 2017, then-FBI director James Comey decided to send FBI agents to interview Flynn. Knowing that Flynn had asked Kislyak to ensure Russia did not respond harshly to U.S. sanctions and also that Vice President Pence, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, and Press Secretary Sean Spicer had all said Flynn told them he hadn't made such a request, Comey decided that Flynn needed to be interviewed as part of assessing whether Flynn was acting under Russian influence. The FBI discussed how to structure the interview, and then-deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe called Flynn on January 24, asking him to meet with two FBI counterintelligence agents; Flynn agreed. McCabe also asked if Flynn wanted a lawyer present, to which Flynn said no.


title: Michael Flynn

text: The two agents met Flynn at his office later that day and asked Flynn about his exchanges with Kislyak regarding the late December 2016 United Nations Security Council resolution regarding Israeli settlements. According to the FBI notes, Flynn told the agents he had not tried to influence Russia's vote on the resolution; in fact, he had asked Kislyak to have Russia oppose or delay the resolution. The FBI agents also asked Flynn whether he had asked Kislyak to avoid escalating the diplomatic conflict. According to FBI notes, Flynn responded: "Not really. I don't remember. It wasn't, 'Don't do anything'". After the meeting, the agents prepared an FD-302 form, a form used to summarize an FBI interview, for the discussion with Flynn.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Based on the results of the FBI interview, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates made an "urgent" request to meet with White House counsel Don McGahn, and they met on January 26 and January 27. Yates told McGahn that Flynn had misled Pence and other administration officials about the nature of his conversations with Kislyak and was possibly open to blackmail by the Russians. Former United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called the possibility of Flynn being blackmailed "kind of a stretch", while acknowledging that his false statement was "a problem ... that I would tell the president about".


title: Michael Flynn

text: On February 9, 2017, "The Washington Post" broke the story that Flynn had discussed the U.S. sanctions with Kislyak, contrary to the public denials made by the Trump administration, citing "nine current and former officials". "The New York Times" confirmed the story by "The Washington Post", stating that a transcript of Flynn-Kislyak conversation existed. "The Washington Post" also reported that on February8 Flynn had given them flat denials about such discussions. Flynn gave denials despite "The Washington Post" journalist Karen DeYoung informing him that officials "have listened to the intercepts" of his calls with Kislyak.


title: Michael Flynn

text: After "The Washington Post" published their story, Flynn's spokesman released a statement on February9 tempering Flynn's denial, describing that Flynn "had no recollection of discussing sanctions", but also "couldn't be certain that the topic never came up". This happened after Flynn was confronted by Reince Priebus, Don McGahn, and John Eisenberg, who also informed Flynn that there were transcripts of his calls with Kislyak. Flynn told the White House officials he "either was not sure whether he discussed sanctions or did not remember doing so" (which was different from what he told Mike Pence and Sean Spicer in January). Meanwhile, Mike Pence only learned on February9 that Flynn had lied to him regarding the calls; Pence was informed by that day's media reports, said Pence's spokesman.


title: Michael Flynn

text: As a result of these news reports, public pressure on Flynn increased. On February 12, Trump's adviser Kellyanne Conway declared that Trump had "full confidence" in Flynn; however, one hour later on the same day, Trump's press secretary Sean Spicer described Trump as "evaluating" Flynn.


title: Michael Flynn

text: On February 13, Flynn resigned as National Security Advisor, writing that he had given "incomplete information" of his conversations with Kislyak. Flynn's 24-day tenure as National Security Advisor was the shortest in the 63-year history of the office. Before Flynn's resignation, he told the "Daily Caller" that, in his conversation with Kislyak, he told Kislyak he was aware of the expulsion of the 35 Russians, and that: "We'll review everything."


title: Michael Flynn

text: On February 14, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Trump had asked for Flynn to resign, "not based on a legal issue, but based on a trust issue", due to "misleading the Vice President and others, or the possibility that he had forgotten critical details of this important conversation", which "created a critical mass and an unsustainable situation".


title: Michael Flynn

text: Later, in December 2017, President Trump said he "had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI", noting that Flynn had "pled guilty to those lies". Also in December 2017, Vice President Pence said that by the time Flynn departed the Trump administration, "I knew that he lied to me." Pence also said Trump "made the right decision" to remove Flynn.


title: Michael Flynn

text: On February 14, 2017, President Trump met with FBI Director James Comey in the Oval Office and reportedly told him "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go", adding "he's a good guy." Comey subsequently testified that, "I had understood the President to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December... I did not understand the president to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign". The propriety, and even the legality, of these words that Trump reportedly said to Comey about Flynn have become a subject of considerable public debate. Several months after dismissing Flynn, Trump also dismissed Comey, which Comey attributed to the FBI's Russia investigation.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn had offered to testify to the FBI or the Senate and House Intelligence committees relating to the Russia probe in exchange for immunity from criminal prosecution. However, the Senate Intelligence Committee rejected Flynn's offer for testimony in exchange for immunity. Flynn initially declined to respond to a subpoena from the Senate Intelligence Committee, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, but he and the committee later struck a compromise. The Pentagon inspector general was also investigating whether Flynn accepted money from foreign governments without the required approval.


title: Michael Flynn

text: On November 5, 2017, NBC News reported that Robert Mueller had enough evidence for charges against Flynn and his son, Michael G. Flynn. On November 10, "The Wall Street Journal" reported that Flynn was under investigation by Mueller for allegedly planning a kidnapping and extrajudicial rendition of Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen to Turkey. On November 22, "NBC News" reported that Flynn's business partner Bijan Kian was a subject of the Mueller probe. NBC reported that a Turkish businessman named Reza Zarrab, who was picked up in 2016 by U.S. authorities in Miami on Iranian sanctions violations and money laundering charges, was offering evidence against Flynn. Flynn's firm was paid more than $500,000 by Inovo, a Netherlands firm owned by Turkish businessman Kamil Ekim Alptekin, for work which included investigating Gülen. In turn Alptekin received $80,000, said to be a kick-back in a report done by "Reuters".


title: Michael Flynn

text: On November 23, 2017, it was reported that Flynn's lawyers notified Trump's legal team they could no longer discuss anything regarding Mueller's investigation, suggesting Flynn may have been cooperating with prosecutors or negotiating a deal.


