Hunter Biden Tinfoil issues

[a fan]

"on the take" means getting paid off. Idiot.

More gasliighting. More putting words into MY mouth. Where'd I write anything about "paid". (I didn't).


Please, tell the class what "Biden's Butt Boy means". Good luck spinning that into something demure and positive.

[old salt]

You said "on the take". take what ? That means getting paid off. Idiot.

He did not want to cause problems for Joe Biden.

[a fan]

You said "on the take". take what ? That means getting paid off. Idiot.

He did not want to cause problems for Joe Biden.

This is spectacular.

I didn't say "on the take". That was you. Twice.

Here, let me help you:

You called Weiss "Biden's Butt Boy'......yet here you are telling us that that doesn't mean that you think that Weiss isn't in Joe's pocket.

Riiiiiiiight. Biden's Butt Boy is a term of affection from Old Salt...is that what you're gonna tell the forum?

GTFO with the gaslighting.

I wrote "in Joe's Pocket". And again....why you take your anger and ad homimem out on me when TLD and others are calling you names etc......when all I'm doing is telling you point by point how your conspiracy doesn't make any sense.

Bill Barr had access to that "Diamond" information and everything else in that laptop. So did Wray. And instead of simply and wisely saying "well, I guess there weren't any crimes in there".....you and FoxNation double down, and claim vast conspiracy that somehow doesn't involve Wray and Barr.

You're not making any sense. Maybe you should bail before you call me an idiot again, for no reason whatsoever.

[Typical Lax Dad]

They found the Diamond Old Salt is looking for!

[old salt]

He's making grand conspiracy claims that Weiss is on the take for Joe Biden...

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/di ... the%20take.

"in Joe's pocket" were your words, not mine.

Blame Barr (& Wray) = diversion & distraction.

[a fan]

He's making grand conspiracy claims that Weiss is on the take for Joe Biden...

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/di ... the%20take.

"in Joe's pocket" were your words, not mine.

So after calling me an idiot, you realized you quoted YOUR words not mine.

Cool. Now that you're done dodging the question, you can FINALLY cop to what you meant by "BIden's Butt Boy".

You meant that you think that Weiss let the SOL's run out on purpose, in order to hide nebulous Biden Family crimes that you can't name for us.


The only person who's trying to divert and distract is YOU. You FINALLY copped to the fact that you do indeed think there is a conpiracy between Weiss and the Bidens to cover up Biden financial crimes. On a totally unrelated note, this happens to be the same story that FoxNation and House Republicans have been selling to you for years now. "Any day now, the evidence will come out...."

Blame Barr (& Wray) = diversion & distraction.

Not if you're not an in-the-bag Republican.

You want Hunter and Joe "investigated more", right? Want to know about diamonds and Ukraine, etc, right?

Tell the Forum, OS: who is in charge of Federal Investigations in America, OS?

I'll give you a hint: the word "investigate" is in the name of this organization.




Oh yeah, I'm trying to distract you from how American Justice works, and stuff you learned in 8th grade Civics class.

You transparently want to tell us that Wray and Barr aren't in on your conspiracy....or, at the least, utterly incompetent.....when this is impossible. They are either in on it, or they are too freaking stupid to investigate what you and TeamTinFoil believes is obvious illegal activity sitting on Hunter's laptop for all the world to see.

in order for your conspiracy to make sense? Wray MUST be an idiot and/or MUST be corrupt. Pick one.

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://fortune.com/europe/2024/02/20/h ... elligence/

[old salt]

He's making grand conspiracy claims that Weiss is on the take for Joe Biden...

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/di ... the%20take.

"in Joe's pocket" were your words, not mine.

So after calling me an idiot, you realized you quoted YOUR words not mine.

I'm quoting your words, not mine. You posted "on the take" & "in Joe's pocket". Idiot.

[a fan]

He's making grand conspiracy claims that Weiss is on the take for Joe Biden...

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/di ... the%20take.

"in Joe's pocket" were your words, not mine.

