National Security Adviser, Conspiracy Theory Fan, Shared Classified Information Without Authorization
The Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, known informally as the National Security Adviser, is the chief adviser to the president on national security issues. Consistent with the pattern of appointees whose political positions or temperaments seem antithetical to the mission of the agencies or positions they've been appointed to fill, Trump's designated National Security Adviser, Retired U.S. Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, has been investigated for passing classified information without authorization, and has promoted conspiracy theories and fake news.
An army investigation in 2010 found that, while serving in Afghanistan, Flynn "shared United States classified information with various foreign military officers and/or officials in Afghanistan without proper authorization." The investigation itself remains classified. Flynn was let off with a warning, according to a November 23 profile in the New Yorker by Dana Priest.
Priest also revealed that Flynn, a harsh critic of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while Secretary of State, had a private Internet connection installed in his Pentagon office while he was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, despite its being "forbidden." Priest does not elaborate on why the private connection was prohibited, but an article in Business Insider points out that authorized Internet connections inside the Pentagon are monitored. An unmonitored connection would have represented a security risk, especially if Flynn's office was a designated sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF).
Trump may have selected Flynn because of their shared love for social networking services Twitter. A review of Flynn's verified twitter account by CNN's Andrew Kaczynski found that he regularly interacted with white nationalists, broadcast slurs against Muslims, and shared a range of fake news. Kaczynski found that, on multiple occasions, Flynn referenced right wing activist Mike Cernovich in his tweets. Among other distasteful views, Cernovich has tweeted that "Date rape does not exist," because rape requires force, and that "Not being a slut is the only proven way to avoid AIDS." Flynn has also referenced anti-Semitic commentator Jared Wyland. Wyland once tweeted that the way to respond to "Liberal Jewish Media" concerns that media be diverse was to ensure "they're only 1.4% of the media."
Flynn's twitter feed gained wider attention recently when it appeared he was promoting the bizarre and completely false conspiracy theory that attempted to associate Hillary Clinton and former campaign chair with a child sex ring supposedly operating out of the basement of a DC pizza restaurant. White supremacists and other Trump supporters spread the wild allegations on social media, culminating on December 4 in a man walking into a Washington pizzeria and firing one or more shots. While the Washington Post found that Flynn had not tweeted specifically about the establishment where the gunman ended up, it did find that he had retweeted a link about the false claims. Flynn's son, however, did tweet about the location where the shooting ultimately took place, and "challenged the media to disprove the baseless claims."
Retired U.S. Army General Barry McCaffrey speaking on NBC News said Flynn's tweets "border[ed] on the demented," and called for further investigtion.
In August, in an interview with Steve Bannon's Breitbart News on SiriusXM radio, Flynn claimed that "radical Islamist countries" were making deals with Mexican drug cartels for access to the U.S. "And I have personally seen the photos of the signage along those paths that are in Arabic," Flynn said. "They're like way points along that path as you come in. Primarily, in this case the one that I saw was in Texas and it's literally, it's like signs, that say, in Arabic, 'this way, move to this point.' It's unbelievable." A border patrol union spokesman told CNN that "the group was not aware of the signs Flynn referenced...."