title: Michael Flynn

text: On December 1, 2017, Flynn and special counsel Robert Mueller agreed to a plea bargain in the District of Columbia's U.S. District Court. In the agreement, Flynn pleaded guilty to "willfully and knowingly" making "false, fictitious and fraudulent statements" to the FBI regarding conversations with Russia's ambassador. Flynn agreed in The Statement of the Offense that he had falsely denied that on December 29, 2016, he had asked Russia's Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak "to refrain from escalating... in response to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia that same day." Flynn's guilty plea acknowledged that he was cooperating with the Mueller investigation, and it was accepted by the court.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn's sentencing had been deferred several times, most recently on November 27, 2019 and February 10, 2020. As part of Flynn's plea negotiations, his son, Michael G. Flynn, was expected to avoid charges.


title: Michael Flynn

text: In a sentencing memorandum released on December 4, 2018, the Mueller investigation stated Flynn "deserves credit for accepting responsibility in a timely fashion and substantially assisting the government" and should receive little or no jail time.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn's attorneys submitted a sentencing memo on December 11, 2018, requesting leniency and suggesting FBI agents had tricked him into lying during the January 24, 2017 White House interview and did not advise him that lying to federal agents is a felony. The memo also asserted that Flynn's relaxed behavior during the interview indicated he was being truthful. Trump echoed this assertion two days later on Twitter and Fox News, asserting, "They convinced him he did lie, and he made some kind of a deal."


title: Michael Flynn

text: Mueller's office rejected these assertions the next day, stating agents had told Flynn portions of what he had discussed with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak to jog his memory, but Flynn did not waver from his false statements. FBI agents concluded that Flynn's relaxed behavior during the interview was actually because he was fully committed to his lies. Mueller's office also documented instances when Flynn lied about the Kislyak conversation during the days before the FBI interview. Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered documents related to the interview be provided to him prior to Flynn's December 18, 2018 sentencing. "The New York Times" reported that Flynn's "decision to attack the FBI in his own plea for probation appeared to be a gambit for a pardon from Mr. Trump, whose former lawyer had broached the prospect last year with a lawyer for Mr. Flynn."


title: Michael Flynn

text: Sullivan, who had a history of skepticism about government conduct, rebuked Flynn at his December 18, 2018 sentencing hearing. Citing evidence not released to the public, the judge told him, "arguably you sold your country out", and warned, "I cannot assure that if you proceed today you will not receive a sentence of incarceration." He offered to delay the sentencing until Flynn's cooperation with investigators was complete. After conferring with his attorneys, Flynn accepted the delay. During the hearing, Sullivan indicated he was offended by the suggestion in the sentencing memo submitted by Flynn's attorneys that the FBI had misled Flynn, as it created an appearance that Flynn wanted to accept a generous plea deal from prosecutors while also contending he had been entrapped. He asked several questions of Flynn's attorney, Robert Kelner, to determine if the defense was maintaining that the FBI had acted improperly in its investigation of Flynn, including whether he had been entrapped. Kelner responded, "No, your honor" to each question. Judge Sullivan also asked Flynn multiple questions under oath, including whether he wanted to withdraw his guilty plea, still accepted responsibility for his false statements and wanted to plead guilty, and was satisfied with his legal representation. Flynn restated his guilty plea, and acknowledged to Sullivan he was aware that lying to federal investigators was a crime at the time of his initial FBI interview in January 2017. Sullivan then delayed sentencing.


title: Michael Flynn

text: On May 16, 2019, an unredacted version of a December 2018 government sentencing memo for Flynn showed that he advised investigators that both before and after his guilty plea "he or his attorneys received communications from persons connected to the Administration or Congress that could have affected both his willingness to cooperate and the completeness of that cooperation." The Mueller Report described a November 2017 voicemail Flynn's attorneys received from Trump's "personal counsel", reportedly John Dowd, who said: "[I]f...there's information that implicates the President, then we've got a national security issue... so, you know... we need some kind of heads up," reiterating the president's "feelings toward Flynn and, that still remains." The newly unredacted information also showed that members of the Trump campaign discussed contacting WikiLeaks about the release of emails and "potential efforts to interfere with the SCO's investigation." The day the unredacted court filing was released, Sullivan ordered that the full transcript of the voicemail be released to the public by May 31, as well as the transcript of Flynn's conversation with Kislyak and unredacted portions of the Mueller Report relating to Flynn. The Justice Department released the Dowd transcript on May 31, but not the Flynn materials.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Dowd denied March 2018 reports by "The New York Times" and "The Washington Post" six days after he resigned as Trump's attorney that in 2017 he had broached the idea of a presidential pardon for Flynn with his attorneys.


title: Michael Flynn

text: In June 2019, Flynn fired the Covington & Burling attorneys who had negotiated his plea deal and hired Sidney Powell, who had previously urged Flynn to withdraw his guilty plea. Trump complimented Flynn and Powell on Twitter. Testimony of contractors of the Flynn company in the Bijan Rafiekian trial indicates their foreign customer was interested in classified government information on Turkey's cleric Fethullah Gülen, surveillance of Gülen supporters, and likely terrorist links that might be turned up by their own investigations of the Turkish cleric. Bijan Rafiekian, who was a partner of Michael Flynn in the Flynn Intel Group and worked with the incoming Trump administration's transition team, was charged with illegally acting as an unregistered agent of Turkey. In 2019 a federal judge threw out the guilty verdicts against Bijan Rafiekian, citing insufficient evidence to sustain his conviction on either count.


title: Michael Flynn

text: In August 2019, Flynn's attorneys filed a motion to hold prosecutors in contempt for "malevolent conduct", accusing them of withholding material that benefited his case to cause him to plead guilty. They alleged that parts of the federal government had attempted to "smear" him as a Russian agent, "or the victim of a criminal leak or other abuses related to classified intercepts of his calls with Kislyak". In October 2019, Flynn's lawyers further alleged in court filings that "high-ranking FBI officials orchestrated an ambush-interview... not for the purpose of discovering any evidence of criminal activity... but for the purpose of trapping him into making statements they could allege as false."