So after calling me an idiot, you realized you quoted YOUR words not mine.

I'm quoting your words, not mine. You posted "on the take" & "in Joe's pocket". Idiot.

And wasting your time and mine on semantics so that you can avoid discussing obvious points like:

If it's SO obvious that there are crimes on Hunter's laptop that need investigating: why hasn't lifelong Republican Wray investigated these obvious crimes?

You have no idea how to answer these simple, simple questions, so you waste time calling me an idiot. You quite simple don't want to call Wray "Biden's Butt Boy", because then you have to admit how absurd your conspiracy is out loud. You don't want to do that....so you take it out on me.

And we discussed everyone of your accusations LAST YEAR. You ignored all the responses given then, and are charging ahead with your conspiracy, regardless of any facts that have emerged. Facts like: if there was an obvious crime on Hunter's laptop, the FBI would have opened an investigation into Joe Biden four freaking years ago, after examining the thing.

Yet the fact that the FBI hasn't done this....even though the FBI is run by a Trump appointee, doesn't deter your conspiracy in the slightest.

You're smarter than this. Which is why everyone quite rightly thinks you're gaslighting, and know full well that the laptop is a big fat nothingburger than was held by a civilian drug user, and that's it. Gee, where did Hunter's money go, OS....as if you just can't figure out where a crack addict would blow tens of thousands of dollars. Right. You just can't figure it out.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Hey Old Salt…..over here….

“Michael Carroll was just 19 when he won Britain's £9.7 million ($15 million) jackpot in 2002, the Daily Mail reports.

But according to media reports from the time, an alleged penchant for crack, parties, prostitutes, and cars put him back at square one in five years.

Last we heard, the former garbageman was hoping to get his old job back.”

We need the DOJ and six years to figure out what Hunter did with the money….

[old salt]

He's making grand conspiracy claims that Weiss is on the take for Joe Biden...

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/di ... the%20take.

"in Joe's pocket" were your words, not mine.

So after calling me an idiot, you realized you quoted YOUR words not mine.

I'm quoting your words, not mine. You posted "on the take" & "in Joe's pocket". Idiot.

And wasting your time and mine on semantics so that you can avoid discussing obvious points like:

If it's SO obvious that there are crimes on Hunter's laptop that need investigating: why hasn't lifelong Republican Wray investigated these obvious crimes?

You have no idea how to answer these simple, simple questions, so you waste time calling me an idiot. You quite simple don't want to call Wray "Biden's Butt Boy", because then you have to admit how absurd your conspiracy is out loud. You don't want to do that....so you take it out on me.

And we discussed everyone of your accusations LAST YEAR. You ignored all the responses given then, and are charging ahead with your conspiracy, regardless of any facts that have emerged. Facts like: if there was an obvious crime on Hunter's laptop, the FBI would have opened an investigation into Joe Biden four freaking years ago, after examining the thing.

Yet the fact that the FBI hasn't done this....even though the FBI is run by a Trump appointee, doesn't deter your conspiracy in the slightest.

You're smarter than this. Which is why everyone quite rightly thinks you're gaslighting, and know full well that the laptop is a big fat nothingburger than was held by a civilian drug user, and that's it. Gee, where did Hunter's money go, OS....as if you just can't figure out where a crack addict would blow tens of thousands of dollars. Right. You just can't figure it out.

What you post & attribute to me is not what I posted & not what I am saying.
You lie, fabricate & dissemble, then deny it & dismiss it as semantics.

I've never said nor implied that Weiss is, in any way, corrupt.
That is your argumentative fabrication.

Wray's FBI did investigate, alongside the IRS WB's.
The FBI did begin an investigation as soon as they got the laptop.
It was just revealed in court that they found the laptop & it's contents to be authentic.

The decisions on where, when & for what to prosecute Hunter were made by Weiss.
He tried to get the DC & CA offices to take the tax cases. They declined, so he was stuck with prosecuting them.
Garland waited over 3 years to make Weiss a SC & give him the staff & authority that he needed,
...after the IRS WB's generated enough heat to force Garland to do what he should have done over 3 years earlier.
Weiss has yet to account for the decisions he made & why.

