Mike Flynn’s Brother Involved in Denying National Guard Response to the Capitol
The Washington Post is reporting that the Army has lied for two weeks that Lt. General Charles Flynn, brother to disgraced and pardoned felon Mike Flynn was involved in the calls from Capitol Hill Police for help to repel the insurrection of Trump’s criminals who attempted to overthrow the government on January 6th. The Pentagon has now confirmed that Flynn’s brother was indeed in on the calls, and he is now denying that he influenced the decision to delay National Guard response. Sure. That’s believable.
Well, if we can believe the Washington Post, “There is no indication that Charles Flynn shares his brother’s extreme views or discharged his duties at the Pentagon on Jan. 6 in any manner that was influenced by his brother.” So there’s that.
1Well, if he wasn’t in on it, that’s too bad. Because of his brother…
2That’s falling into the old military category of once (or one thing) is enh (accident, random, whatever), twice (two related things) is coincidence, and three times is enemy action.
There were multiple calls asking for help. Multiple calls from MD Governor asking to be given permission to send the MD Nat Guard. ANYONE in the chain of calls between the asking and the granting of permission for MD Nat Guard to cross the state line should be required to explain what he heard from whom, and what he said to whom, until the whole linkage is laid bare. We’re already at the third category, enemy action in there somewhere. Acting SecDef? Acting next level down? A Lieutenant General (3 stars) at the Pentagon is not going to be the bottom level, and is plenty high enough to be culpable if he obeyed an illegal order. A three-star.
Now he could well be telling the partial truth that he didn’t “influence” the calls, because he got his orders from above (e.g. SecDef, SecArmy, or a 4 star general) and merely did what he was told. Those are people who would reasonably be in his chain of command. But Trump liked to work through people he knew. If his brother-bad-guy called and said “Listen, the President doesn’t want any intervention until x-hours…and he doesn’t trust these other guys…he’s your Commander in Chief, do what he wants…” That is a backdoor way he could receive an order. Trump might well have taken that route, esp. if he got any back pressure from the other.
What’s needed it to squeeze Lt. Gen Flynn into admitting exactly who gave him his orders, what those orders were, and to whom he then gave orders, and complete the chain. Ordinarily the Army’s own investigators would do this but the Army’s had some problems lately with investigating serial crimes in Texas (Fort Hood’s murders of troops, and now one or two in San Antonio.) Since the Army lied about Flynn’s involvement, someone there thinks he knows something that can incriminate someone *else* (the 4 star, for instance.)
Flynn is looking at a career-ending mess with a court-martial, and though none of it may be his fault, it’s going to look bad until he says what DID happen, not just what he didn’t do. His career’s pffft! at this point, but if he wasn’t involved, he might not get thrown in a military prison if he’s clear, concise, and helpful. It’s not just whether he was influenced by his brother, or he himself influenced the orders he was given…it’s whether he knew/could have known the orders he was given were illegal.
If he was spending two hours arguing with Army lawyers about whether Trump had the right to order him to hang Congress out to be attacked freely…I’d be inclined to go to court martial myself. 3 stars should know the law and make a decision, right or wrong, faster than that. I never risked that much (not being within shouting distance of that rank) but I met some in the course of my time and I cannot conceive of a flag rank officer–esp. with more than one star–who would not see failure to respond to an attack on the Capitol and Congress as the wrong thing to do, no matter who gave the order.
3I’m assuming he’s Army, from the Lt. General part, but that could also be USMC (wait, this is what search engines are for): HOLY FREAKIN’ BABYCAKES. OK. Let’s see if I can get it to paste in here:
Charles A. Flynn (born c. 1963) is a United States Army lieutenant general who serves as Deputy Chief of Staff G3/5/7 since June 2019. His nomination for promotion to general was submitted to the U.S. Senate on 30 November 2020 and confirmed by voice vote of the full Senate on 20 December 2020.
He WAS a 3-star Lt. Gen until 30 November, 2020, and was already Deputy Chief of Staff G-3/5/7 (which means “Readiness”) since June 2019. Nominated to be promoted to 4-star, General, confirmed by voice vote in the Senate on 20 December, 2020. One of Trump’s late-in-term changes, like the new SecDef. (Generals serve at the pleasure of presidents, and presidents can nudge for promotions or not, and the Senate, under McConnell, would do whatever Trump wanted.)
Lordy, Lordy, that’s beginning to smell like a 5 day old fish in the vegetable drawer. We know the planning for the Capitol attack was already underway before Christmas, some of it before that (because of getting hotel reservations, travel reservations, among other things. We know the military is compromised with various, um, political extremists, mostly right-wing.
It’s all speculation until we see the transcripts, but I think this guy was either set up to take the fall, if a fall came, or he’s been in it like, um, Flynn, from the get go. A four-star in Readiness would be believed by any subordinate unit, and can be unavailable to those below when it’s convenient. This is one of the buried fuses of revolution (or maybe not. But as a fiction writer, it sure would make this a plot to hold readers to the page with. I may in fact steal it and run it, well-disguised, in the next book.)
4I am all in on investigating and purging the system of those responsible. I am just concerned that we do it right. I do not want a Vindeman style case on our watch.
5Digging deeper into stuff I’d forgotten and stuff I never knew (nobody teaches butterbars all this stuff about organization all the way up). All sources so far easily reached by Googling at a completely open level…so none of this is classified; it’s just sitting there in the internet servers, waiting to be called on by any military or civilian who’s interested. No need for hacking, or messing with “dark webs”….look up G-3/5/7 responsibilities and *bingo*. That certainly makes it easy to see how much clout an officer of any rank has in responding to an attack, and how many are above them in the chain of command. Above a four-star…not many.
Each G-level number denotes a particular range of responsibilities for staff. G-3 is Operations (when you’re actually doing something with a unit), G-5 is Civil/Military Operations (when civilian and military operations intertwine), and G-7 is Information Operations (where gathering information and using it overlap.) An individual in lower ranks usually has only one of these attached numbers; senior officers may have overlapping responsibilities. So a G-3/5/7 will be responsible for what falls under all three within their chain of command.
If you wanted interfere with response to an attack on the Capitol, if you wanted to be more confident that a lower-ranking hot-shot would be less likely to jump the gun and send help, a G-3/5/7 four-star you could bamboozle or just command would be the one to go for. If you could snag two, then you’d also want the G-2/4/6, but the one we know of was a 3/5/7.
6My thought exactly. Howard. As far as the story goes, the finger is not pointing at Flynn but at whoever lied/was too confused to answer about it.
What is needed is a full-blown commission of inquiry.
One thing is known: we don’t get much for our $700,000,000,000.00 a year.
Also, I just learned thAt you cannot conduct a war over Zoom or whatever conferencing platform they were using. They nee to fix that
7Howard, the only people I’m suggesting be summarily removed from the Senate are those clearly videotaped in the process of inciting and enabling the attack on the Capitol.
I’ve said clearly that I can imagine scenarios in which General Charles Flynn is innocent of wrongdoing. Not out to hang the innocent.
But also NOT willing to fail to identify those who enabled this attack, as quickly as investigation allows, and make sure they’re not running around free to do the same thing again in six months. I do not have even a smidge of the Susan Collins-like “Oh, he’s learned his lesson” in my mind. They’ll have learned their lesson after they confess what they did wrong and start making serious reparations that cost them time, money, and effort. That’s when I’ll know they’ve learned their lesson.
8Sadly for him, he’s the brother of a convicted criminal. The stench will follow him forever through his career even though his brother received a pardon.
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