title: Michael Flynn

text: On December 16, 2019, after a review of possible case related findings in the Michael Horowitz report, Sullivan rejected the assertions of FBI entrapment and prosecutorial malfeasance, setting his sentencing date for January 28, 2020. Sullivan asked prosecutors to present a new sentencing memo; they had previously recommended little or no jail time, but more recently suggested they might change their position. On January 7, 2020, prosecutors presented a sentencing memo calling for Flynn to be sentenced to a term of up to six months. One week later, Flynn's lawyers filed a motion seeking permission to withdraw his guilty plea "because of the government's bad faith, vindictiveness, and breach of the plea agreement". On January 16, Sullivan postponed Flynn's sentencing date to February 27. On January 22, Flynn requested he be sentenced to probation and community service if his request to withdraw his guilty plea is not granted. On January 29, 2020, Flynn filed a personal declaration with the court, declaring under penalty of perjury that he was innocent, that he still didn't remember whether he had discussed sanctions with Kislyak or the details of their discussion of the United Nations vote on Israel, that his Covington attorneys had not provided effective counsel, and that he "did not consciously or intentionally lie" to the FBI agents who had interviewed him. After senior Justice Department officials intervened in February 2020 to recommend a lighter sentence for Roger Stone than prosecutors had recommended the day before, NBC News reported that the previous month senior DOJ officials had also intervened to recommend Flynn's sentence be reduced from up to six months in the original recommendation to probation.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Days before Flynn's scheduled sentencing, attorney general William Barr appointed Jeffrey Jensen, the U.S. attorney for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, to examine Flynn's prosecution. On February 10, 2020, Flynn's sentencing was postponed indefinitely, to allow both sides to prepare arguments in response to his claim that his previous lawyers violated his constitutional rights by providing inadequate legal counsel.


title: Michael Flynn

text: In February 2020, Attorney General William Barr declared that there would be a review of Flynn's case. Barr chose St. Louis' chief federal prosecutor, Jeffrey Jensen, to conduct the review. Jensen himself was nominated by President Trump for the St. Louis position. Trump had publicly called for Flynn's charges to be dropped. In late April or early May, Jensen recommended to Barr that the charges be dropped, and Barr agreed with the recommendation.


title: Michael Flynn

text: On May 7, 2020, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a Motion to Dismiss with prejudice the criminal information against Flynn. The motion, filed by Timothy Shea, interim United States Attorney for the District of Columbia and a longtime adviser of Barr's, stated that Flynn's questioning "was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI's counterintelligence investigation". Lead DOJ prosecutor Brandon L. Van Grack withdrew from the case, and no DOJ attorneys who had been involved in the case signed on to Shea's motion. Van Grack had contended in previous filings that the "topics of sanctions went to the heart of the FBI's counterintelligence investigation, [and] any effort to undermine those sanctions could have been evidence of links or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia." Sidney Powell, Flynn's attorney, said prosecution filings had been made in "bad faith", and Brady materials had been withheld. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan had previously ruled that Flynn's statements were material to the Russia campaign interference inquiry. It was left to Sullivan to determine whether to dismiss the charges and also to prevent a retrial on the charges. Sullivan had the option of requesting written submissions on the motion and also could determine if additional Brady disclosure materials that should have been provided to the defense could be added to the record.


title: Michael Flynn

text: On May 12, 2020, Judge Sullivan ordered a hold on the DOJ's intent to drop charges, saying he expected that independent groups and legal experts will wish to intervene. Judge Sullivan said he will set schedules for filing "friend-of-the court" or amicus briefs. On May 13, Judge Sullivan appointed retired U.S. District Judge John Gleeson to act as an "amicus curiae" "to present arguments in opposition to the government's Motion to Dismiss" and to "address whether the Court should issue an Order to Show Cause why Mr. Flynn should not be held in criminal contempt for perjury." On May 19, Judge Sullivan set a schedule for amicus briefs (to be submitted no later than June 10, 2020), replies (with various dates in June, 2020), and oral arguments (on July 16, 2020). On June 10, Judge Gleeson filed his amicus brief stating that the government's motion be denied as "the Government's statement of reasons for seeking dismissal is pretextual" and "there is clear evidence of a gross abuse of prosecutorial power" and concluding that "Flynn has indeed committed perjury in these proceedings" that should be taken into account in his sentencing. On June 17, the DOJ filed a brief with Sullivan asserting that even if Gleeson's findings of gross abuse were true, the Department still had sole authority to drop the case without judicial review. A footnote in the brief stated that assertions of prosecutorial misconduct made by Flynn's attorney, Sidney Powell, were "unfounded and provide no basis for impugning the prosecutors."


title: Michael Flynn

text: On May 19, 2020, Flynn filed an Emergency Petition for a Writ of Mandamus in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit requesting a writ ordering the district court to (1) grant the government's Motion to Dismiss with prejudice, (2) vacate its order appointing an "amicus curiae", and (3) assign the case to another judge for any additional proceedings. On May 21, the panel ordered Judge Sullivan to file a response addressing Flynn's request within ten days of the order and also invited the Department of Justice to respond. In response to the order, Judge Sullivan retained Beth Wilkinson to help with his response. On June 1, Judge Sullivan and the Department of Justice filed responsive briefs with the appellate court panel. On June 10, Flynn, the Department of Justice, and Judge Sullivan filed reply briefs. On June 12, oral arguments were heard by the appellate court panel by teleconference. On June 24, the appellate court panel ruled to grant the writ, "direct[ing] the district court to grant the government’s Rule 48(a) motion to dismiss ... [and] vacat[ing] the district court’s order appointing an amicus as moot," with Judge Neomi Rao writing for the majority, joined by Judge Karen Henderson, and Judge Robert L. Wilkins dissenting in part. On July 9, Sullivan filed a petition with the full appellate court to rehear the case. On July 30, the full court agreed to hear the case, vacating the June 24 ruling, scheduling oral arguments for August 11, and advising the parties to "be prepared to address whether there are 'no other adequate means to attain the relief' desired." On August 11, the full appeals court heard arguments from the DOJ and from Sullivan's attorney. The appeals court ruled 8–2 on August 31, 2020, to deny the request to dismiss the case or reassign the case from Sullivan.


title: Michael Flynn

text: More oral arguments took place on September 29, 2020, conducted remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Flynn received a presidential pardon on November 25, 2020. Judge Sullivan subsequently dismissed the criminal case against Flynn as moot on December 8, 2020.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Amid speculation that Flynn might be selected as Trump's 2016 running mate, he discussed his registration as a Democrat, stating "I grew up as a Democrat in a very strong Democratic family, but I will tell you that Democratic Party that exists in this country is not the Democratic Party that I grew up around in my upbringing", and declined to say whether his affiliation had changed. He was a headlining speaker during the first night of the 2016 Republican National Convention, and he was a surrogate and top national security adviser for President Donald Trump.


title: Michael Flynn

text: During a July 10, 2016, interview on ABC News' "This Week", when asked by host Martha Raddatz about the issue of abortion, Flynn said, "women have to be able to choose". The next day, Flynn said on Fox News that he is a "pro-life Democrat".


