Flynn Encourages QAnon in Another Call for a Coup
Over the holiday weekend, QAnon held a four day conference that included several heavy-hitters from Trump's insurrection days, and culminated in a call for a Myanmar-like coup in the United States.
Former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn served as a keynote speaker for the For God & Country Patriot Roundup at the city-owned Omni Dallas Hotel this weekend, where he told attendees of the conference that what happened in Myanmar — where the military overthrew the government — “should happen” in the United States.
The retired Army Lieutenant General, who has helped to promote false claims of election fraud to help Trump overturn the results of last year’s presidential election, made the controversial statement during a Q&A session near the close of the event. Flynn, a former three-star general who received a pardon from Trump in November for lying to the FBI, was asked by an attendee who identified himself as a US Marine, “I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can’t happen here.”
After pausing for a few moments to allow the rowdy crowd, which had erupted in cheers and applause following the question to settle down, Michael Flynn responded by saying: “No reason. I mean, it should happen here.” You can watch the moment in the video embedded in the tweet below.
Following a national democratic election in Myanmar earlier this year, the military in Myanmar (formerly Burma) used overwhelming force to seize control of the government and imprison the newly elected leaders. Myanmar military leaders cited unproven allegations of voter fraud as the basis for their violent plan to maintain power. Thousands of civilians in Myanmar have been protesting for months in an attempt to stop the coup — at least 800 civilians have died, and thousands have been arrested.
Following the US Presidental Election in November of last year, Donald Trump and his supporters made eerily similar claims and filed over 50 lawsuits, in various jurisdictions, to no avail. On Jan 6th of this year, Trump supporters, which included many QAnon members and several other nationalist militant groups, seized control of the US Capitol Building to stop the certification of the election and keep Trump in power.
A newly unsealed indictment was also revealed just a day before Flynn made his outrageous claims, and it named additional members of the Oath Keepers militant group, who have now been indicted and arrested for their actions during the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. The total number of co-defendants charged in the US Capitol attack has now reached 16, making it the largest conspiracy case to date.
On Friday, Senate Republicans launched their first filibuster since President Biden took office to stop bipartisan legislation that would establish an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Despite several credible allegations that Republican Members of Congress, with substantial ties to Trump and QAnon, were possibly involved in the insurrection, the vote to establish an investigatory commission failed.
The final Senate vote was 54-35, and ultimately, Republicans withheld the votes necessary to bring the bill up for debate. Only six Republican Senators joined with Democrats in the vote, leaving the measure short of the 60 votes needed to proceed.
This weekend was not the first time that QAnon conspiracy group members have praised the Myanmar coup and called for the same actions in the United States. It is also not the first instance that Flynn has publically supported the QAnon movement. Flynn posted a video on Twitter last summer where he recited QAnon slogans, and he was ultimately banned by the social media platform in January of this year.
The baseless QAnon conspiracy movement emerged during the 2016 election when the Trump campaign enjoyed surprisingly new popularity. The basis of the movement posits the false premise that Trump was combating a laundry list of bureaucrats, liberal politicians, and Hollywood figures who were actively engaged in running an underground child sex trafficking cult. While the movement has only continued to grow in size during the last four years, Trump’s recent election loss and the increasingly strict new social media content policies have clearly not curbed the group’s activity.
Despite the group’s tendency to blame ANTIFA activists for protest violence in America, a report from the Domestic Radicalization Project has found that 79 conspiracy-motivated QAnon believers had committed crimes as of May 26, 2021. This includes the infamous Comet Ping Pong shooting in 2016 and an assassination threat against then-candidate Biden.
During a White House press briefing last August, Trump told a crowd of reporters, "Well, I don't know much about the [QAnon] movement other than I understand that they like me very much, which I appreciate," and added, “if I can help save the world from problems, I'm willing to do it.”
Several other accounts that consistently promoted QAnon theories were permanently removed from Twitter following the Capitol insurrection, including other high-profile supporters of Trump and Trump’s former lawyer Sidney Powell. Nevertheless, Powell was chosen to attend the QAnon Roundup Conference this weekend and served as a co-keynote speaker with Michael Flynn.
During her speech, Sidney Powell, who helped lead Trump’s disastrous post-election lawsuits, promoted a popular QAnon theory that Trump can be “reinstated” on a “new inauguration date,” after President Joe Biden is “told to move out of the White House.” There is absolutely no aspect of this ridiculous scenario that is legal or plausible.
For this weekend’s QAnon convention in Dallas, Tickets were priced at $500 each, and the event was reportedly organized by John Sabal, known in QAnon circles as “QAnon John.” Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX) spoke at the event to continue his House floor shtick of downplaying the attack on the Capitol, and he also took a photo with a confessed Jan. 6 rioter at the event.
Following substantial criticism from various commentators, lawmakers, and GOP heavy hitters like Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), Michael Flynn tried to walk back his statements on Monday night, saying he had never called for a Myanmar-like military coup in the US in his statement. Flynn told his Telegram followers that there was "no reason whatsoever" for any coup to occur in America and claimed it was a "boldface fabrication" to say otherwise, despite video proof of his original statement.
The word “sedition” is defined as conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch. Moreover, the act of sedition or inciting sedition is the crime of revolting or inciting revolt against the government. Prosecutions for instances of sedition are rare due to the broad protections of the First Amendment and freedom of speech, but it remains a federal crime in the United States.
The Department of Justice continues to charge civilians engaged in alleged illegal activity that culminated in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, while Members of Congress remain immune from any real investigation into their possible roles in the attack. What makes this realization worse is that those who are likely involved in assisting Trump in his coup were actually able to sway the vote that would have established a commission to hold them accountable, making it clear that an extensive re-examination of governmental immunity needs to happen immediately.
Amee Vanderpool writes the SHERO Newsletter and is an attorney, published author, contributor to newspapers and magazines, and analyst for BBC radio. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @girlsreallyrule.
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Am I the only one wondering why Flynn hasn't been arrested and charged with sedition and/or treason yet?
You are not the only one who is wondering why Flynn hasn’t been charged with sedition yet. I have been wondering what the FBI might be turning up with an investigation against him. Maybe they’ve been waiting for him to do something SO OVERT that he can’t get out of it. After last weekend, those charges should be writing themselves…