General Flynn played pivotal roles in military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. While his skills served him well in those environments, when he was tapped to lead the Defense Intelligence Agency, his shortcomings as a manager and strategic thinker soon became glaring. His grasp on the truth was so flimsy at times that colleagues began mockingly referring to “Flynn facts.”

Image Credit... Hanna Barczyk

General Flynn did not leave quietly after being fired by the Obama administration in 2014. He has since created a self-serving narrative, maintaining that he was dismissed for raising alarms about the threat posed by Islamist extremist groups, which he contends the Obama administration “coddles.”

He has been extraordinarily incendiary in his characterizations of Islam. In February, he posted a link to a video on Twitter warning about the threat of Islam: “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.” In August, he told The Washington Post that he agreed with some of Mr. Trump’s views about Muslims; he called Islam an ideology and compared it to a cancer that has metastasized.

General Flynn’s fearmongering “only plays into Al Qaeda’s narrative that there is a clash of civilizations,” Representative Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said, “What he has expressed is dangerous and harmful to us.”

In recent months, even while he advised Mr. Trump, General Flynn took on questionable consulting work, including speaking at a forum hosted by the state broadcaster Russia Today, which is infamous for its propaganda and serves as a mouthpiece for President Vladimir Putin. He also runs a consulting firm that has lobbied for a company with connections to Turkey’s authoritarian president. Just last week, he wrote an article urging the extradition of a Turkish cleric whom the Turkish government said was the mastermind of the attempted coup in July.