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn is a supporter of current Israeli policies. He is also an opponent of the Iran nuclear deal. In February 2017, Flynn said "the Obama administration failed to respond adequately to Tehran's malign actions—including weapons transfers, support for terrorism and other violations of international norms". Flynn accused Yemen's Houthi rebels of being one of Iran's "proxy terrorist groups" in February 2017. Flynn also criticized Obama's administration for arming Syrian rebels linked to Salafi jihadism. According to Flynn, the U.S. is "at war with a radical component of Islam". Flynn has been a board member of the anti-Muslim ACT! for America, and sees the Muslim faith as one of the root causes of Islamist terrorism, which along with other views on Islam has seen him considered a part of the counter-jihad movement.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn has described Islam as a political ideology that "definitely hides behind being a religion" and has metastasized into a "malignant cancer." He once tweeted that "fear of Muslims is RATIONAL" and included a video link claiming that Islam wants "80% of people enslaved or exterminated". Initially supportive of Trump's proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., Flynn later told Al Jazeera a blanket ban was unworkable and has called instead for "vetting" of entrants from countries like Syria. Flynn has said the U.S. "should extradite Fethullah Gülen" to Turkey and "work constructively with Russia" in Syria. In 2016, he said he had seen photos of signs in the Southwest border area that were in Arabic to help Muslims entering the United States illegally. Shawn Moran, a vice president of the National Border Patrol Council responded to CNN that the group National Border Patrol Council was not aware of the signs Flynn referenced, but they were concerned about the threat of terrorism at the southern border.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn was a scheduled speaker for a "Digital Soldiers Conference" in Atlanta in September 2019, along with other Trump associates George Papadopoulos and Gina Loudon. The conference was named after a 2016 quote from Flynn about Trump having been elected by an "army of digital soldiers". The stated purpose was to prepare "patriotic social media warriors" for a coming "digital civil war." The announcement for the event prominently displayed a Q spelled in stars on the blue field of an American flag, and the host of the event had numerous references to QAnon on his Twitter account. On Independence Day 2020, Flynn tweeted a video of himself leading others in an oath to QAnon. Flynn's attorney, Sidney Powell, denied the oath related to QAnon, saying it was merely a statement engraved on a bell on John F. Kennedy's sailboat. However, during preceding days numerous QAnon followers had taken the same so-called "digital soldier oath" on Twitter, using the same #TakeTheOath hashtag as Flynn had.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Following his November 2020 pardon, Flynn deepened his involvement with QAnon by endorsing merchandise related to the conspiracy theory, creating a Digital Soldiers media company, and announcing that he planned to launch a news media outlet also called "Digital soldiers". As Flynn appeared on podcasts popular with QAnon followers such as "Bards of War," QAnon stories predicted that he would help them take control, some adherents even speculating that Flynn was Q.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Days after being pardoned by Trump, Flynn tweeted a press release by the "We the People Convention" that called on the president to "exercise the Extraordinary Powers of his office and declare limited Martial Law to temporarily suspend the Constitution and civilian control of these federal elections in order to have the military implement a national re-vote that reflects the true will of the people."


title: Michael Flynn

text: On December 17, 2020, Flynn stated during a television interview, "People out there talk about martial law like it's something that we've never done. Martial law has been instituted 64 times." Although martial law had been imposed 68 times in the nation's history, only one sitting president had invoked it — Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. None of the invocations of martial law involved electoral issues as Flynn envisioned. In January 2022, a draft executive order dated December 16, 2020 surfaced that proposed a military seizure of voting machines and the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the election, as the president and his allies sought ways to overturn the election which he had lost. In a December 18 Oval Office meeting Flynn attended, Sidney Powell urged Trump to seize voting machines and to appoint her as a special counsel, though it was not immediately clear who wrote the draft order.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn appeared at a Stop the Steal rally in Washington, D.C. in December following the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court not to hear "Texas v. Pennsylvania". He dismissed the court's decision saying "the people decide" who'll be president, saying, "I will tell you one more time—because I've been asked—on a scale of one to ten, who will be the next president of the United States, and I say Donald Trump. Ten. A ten". Flynn likened the protesters at Stop the Steal events to the biblical soldiers and priests breaching the walls of Jericho in the Battle of Jericho, echoing the rally organizers' call for "Jericho Marches" to overturn the election result. After the meeting, the largest Three Percenters group announced that they were "ready to enter into battle with General Flynn leading the charge".


title: Michael Flynn

text: Not long afterward, Flynn and Powell met with Trump in the Oval Office, where they reportedly railed on White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and accused them of abandoning the president post-election.


title: Michael Flynn

text: On January 8, 2021, two days after the storming of the Capitol, Flynn's Twitter account was permanently suspended, along with those of many other QAnon-affiliated personalities such as Sidney Powell. A Twitter representative said the accounts of Flynn and others had "been suspended in line with our policy on Coordinated Harmful Activity".


title: Michael Flynn

text: In February 2021, Flynn distanced himself from QAnon views, stating that rumors about Trump using the Insurrection Act to take back control of the country were "nonsense", and commenting : "There's no plan. There's so many people out there asking, ‘Is the plan happening?’ We have what we have, and we have to accept the situation as it is." However, he did not disavow QAnon outright, nor did he admit that Biden's win was legitimate.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Media Matters published analysis in February 2021 finding that QAnon adherents had praised the February 2021 Myanmar coup d'état in which the military overthrew the democratically elected government, and advocated a similar coup in the United States. In May 2021, Flynn was one of the keynote speakers at the "For God & Country: Patriot Roundup" conference, organized in Dallas by QAnon activists. When an audience member stated, "I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can't happen here," Flynn responded, "No reason, I mean, it should happen here. No reason. That's right." After his words were reported, Flynn asserted he had "not at any time called for any action of that sort" and accused the press of "boldface fabrication based on twisted reporting."


title: Michael Flynn

text: In May 2021, Flynn asserted the COVID-19 pandemic was fabricated as "a distraction to what happened on 3 November," referring to the 2020 presidential election which he maintains was stolen from Trump. He added, "Everything we hear about Covid, and how Covid started before November 3, it is all meant to control, it is all meant to gain control of a society to be able to force decisions on society, instead of allowing 'we the people' to make decisions." Flynn falsely suggested that getting the COVID-19 vaccine was required to get an identification card or to travel.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn became active on speaking tours in 2021, including the ReAwaken America Tour which Flynn helped launch. Will Sommer of "The Daily Beast" observed that a prayer Flynn gave in September bore a striking resemblance to one by Elizabeth Clare Prophet, leader of the Church Universal and Triumphant, an anti-communist doomsday cult. Some QAnon supporters alleged the prayer was Satanic because Flynn used terms they considered antithetical to Christian doctrine.


