Edward Snowden is calling it the “
On Sunday, the first in a series of investigations were
As new stories about the spyware continue to drop, believers of the vast right-wing conspiracy theory QAnon had their own revelation to deal with:
Michael Flynn has ties to the firm behind the spyware.
Flynn’s ties to NSO Group are now well known, thanks to financial disclosure forms.
Back in 2017, Huffington Post
Interestingly, the news of Flynn’s involvement with an Israel-based cyberweapons firm in the middle of a huge spying scandal was brought to QAnon’s attention by Ron Watkins.
Ron Watkins is the former administrator of 8kun, the extremist imageboard owned by his father, Jim Watkins. Ron is also whom
In a post on the far-right social network, Gab, Watkins points out Flynn’s ties to NSO Group and notes how this could be used to hurt the
On his channel at the messaging service Telegram, Watkins continued to speculate about Flynn amongst his more than 300,000 subscribers on the platform.
“I am not saying Flynn is a black hat. I am not saying Flynn is a white hat,” wrote Watkins, referencing the possibilities that Flynn could have been involved with good intentions or for nefarious reasons. “There are plenty of BOTH intel and cointel reasons for him to be a member of those companies.”
Hours later, Watkins returned to his Telegram channel to further speculate about Flynn’s involvement. This time, Watkins urges Flynn to put out a statement in order to set the record straight.
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“Gen Flynn should consider putting out a statement about his involvement in the companies close to Pegasus,” posted Watkins. “I’m curious as to the extent of what he knew regarding Pegasus and the targets of the software.”
Many QAnon followers still don’t exactly know what to make of the news. Some seemed to accept the idea that this “doesn’t look good” for Flynn.
Altogether, Watkins’ posts on Telegram and Gab about Flynn and Pegasus generated thousands of comments.
“So is General Flynn a bad guy then?” asked one of Watkins’ Telegram subscribers.
“Oh man…this freaking sucks,” replied another.
Others jumped to Flynn’s defense, questioning Watkins’ motives, and claiming Flynn had to have been a “white hat infiltrating the black hats” while working with companies tied to the spyware firm.
“I trust Flynn no matter what!” exclaimed one of Watkins’ subscribers.
“Fuck off…you mess with Flynn and you mess with America’s Hero. WWG1WGA,” replied a Flynn supporter while invoking the “Where We Go One We Go All” QAnon slogan.
It’s unclear exactly why Ron Watkins would share such speculation about Michael Flynn, a Trump-supporting former Army lieutenant general who also served as a national security advisor for the administration. Flynn is viewed as a hero to many in the QAnon world and, in their eyes, his legitimacy in the movement is buoyed by the fact that Trump
It should be noted that since Q stopped posting last December,