[a fan]

What you post & attribute to me is not what I posted & not what I am saying.
You lie, fabricate & dissemble, then deny it & dismiss it as semantics.

I've never said nor implied that Weiss is, in any way, corrupt.
That is your argumentative fabrication.

Right.

-called Weiss Biden's Butt Buddy.

-claiming Weiss let the SOl's expire intentionally so that the election came and went.

-claiming Weiss let the SOL's expire, "therefore" he couldn't investigate Burisma and any ties with Joe.

....and this is just this week. There are YEARS of your accusations about Weiss and Co.

You're stuck making claims that you are embarrassed by in 2024, and wish weren't on the forum for all to read.

Not my fault. Stop talking about this stuff, and move on. But I'm not going to sit here and let you call me a liar for telling you that you've never (snicker) implied that Weiss is corrupt.

Yeah. You have. And the WB's claimed that Barr, Weiss, and others were corrupt, too.

[old salt]

I just finished reviewing a digital edition of Barr's memoir.
He makes no mention of Weiss. He makes no mention of Hunter's tax case. He expressed frustration with Guliani. He said he had little confidence in anything that came out of Ukraine & he could not implicate VP Biden for having the Ukrainian prosecutor fired to help Hunter with Burisma.
In his final news conference, when asked if he would appoint a SC to conduct the reported investigation of Hunter. He responded that he was confident that the case was being handled by DoJ lawyers. Based on his book, it reads like Hunter's case was below his radar horizon. He had more important issues to deal with.

[Typical Lax Dad]

I just finished reviewing a digital edition of Barr's memoir.
He makes no mention of Weiss. He makes no mention of Hunter's tax case. He expressed frustration with Guliani. He said he had little confidence in anything that came out of Ukraine & he could not implicate VP Biden for having the Ukrainian prosecutor fired to help Hunter with Burisma.
In his final news conference, when asked if he would appoint a SC to conduct the reported investigation of Hunter. He responded that he was confident that the case was being handled by DoJ lawyers. Based on his book, it reads like Hunter's case was below his radar horizon. He had more important issues to deal with.

Hillary wrote that she told the truth about her emails, server and Benghazi. You were fine with what she said.

[a fan]

I just finished reviewing a digital edition of Barr's memoir.
He makes no mention of Weiss. He makes no mention of Hunter's tax case. He expressed frustration with Guliani. He said he had little confidence in anything that came out of Ukraine & he could not implicate VP Biden for having the Ukrainian prosecutor fired to help Hunter with Burisma.

That's right! Just as we discussed MONTHS ago, and as I told you yesterday....Barr looked into Ukraine. You've just forgotten.

And that's fine. But maybe tone it down with me, and realize all I'm doing is addressing IDEAS, and the ridiculousness that there's a conspiracy to help Hunter and Joe. It's clear as day that this isn't true....and you're clearly piecing this all together today, after calling me an idiot.

I have thick skin, so call me what you want if it makes you happy. But maybe take a look around......I'm addressing TeamTinFoil nonsense, and I handle it alllll the same. Whether Jan6th, or Covid, or whatever. This isn't personal.

if I thought you were too stupid to understand this stuff, I'd just walk away.......but you're NOT stupid. And should be able to handle having your ideas challenged when they make no sense without getting upset.

In his final news conference, when asked if he would appoint a SC to conduct the reported investigation of Hunter. He responded that he was confident that the case was being handled by DoJ lawyers. Based on his book, it reads like Hunter's case was below his radar horizon. He had more important issues to deal with.

And that's all fine.

But that doesn't mean that:

A. the case wasn't Barr's responsibility. It was. The management choices made were HIS choices. So if you agree with the WB's (and clearly you don't anymore), you have to hold Barr accountable for his role.