title: Michael Flynn

text: While speaking before a ReAwaken America audience in November 2021, Flynn stated: "If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God," a statement that caused outrage.


title: Michael Flynn

text: In December 2021, lawyer and QAnon follower L. Lin Wood leaked a text exchange and a phone conversation between himself and Flynn, in which Flynn commented that QAnon was "a set up and a disinformation campaign to make people look like a bunch of kooks" and accused "the Left" or the CIA of being behind the campaign.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Reuters reported in December 2021 that Flynn and associated military-intelligence veterans played a central role in spreading false information alleging the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump. Phil Waldron, a psychological operations expert, said he worked with Flynn on secret projects during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and worked in clandestine services under Flynn at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Waldron had distributed a 38-page PowerPoint presentation detailing an elaborate theory that China and Venezuela had taken control of voting machines — a theory also promoted by Trump and Flynn attorney Sidney Powell. Waldron said he had conveyed his theory to congressman Louie Gohmert who immediately called Trump. Waldron soon met with Powell and Rudy Giuliani before attending a meeting with Trump in the Oval Office. Waldron said he spoke with Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows several times and discussed his theory with several members of Congress. The presentation recommended that Trump declare a national security emergency to delay the January 6 certification of electors, reject all ballots cast by machine, and have paper ballots secured by U.S. marshals and National Guard troops to conduct a recount.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn also worked with Ivan Raiklin, a former special forces officer who presented himself as a constitutional attorney, though Reuters could not find evidence he had such expertise. Raiklin promoted conspiracy theories involving Pence, intelligence agencies, big tech, China and the postal service. On December 22, he tweeted to Trump a two-page memo entitled, "Operation Pence Card," describing how the vice president might reject electors from states Biden won and in which Trump alleged fraud. Trump retweeted the Raiklin tweet. Seth Keshel, a former Army intelligence officer, conducted a statistical analysis that falsely claimed to prove the 2020 election results were fraudulent; he told Reuters he contacted Flynn and they began collaborating. Shortly after the election, Flynn, Powell, Keshel and others gathered for days of strategy sessions at the South Carolina estate of Lin Wood. Also present was Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, which managed the controversial election audit in Maricopa County, Arizona after Waldron recommended him to Arizona Senate president Karen Fann. A Flynn fundraising organization provided most of the $5.7 million funding for that audit, which ultimately affirmed Biden's victory in Arizona without proving fraud.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn was subpoenaed for testimony and documents by the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack in November 2021; he appeared before the committee in March 2022 but repeatedly exercised his Fifth Amendment right to not answer questions.


title: Michael Flynn

text: After moving to Englewood, Florida in 2021, Flynn joined the Sarasota County Republican Party's executive board and signed up as a poll watcher.


title: Michael Flynn

text: As of September 2022, Flynn is continuing to consolidate right wing, conservative Christian groups to influence elections. Among the groups are also election deniers, mask and vaccine opponents, insurrectionists and Proud Boys. With his brother Joe, and Patrick Byrne, Flynn co-founded The America Project, which advocates for what it contends is "election integrity" by poll watching and voter challenges, producing manuals for nine states. The project funds another organization, One More Mission, which seeks to recruit thousands of military veterans and police officers to work at polls for the 2022 United States elections. In September 2022, Flynn also joined the executive committee of the Sarasota County, Florida Republican Committee.


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn co-authored a report in January 2010 through the Center for a New American Security, entitled "Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan". That report, which became influential, argued that U.S. intelligence agencies "must open their doors to anyone who is willing to exchange information, including Afghans and NGOs [non-governmental organizations] as well as the U.S. military and its allies".


title: Michael Flynn

text: Flynn is also an author of "The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies", co-authored with Michael Ledeen, which was published by St. Martin's Press in 2016. In reviewing the book, Will McCants of the Brookings Institution described Flynn's worldview as a confused combination of neoconservatism (an insistence on destroying what he sees as an alliance of tyranny, dictatorships, and radical Islamist regimes) and realism (support for working with "friendly tyrants"), although he acknowledged that this could be due to the book's having two authors.


title: Empathy

text: Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another's position. Definitions of empathy encompass a broad range of social, cognitive, and emotional processes primarily concerned with understanding others (and others' emotions in particular). Types of empathy include cognitive empathy, emotional (or affective) empathy, empathy, and spiritual empathy.


title: Empathy

text: The English word "empathy" is derived from the Ancient Greek ("empatheia", meaning "physical affection or passion"). That word derives from ("en", "in, at") and ("pathos", "passion" or "suffering"). Theodor Lipps adapted the German aesthetic term ("feeling into") to psychology in 1903, and Edward B. Titchener translated into English as "empathy" in 1909. In modern Greek may mean, depending on context, prejudice, malevolence, malice, or hatred.


title: Empathy

text: Since its introduction into the English language, "empathy" has had a wide range of (sometimes conflicting) definitions among both researchers and laypeople. Empathy definitions encompass a broad range of phenomena, including caring for other people and having a desire to help them; experiencing emotions that match another person's emotions; discerning what another person is thinking or feeling; and making less distinct the differences between the self and the other.


title: Empathy

text: Since empathy involves understanding the emotional states of other people, the way it is characterized derives from the way emotions are characterized. For example, if emotions are characterized by bodily feelings, then understanding the bodily feelings of another will be considered central to empathy. On the other hand, if emotions are characterized by a combination of beliefs and desires, then understanding those beliefs and desires will be more essential to empathy. The ability to imagine oneself as another person is a sophisticated process. However, the basic capacity to recognize emotions in others may be innate and may be achieved unconsciously. Empirical research supports a variety of interventions to improve empathy.


title: Empathy

text: Empathy is not all-or-nothing; rather, a person can be more or less empathic toward another. Paradigmatically, a person exhibits empathy when they communicate an accurate recognition of the significance of another person's ongoing intentional actions, associated emotional states, and personal characteristics in a manner that seems accurate and tolerable to the recognized person.


title: Empathy

text: One's ability to recognize the bodily feelings of another is related to one's imitative capacities, and seems to be grounded in an innate capacity to associate the bodily movements and facial expressions one sees in another with the proprioceptive feelings of producing those corresponding movements or expressions oneself.


