'A Bunch of Kooks': Michael Flynn Described QAnon as a 'Disinformation Campaign' in Recorded Call

Michael Flynn, who once filmed his family at a July 4 barbecue saying the QAnon oath, “Where we go one, we go all,” said in private that the Q conspiracy theory was “total nonsense” and a “disinformation campaign created by the left.”

In a recording of a phone call purportedly between Trump lawyer Lin Wood and Flynn released late Saturday night, Trump’s disgraced former national security advisor said of QAnon, “I think it’s a disinformation campaign that the CIA created. That’s what I believe. Now, I don’t know that for a fact, but that’s what I think it is. I think it’s a disinformation campaign.”

Flynn has been a prominent figure in the QAnon movement, with some followers believing Flynn himself may have been the anonymous poster known as “Q,” who posted nearly 5,000 messages online between 2017 and 2020. Many of those messages contained cryptic hints that followers in the movement believe point to a “Deep State” conspiracy of Satanic rituals performed by cannibal pedophiles in the U.S. government.

Flynn’s disbelief, however, has not stopped him from profiting off of the Q conspiracy. In 2016 shortly after Trump’s election, Flynn said that “army of digital soldiers” got Trump into office. Flynn trademarked the phrase “digital soldiers,” which later became a rallying cry for the Q movement. Even as recently as this summer, he spoke at a conference attended by QAnon believers — the “For God & and Country Patriot Roundup” — where he appeared to endorse the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. In 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

“The QAnon movement really is a movement that spun out of your digital soldiers,” Wood told Flynn during the call.

“Maybe, I don’t know that,” Flynn responded.

“I find it total nonsense,” Flynn continued. “And I think it’s a disinformation campaign created by the left and the types of people that can create something like that are the kinds of people that we trained with certain skills in the CIA, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what it was.”

Wood then chimes in, saying that QAnon “may have been a white hat operation that got, in effect, kidnapped by the black hat.”

“I don’t care,” Wood added. “I’ve always believed one, there were ‘Q Drops’ — I didn’t understand them, I didn’t look at them. But I understood what Q stood for.”

In addition to the recording, Wood posted screenshots of texts that appear to be from Flynn where he says he has “always believe (sic)” that QAnon was a “disinformation campaign to make people look like a bunch of kooks.”

Wood, who has been feuding recently with fellow Trump allies, released the recording of the nearly 24-minute call with Flynn on his Telegram channel. Wood has been in a downward spiral ever since Kyle Rittenhouse, the far-right darling recently acquitted of homicide for killing people at a racial justice protest, said that Wood had “taken advantage” of him and left him in jail unnecessarily when he briefly represented him. On Friday night, he released a recording of a phone call between himself and another Trump ally, former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne. In the call, Wood claimed that Stop the Steal — the organization formed to help Trump overturn the 2020 election — “is a Deep State organization to raise money for purposes other than to FIX 2020.”

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