Michael T. Flynn

Michael Thomas "Mike" Flynn (born December 1958) is a retired United States Army Lieutenant General, who served in the Army for 33 years until 2014. Flynn's military career included a key role in shaping U.S. counterterrorism strategy and dismantling insurgent networks in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he was given numerous combat arms, conventional, and special operations senior intelligence assignments. He was appointed by President Barack Obama as the eighteenth director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, serving from July 2012 to his retirement from the military in August 2014. After leaving the military, he established Flynn Intel Group which has provided intelligence services for businesses and governments, including ones in Turkey. Flynn also briefly served as the twenty-fifth National Security Advisor for President Donald Trump, from January 20 to February 13, 2017. Flynn was forced to resign as Trump's National Security Advisor after information surfaced that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about the nature and content of his communications with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak. Flynn's tenure of just 24 days was the shortest in the history of the office. On April 27, 2017, the Pentagon inspector general announced an investigation into whether Flynn had accepted money from foreign governments without the required approval. Flynn initially refused to hand over subpoenaed documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee, pleading the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination, but a compromise with the committee was worked out.