title: Empathy

text: Compassion and sympathy are terms associated with empathy. A person feels compassion when they notice others are in need, and this feeling motivates that person to help. Like empathy, compassion has a wide range of definitions and purported facets (which overlap with some definitions of empathy). Sympathy is a feeling of care and understanding for someone in need. Some include in sympathy an empathic concern for another person, and the wish to see them better off or happier.


title: Empathy

text: Empathy is also related to pity and emotional contagion. One feels pity towards others who might be in trouble or in need of help. This feeling is described as "feeling sorry" for someone. Emotional contagion is when a person (especially an infant or a member of a mob) imitatively "catches" the emotions that others are showing without necessarily recognizing this is happening.


title: Empathy

text: "Alexithymia" describes a deficiency in understanding, processing, or describing one's own emotions (unlike empathy which is about someone else's emotions).


title: Empathy

text: The scientific community has not coalesced around a precise definition of these constructs, but there is consensus about this distinction. Affective and cognitive empathy are also independent from one another; someone who strongly empathizes emotionally is not necessarily good in understanding another's perspective.


title: Empathy

text: Studies in animal behavior and neuroscience indicate that empathy is not restricted to humans (however the interpretation of such research depends in part on how expansive a definition of empathy researchers adopt).


title: Empathy

text: Empathy-like behaviors have been observed in primates, both in captivity and in the wild, and in particular in bonobos, perhaps the most empathic primate.


title: Empathy

text: One study demonstrated prosocial behavior elicited by empathy in rodents. Rodents demonstrate empathy for cagemates (but not strangers) in pain. An influential study on the evolution of empathy by Stephanie Preston and Frans de Waal discusses a neural perception-action mechanism and postulates a bottom-up model of empathy that ties together all levels, from state matching to perspective-taking.


title: Empathy

text: University of Chicago neurobiologist Jean Decety agrees that empathy is not exclusive to humans, but that empathy has deep evolutionary, biochemical, and neurological underpinnings, and that even the most advanced forms of empathy in humans are built on more basic forms and remain connected to core mechanisms associated with affective communication, social attachment, and parental care. Neural circuits involved in empathy and caring include the brainstem, the amygdala, hypothalamus, basal ganglia, insula, and orbitofrontal cortex.


title: Empathy

text: By the age of two, children normally begin to exhibit fundamental behaviors of empathy by having an emotional response that corresponds with another person's emotional state. Even earlier, at one year of age, infants have some rudiments of empathy; they understand that, as with their own actions, other people's actions have goals. Toddlers sometimes comfort others or show concern for them. During their second year, they play games of falsehood or pretend in an effort to fool others. Such actions require that the child knows what others believe in order that the child can manipulate those beliefs.


title: Empathy

text: According to researchers at the University of Chicago who used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), children between the ages of seven and twelve experience brain activity when seeing others be injured similar to the brain activity that would occur if the child themself had been injured. Their findings are consistent with previous fMRI studies of pain empathy with adults, and previous findings that vicarious experiencing, particularly of others' distress, is hardwired and present early in life. The research found additional areas of the brain, associated with social and moral cognition, were activated when young people saw another person intentionally hurt by somebody, including regions involved in moral reasoning.


title: Empathy

text: Although children are capable of showing some signs of empathy, including attempting to comfort a crying baby, from as early as 18 months to two years, most do not demonstrate a full theory of mind until around the age of four. Theory of mind involves the ability to understand that other people may have beliefs that are different from one's own, and is thought to involve the cognitive component of empathy. Children usually can pass false-belief tasks (a test for a theory of mind) around the age of four. It is theorised that people with autism find using a theory of mind to be very difficult (e.g. the Sally–Anne test).


title: Empathy

text: Empathic maturity is a cognitive-structural theory developed at the Yale University School of Nursing. It addresses how adults conceive or understand the personhood of patients. The theory, first applied to nurses and since applied to other professions, postulates three levels of cognitive structures. The third and highest level is a meta-ethical theory of the moral structure of care. Adults who operate with level-III understanding synthesize systems of justice and care-based ethics.


title: Empathy

text: The Empathic Concern scale assesses other-oriented feelings of sympathy and concern and the Personal Distress scale measures self-oriented feelings of personal anxiety and unease. Researchers have used behavioral and neuroimaging data to analyze extraversion and agreeableness (the Warmth-Altruistic personality profile). Both are associated with empathic accuracy and increased brain activity in two brain regions that are important for empathic processing (medial prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction).


title: Empathy

text: On average, females score higher than males on measures of empathy, such as the Empathy Quotient (EQ), while males tend to score higher on the Systemizing Quotient (SQ). Both males and females with autistic spectrum disorders usually score lower on the EQ and higher on SQ (see below for more detail on autism and empathy).


title: Empathy

text: Other studies show no significant sex differences, and instead suggest that gender differences are the result of motivational differences, such as upholding stereotypes. Gender stereotypes about men and women can affect how they express emotions. The sex difference is small to moderate, somewhat inconsistent, and is often influenced by the person's motivations or social environment. Bosson et al. say "physiological measures of emotion and studies that track people in their daily lives find no consistent sex differences in the experience of emotion," which "suggests that women may amplify certain emotional expressions, or men may suppress them." However, a 2014 review from "Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews" reported that there is evidence that "sex differences in empathy have phylogenetic and ontogenetic roots in biology and are not merely cultural byproducts driven by socialization."


title: Empathy

text: A review published in "Neuropsychologia" found that females tended to be better at recognizing facial effects, expression processing, and emotions in general. Males tended to be better at recognizing specific behaviors such as anger, aggression, and threatening cues. A 2014 meta-analysis, in "Cognition and Emotion", found a small female advantage in non-verbal emotional recognition.


title: Empathy

text: The 2014 "Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews" analysis found sex differences in empathy from birth, growing larger with age, and consistent and stable across lifespan. Females, on average, had higher empathy than males, while children with higher empathy, regardless of gender, continue to be higher in empathy throughout development. Analysis of brain event-related potentials found that females who saw human suffering tended to have higher ERP waveforms than males. An investigation of N400 amplitudes found, on average, higher N400 in females in response to social situations which positively correlated with self-reported empathy. Structural fMRI studies also found females to have larger grey matter volumes in posterior inferior frontal and anterior inferior parietal cortex areas which are correlated with mirror neurons in fMRI literature. Females also tended to have a stronger link between emotional and cognitive empathy. The researchers believe that the stability of these sex differences in development are unlikely to be explained by environmental influences but rather by human evolution and inheritance. Throughout prehistory, women were the primary nurturers and caretakers of children; so this might have led to an evolved neurological adaptation for women to be more aware and responsive to non-verbal expressions. According to the "Primary Caretaker Hypothesis", prehistoric men did not have such selective pressure as primary caretakers. This might explain modern day sex differences in emotion recognition and empathy.


