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WASHINGTON − Former President Donald Trump tells supporters he’ll be their “retribution” if elected in November. He talks of turning the military and the National Guard on the “enemy within,” or those who don’t support him, including Democratic figures like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Trump speaks only in generalities about his intentions. But for the past year, a former top Trump national security official likely to join him in a new administration has been crisscrossing America recruiting an army of volunteers to help carry out such a plan.
That’s Michael Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general and Trump’s first White House national security advisor. He’s also a former convicted felon who was banished from what he calls the “Deep State” national security bureaucracy after rising to become head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency.
At Flynn’s side is his longtime aide Ivan Raiklin, an intense former Green Beret, retired Army Reserve lieutenant colonel and former DIA employee who’s also a conservative lawyer.
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Flynn and Raiklin are among the most vocal of a cadre of Trump allies calling for prosecution and even violence against the former president’s political enemies.
Raiklin, who calls himself Trump’s “Secretary of Retribution,” has gone so far as to compile a “Deep State Target List” of more than 350 people he says he’ll go after in a second Trump administration.
“It’s just unthinkable that our country has come to this,” retired Air Force Lt. Gen. JamesClapper, who served as the U.S. director of National Intelligence and DIA chief, told USA TODAY.
Javed Ali, a senior National Security Council official in the Trump administration, called the men’s agenda “very unsettling,” especially coming from a former top-ranking military officer like Flynn.
Together, Flynn and Raiklin have been barnstorming for a far-right, antigovernment form of Christian nationalism, railing against what they see as a “woke” takeover of America by communist sympathizers aligned with China.
That group, they say, includes liberals, Democrats and other Trump opponents.
‘The gates of hell’
In dozens of town hall-style appearances this year, including at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, Flynn and Raiklin have talked of the need for Americans do whatever it takes to get Trump re-elected − and then exact vengeance including detention, tribunals and possibly worse.
At the far-right Rod of Iron Freedom Festival on Oct. 11 in Greeley, Pennsylvania, one attendee asked Flynn whether, if Trump wins, he would get his “rank reinstated and sit at the head of a military tribunal to not only drain the swamp, but imprison the swamp and on a few occasions, execute the swamp?”
The question brought a chorus of cheers at the event, which was sponsored by a group, led by the son of the late Unification Church founder Rev. Sun Myung Moon, that the Southern Poverty Law Center calls an “antigovernment Christian gun cult.”
“I think a lot of people actually think like you do, and I think that that’s your right and our privilege,” Flynn replied.
“These people are already up to no good,” he said of Trump’s opponents, “so we gotta win first. We win, and then … Katie bar the door. Believe me, the gates of hell − my hell − will be unleashed.”
Jeffrey Breinholt, a George Washington University law lecturer who worked on counterterrorism at the Justice Department for 25 years, said Flynn and Raiklin’s statements and organizing could violate federal laws against illegal threats, even when considering the extremely high bar of First Amendment protections.
“I think if we had the political will, we would be able to find an appropriate federal statute to charge them with this,” Breinholt said of the DOJ, where he worked until his retirement earlier this year. “When I say the line was crossed, there is a line that goes from First Amendment protected activity into harassment.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, using an expletive, described Flynn’s remarks as “crazy” at a campaign event last Thursday in North Carolina.
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Repeating Flynn’s comments almost verbatim, Walz warned that Flynn “is a contender” to be national security advisor once again if Trump wins.
“This is the guy that Donald Trump wants to hand the keys to the federal government over to on security,” Walz said.
Flynn did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The Trump campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s self-proclaimed ‘Secretary of Retribution’
Raiklin wears t-shirts that say “Secretary of Retribution” and “The Deep State Marauder” at his many public appearances.
A daily presence on far-right cable, radio and internet shows, Raiklin also touts − and offers to share − a target list he’s compiled of politicians, intelligence and law enforcement officials, journalists and others.
Describing them as “the enemy of our constitutional order,” he says they’ll pay if Trump wins on Nov. 5.
