The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

by Timothy Snyder

In the fog of mental confusion that surrounded Flynn, it was easy to overlook his peculiar connections to Russia. Flynn was permitted to see the headquarters of Russian military intelligence, which he visited in 2013. When invited to a seminar on intelligence at Cambridge in 2014, he befriended a Russian woman, signing his emails to her “General Misha”—a Russian diminutive meaning “Mike.” In summer 2015, he worked to promote a plan to build nuclear power plants across the Middle East with Russian cooperation, and then failed to disclose that he had done so. Flynn was a guest on RT, where he gave the impression of being outwitted by the hosts. In 2015, he appeared in Moscow as a paid guest ($33,750) to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the founding of RT. He sat with Vladimir Putin at the gala dinner. When the American media began to report that Russia had hacked the emails of Democratic activists, Flynn responded by retweeting a message that suggested a Jewish conspiracy was behind that claim of Russian responsibility. On Flynn’s Twitter feed his followers read: “Not anymore, Jews. Not anymore.” Flynn followed and retweeted no fewer than five fake Russian accounts, pushed at least sixteen Russian memes through the internet, and was sharing Russian content with his followers right down to the day before the election. On December 29, 2016, weeks after Trump had won the election but weeks before his inauguration, Flynn spoke to the Russian ambassador and then lied to others,...