title: Empathy

text: Some research theorizes that environmental factors, such as parenting style and relationships, affect the development of empathy in children. Empathy promotes pro-social relationships and helps mediate aggression.


title: Empathy

text: Caroline Tisot studied how environmental factors like parenting style, parent empathy, and prior social experiences affect the development of empathy in young children. The children studied were asked to complete an effective empathy measure, while the children's parents completed a questionnaire to assess parenting style and the Balanced Emotional Empathy scale. The study found that certain parenting practices, as opposed to parenting style as a whole, contributed to the development of empathy in children. These practices include encouraging the child to imagine the perspectives of others and teaching the child to reflect on his or her own feelings. The development of empathy varied based on the gender of the child and parent. Paternal warmth was significantly positively related to empathy in children, especially boys. Maternal warmth was negatively related to empathy in children, especially girls.


title: Empathy

text: Empathy may be disrupted due to brain trauma such as stroke. In most cases, empathy is impaired if a lesion or stroke occurs on the right side of the brain. Damage to the frontal lobe, which is primarily responsible for emotional regulation, can profoundly impact a person's capacity to experience empathy. People with an acquired brain injury also show lower levels of empathy. More than half of those people with a traumatic brain injury self-report a deficit in their empathic capacity.


title: Empathy

text: Empathic anger is an emotion, a form of empathic distress. Empathic anger is felt in a situation where someone else is being hurt by another person or thing.


title: Empathy

text: Empathic anger affects desires to help and to punish. Two sub-categories of empathic anger are state empathic anger (current empathic anger) and trait empathic anger (tendency or predisposition to experience empathic anger).


title: Empathy

text: The higher a person's perspective-taking ability, the less angry they are in response to a provocation. Empathic concern does not, however, significantly predict anger response, and higher personal distress is associated with increased anger.


title: Empathy

text: Empathic distress is feeling the perceived pain of another person. This feeling can be transformed into empathic anger, feelings of injustice, or guilt. These emotions can be perceived as pro-social; however, views differ as to whether they serve as motives for moral behavior.


title: Empathy

text: Investigators into the social response to natural disasters researched the characteristics associated with individuals who help victims. Researchers found that cognitive empathy, rather than emotional empathy, predicted helping behavior towards victims. Taking on the perspectives of others (cognitive empathy) may allow these helpers to better empathize with victims without as much discomfort, whereas sharing the emotions of the victims (emotional empathy) can cause emotional distress, helplessness, and victim-blaming, and may lead to avoidance rather than helping.


title: Empathy

text: Individuals who expressed concern for the vulnerable (i.e. affective empathy) were more willing to accept the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown measures that create distress. Knowledge of how empathic feelings evoke altruistic motivation may lead people to adopt strategies for suppressing or avoiding such feelings. Such numbing, or loss of the capacity to feel empathy for clients, is a possible factor in the experience of burnout among case workers in helping professions. People can better cognitively control their actions the more they understand how altruistic behavior emerges, whether it is from minimizing sadness or the arousal of mirror neurons. Empathy-induced altruism may not always produce pro-social effects. For example, it could lead one to exert oneself on behalf of those for whom empathy is felt at the expense of other potential pro-social goals, thus inducing a type of bias. Researchers suggest that individuals are willing to act against the greater collective good or to violate their own moral principles of fairness and justice if doing so will benefit a person for whom empathy is felt.


title: Empathy

text: Empathy-based socialization differs from inhibition of egoistic impulses through shaping, modeling, and internalized guilt. Therapeutic programs to foster altruistic impulses by encouraging perspective-taking and empathic feelings might enable individuals to develop more satisfactory interpersonal relations, especially in the long-term. Empathy-induced altruism can improve attitudes toward stigmatized groups, and to improve racial attitudes, and actions toward people with AIDS, the homeless, and convicts. Such resulting altruism also increases cooperation in competitive situations.


title: Empathy

text: Measures of empathy show evidence of being genetically influenced. For example, carriers of the deletion variant of ADRA2B show more activation of the amygdala when viewing emotionally arousing images. The gene 5-HTTLPR seems to influence sensitivity to negative emotional information and is also attenuated by the deletion variant of ADRA2b. Carriers of the double G variant of the OXTR gene have better social skills and higher self-esteem. A gene located near LRRN1 on chromosome 3 influences the human ability to read, understand, and respond to emotions in others.


title: Empathy

text: Contemporary neuroscience offers insights into the neural basis of the mind's ability to understand and process emotion. Studies of mirror neurons attempt to measure the neural basis for human mind-reading and emotion-sharing abilities and thereby to explain the basis of the empathy reaction. People who score high on empathy tests have especially busy mirror neuron systems. Empathy is a spontaneous sharing of affect, provoked by witnessing and sympathizing with another's emotional state. The empathic person mirrors or mimics the emotional response they would expect to feel if they were in the other person's place. Unlike personal distress, empathy is not characterized by aversion to another's emotional response. This distinction is vital because empathy is associated with the moral emotion sympathy, or empathic concern, and consequently also prosocial or altruistic action.


title: Empathy

text: A person empathizes by feeling what they believe to be the emotions of another, which makes empathy both affective and cognitive. For social beings, negotiating interpersonal decisions is as important to survival as being able to navigate the physical landscape.


title: Empathy

text: Meta-analysis studies of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of empathy confirm that different brain areas are activated during affective-perceptual empathy than during cognitive-evaluative empathy. Affective empathy is correlated with increased activity in the insula while cognitive empathy is correlated with activity in the mid cingulate cortex and adjacent dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. A study with patients who experienced different types of brain damage confirmed the distinction between emotional and cognitive empathy. Specifically, the inferior frontal gyrus appears to be responsible for emotional empathy, and the ventromedial prefrontal gyrus seems to mediate cognitive empathy.


title: Empathy

text: fMRI has been employed to investigate the functional anatomy of empathy. Observing another person's emotional state activates parts of the neuronal network that are involved in processing that same state in oneself, whether it is disgust, touch, or pain.