“I’m coming for all of them. And what does that mean when I say coming for all of them?” Raiklin told a reporter last May in a video he uploaded to X.
“It means the most legal, moral and ethical consequences to the maximum, to include the maximum punishment for treason,” he said. “I personally guarantee that they’re going to face those consequences.”
Treason is punishable by penalties including death, according to the Justice Department.
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Raiklin called for “livestream swatting raids of every single individual” on the list, a reference to the practice of anonymously calling police to swarm a victim’s residence for an emergency that doesn’t exist.
He says he has 80,000 recruits waiting to be deputized by “appropriate sheriffs throughout the country” − so-called Constitutional sheriffs who believe they are above the law − to go after those on his target list.
“The individuals that I mention are the enemy of our constitutional order,” Raiklin says. “We’re coming for them, maximally.”
Last week, Raiklin threatened a USA TODAY reporter who phoned and texted him for comment on this story.
“Please find on him. Maximum. Look…to family, friends, neighbors, and all associates to determine how and if I respond,” Raiklin said on X to his 220,000 followers.
Threatening Fauci
In a June, Raiklin bragged of threatening Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and a figure hated by anti-vaccine extremists, at a congressional hearing on the Covid pandemic response.
In a June 3 episode of his online “The Raiklin Report,” Raiklin said he sat behind Fauci at the hearing to “whisper in Dr. Fauci’s ear” about “the maximum consequences” the doctor should face for his role in fighting the pandemic.
“And fortunately for him, I was not close enough to him physically to conduct a Mike Tyson-style, Evander Holyfield physical movement,” Raiklin added, referring to an infamous 1997 incident in which Tyson bit off part of Holyfield’s ear during a championship boxing match.
Photos from the hearing show Raiklin sitting two rows behind the 83-year-old Fauci, who told USA TODAY in June he lives under 24-hour security.
Clapper, a prominent member of Raiklin’s retribution list, knows Flynn well from their time in military and intelligence agencies but said he has no explanation for why he’s participating in such an effort.
“I’m not a psychologist. I just think that after he retired, he became an angry man,” Clapper said. “I can’t account for what happened. But he’s a different person than the one I knew.”
‘Somebody very special’
These days, Flynn and Raiklin often appear together at events showcasing Flynn’s 2024 autobiographical documentary “Flynn,” in which Raiklin plays a lead role. The film describes the “severe political persecution” Flynn says he faced while “exposing corruption as the National Security Advisor to President Trump.”
After a meteoric rise through the Army, Flynn was fired as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency by then-President Barack Obama in 2014. He then was investigated by the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller for raking in huge sums as a lobbyist, including for the Turkish government, until March 2017, a period in which he served on Trump’s campaign and worked at the top of the Trump administration, Mueller and other prosecutors would later say.
After Trump’s election in November 2016, Flynn − as a private citizen − conducted secret, back-channel discussions with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. In his final report, Mueller said those actions undermined Obama’s foreign policy, including sanctions on Moscow for meddling in the 2016 election to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.
While Flynn was under criminal investigation by the FBI, Trump tapped him as White House national security advisor. Three weeks later, Flynn was forced to resign for lying to then-Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador.
Trump told then-FBI Director James Comey to “let this go” in reference to the Flynn investigation, USA TODAY reported in 2017. Flynn ultimately pled guilty to lying to federal agents. “Arguably, you sold your country out,” U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan told him.
Flynn later helped Trump try to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden, the Congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack found − with help from Raiklin, who tweeted to urge people to bring “walkietalkies, medicalbags” to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
By then, Trump already had given Flynn a full pardon.
Trump has said he intends to find a role for Flynn in his administration if he wins in November.
“We’re going to bring you back,” he told Flynn in May. “We’re proud of you, general. I knew it from day one − you’re really somebody very special.”
Dana Nessel, Michigan’s attorney general, said she was concerned enough to track down a copy of Raiklin’s enemies list and found the state’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer − who was the target of a militia kidnapping plot in 2020 − and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson among the targets.
“I was waiting for Donald Trump to disavow that list,” Nessel said, “but he never did. Scary times.”