title: Empathy

text: The study of the neural underpinnings of empathy received increased interest following a paper published by S.D. Preston and Frans de Waal after the discovery of mirror neurons in monkeys that fire both when the creature watches another perform an action as well as when they themselves perform it. Researchers suggest that paying attention to perceiving another individual's state activates neural representations, and that this activation primes or generates the associated autonomic and somatic responses (perception-action coupling), unless inhibited. This mechanism resembles the common coding theory between perception and action. Another study provides evidence of separate neural pathways activating reciprocal suppression in different regions of the brain associated with the performance of "social" and "mechanical" tasks. These findings suggest that the cognition associated with reasoning about the "state of another person's mind" and "causal/mechanical properties of inanimate objects" are neurally suppressed from occurring at the same time.


title: Empathy

text: Mirroring-behavior in motor neurons during empathy may help duplicate feelings. Such sympathetic action may afford access to sympathetic feelings and, perhaps, trigger emotions of kindness and forgiveness.


title: Empathy

text: A difference in distribution between affective and cognitive empathy has been observed in various conditions. Psychopathy and narcissism are associated with impairments in affective but not cognitive empathy, whereas bipolar disorder and borderline traits are associated with deficits in cognitive but not affective empathy. Autism spectrum disorders are associated with various combinations, including deficits in cognitive empathy as well as deficits in both cognitive and affective empathy. Schizophrenia, too, is associated with deficits in both types of empathy.<ref name="10.1016/j.psychres.2007.05.017"></ref> However, even in people without conditions such as these, the balance between affective and cognitive empathy varies.


title: Empathy

text: Atypical empathic responses are associated with autism and particular personality disorders such as psychopathy, borderline, narcissistic, and schizoid personality disorders; conduct disorder; schizophrenia; bipolar disorder; and depersonalization. Sex offenders who had been raised in an environment where they were shown a lack of empathy and had endured abuse of the sort they later committed, felt less affective empathy for their victims.


title: Empathy

text: The interaction between empathy and autism is a complex and ongoing field of research. Several different factors are proposed to be at play.


title: Empathy

text: A study of high-functioning adults with autistic spectrum disorders found an increased prevalence of alexithymia, a personality construct characterized by the inability to recognize and articulate emotional arousal in oneself or others. Some fMRI research indicates that alexithymia contributes to a lack of empathy. The lack of empathic attunement inherent to alexithymic states may reduce quality and satisfaction of relationships. Empathy deficits associated with the autism spectrum may be due to significant comorbidity between alexithymia and autism spectrum conditions rather than a result of social impairment.


title: Empathy

text: Relative to typically developing children, high-functioning autistic children showed reduced mirror neuron activity in the brain's inferior frontal gyrus ("pars opercularis") while imitating and observing emotional expressions in neurotypical children. EEG evidence revealed significantly greater mu suppression in the sensorimotor cortex of autistic individuals. Activity in this area was inversely related to symptom severity in the social domain, suggesting that a dysfunctional mirror neuron system may underlie social and communication deficits observed in autism, including impaired theory of mind and cognitive empathy. The mirror neuron system is essential for emotional empathy.


title: Empathy

text: Studies have suggested that autistic individuals have an impaired theory of mind. Theory of mind relies on structures of the temporal lobe and the pre-frontal cortex; empathy relies on the sensorimotor cortices as well as limbic and para-limbic structures. The lack of clear distinctions between theory of mind and cognitive empathy may have caused an incomplete understanding of the empathic abilities of those with Asperger syndrome; many reports on the empathic deficits of individuals with Asperger syndrome are actually based on impairments in theory of mind. Although autistic people have difficulties in recognizing and articulating emotions, some studies have reported that while they may lack cognitive empathy (the ability to assume another's emotions), they have higher than average levels of affective empathy (feeling the emotions that another is feeling, once they are known).


title: Empathy

text: Individuals on the autistic spectrum self-report lower levels of empathic concern, show less or absent comforting responses toward someone who is suffering, and report equal or higher levels of personal distress compared to controls. The combination of reduced empathic concern and increased personal distress may lead to the overall reduction in empathy. Professor Simon Baron-Cohen suggests that those with classic autism often lack both cognitive and affective empathy. However, other research found no evidence of impairment in autistic individuals' ability to understand other people's basic intentions or goals; instead, data suggests that impairments are found in understanding more complex social emotions or in considering others' viewpoints. People with Asperger syndrome may have problems understanding others' perspectives in terms of theory of mind, but the average person with the condition demonstrates equal empathic concern as, and higher personal distress than, controls. The existence of individuals with heightened personal distress on the autism spectrum is a possible explanation for why some people with autism appear to have heightened emotional empathy. Although increased personal distress may be an effect of heightened egocentrism, emotional empathy depends on mirror neuron activity (which, as described previously, has been found to be reduced in those with autism), and empathy in people on the autism spectrum is generally reduced. Empathy deficits present in autism spectrum disorders may be more indicative of impairments in the ability to take the perspective of others, while the empathy deficits in psychopathy may be more indicative of impairments in responsiveness to others' emotions. These "disorders of empathy" further highlight the importance of the ability to empathize, by the way they illustrate some of the consequences of disrupted empathy development.


title: Empathy

text: The empathizing–systemizing theory (E-S) classifies people by testing their capabilities along two independent dimensions—empathizing (E) and systemizing (S)—to establish their Empathy Quotient (EQ) and Systemizing Quotient (SQ). Five "brain types" can be distinguished based on such scores, which are theorized to correlate with differences at the neural level. In E-S theory, autism and Asperger syndrome are associated with below-average empathy and average or above-average systemizing. The E-S theory has been extended into the Extreme Male Brain theory, which suggests that people with an autism spectrum condition are more likely to have an "Extreme Type S" brain type, corresponding with above-average systemizing but challenged empathy.


title: Empathy

text: The extreme male brain (EMB) theory proposes that individuals on the autistic spectrum are characterized by impairments in empathy due to sex differences in the brain: specifically, people with autism spectrum conditions show an exaggerated male profile. Some aspects of autistic neuroanatomy seem to be extrapolations of typical male neuroanatomy, which may be influenced by elevated levels of fetal testosterone rather than gender itself.


title: Empathy

text: The double empathy problem theory proposes that prior studies on autism and empathy may have been misinterpreted and that autistic people show the same levels of cognitive empathy towards one another as non-autistic people do.


title: Empathy

text: Psychopathy is a personality disorder partly characterized by antisocial and aggressive behaviors, as well as emotional and interpersonal deficits including shallow emotions and a lack of remorse and empathy. The "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM) and "International Classification of Diseases" (ICD) list antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and dissocial personality disorder, stating that these have been referred to as or include what is referred to as psychopathy.