B. that he didn't personally choose to move the case to Delaware. Again: where do you think the Whistleblower's offices were located? It wasn't Delaware. Personally? As I've told you before, Barr had to move the case somewhere. His choice of HQ was a nothingburger, and neither right nor wrong. It was a choice. That's it.

[ggait]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZU9D_DcbMs

[admin]

I'm quoting your words, not mine. You posted "on the take" & "in Joe's pocket". Idiot.

No personal attacks.

[Seacoaster(1)]

I'm quoting your words, not mine. You posted "on the take" & "in Joe's pocket". Idiot.

No personal attacks.

Maybe he can go back to defending the pardoned criminal Mike Flynn, who has turned out to be -- surprise -- a seditious whore?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/23/us/p ... qanon.html

"In 2021, retired Gen. Michael T. Flynn, Donald J. Trump’s first national security adviser, became chairman of a 75-year-old nonprofit organization — the kind of small charity where chairmen typically work for free.

But Mr. Flynn received a salary of $40,000, for working two hours per week.

The next year, he got a raise: $60,000, for two hours.

Mr. Flynn’s charity also paid one of his brothers, two of his sisters, his niece and his sister-in-law. By the end of its second year, his nonprofit group, America’s Future Inc., was running in the red, burning through reserves — and still paying $518,000, or 29 percent of its budget, to Flynns.

Since leaving the Trump administration under an ethical cloud, Michael Flynn has converted his Trump-world celebrity into a lucrative and sprawling family business. He and his relatives have marketed the retired general as a martyr, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for a legal-defense fund and then pocketing leftover money. Through a network of nonprofit and for-profit ventures, they have sold far-right conspiracy theories, ranging from lies about the 2020 election to warnings, embraced by followers of QAnon, about cabals of pedophiles and child traffickers.

“This is one that goes up to the highest levels of corporations, up to the highest levels of the government,” Mr. Flynn said recently at a meeting hosted by America’s Future in Kent, Ohio. “People that you know and that you think you respect.”

A New York Times investigation found Flynn family members had made at least $2.2 million monetizing Michael Flynn’s right-wing stardom in recent years, with more than half of that going to Mr. Flynn directly. That total includes several payments not previously reported, but it is still a low estimate, since not all financial records are public. The Times’s reporting also raised questions about whether America’s Future had properly disclosed its payments to Mr. Flynn’s relatives.

Many of Mr. Trump’s closest allies have tried to turn political fame into private income, hawking everything from T-shirts to coffee beans to podcasts. Other than Mr. Trump himself, few have done it on the scale of Mr. Flynn.

Mr. Flynn’s reinvention could lead to resurrection: In the last year, Mr. Trump has alluded several times to his intention to bring the retired general back into his administration should Mr. Trump win the White House in November.

Mr. Flynn and his relatives did not respond directly to questions. A lawyer for Mr. Flynn, Jesse Binnall, said in an interview that the Flynns had earned their payments from America’s Future and other groups and that any errors in their filings were unintentional.

“General Flynn’s dedication to the cause of American freedom is steadfast and resolute, especially as it relates to the freedom of children,” Mr. Binnall said in a statement, adding that the Flynn family’s “strength, unity and dedication to America should be celebrated, not attacked.”

A Pardon and a Windfall
This spring, Mr. Flynn traveled around the country on a bus with one of his sons, Michael Flynn Jr, and a collection of right-wing influencers, stopping in churches and other venues where V.I.P. ticket buyers paid as much as $200 to meet the retired general.

The occasion was the showing of a hagiographical movie about Mr. Flynn’s rise out of a large Irish American clan in Rhode Island to the pinnacle of power — and, in its telling, his unjust fall at the hands of enemies in the government.

One of the movie’s themes is Mr. Flynn’s financial strain after leaving the White House. He served less than a month on the job before resigning amid reports that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about phone calls with a Russian diplomat. He later twice pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about the communication but retracted the plea. The Justice Department ultimately dropped the case, and Mr. Flynn was pardoned by Mr. Trump in the final weeks of his term.

Paying for his legal morass took a financial toll. Mr. Flynn and his wife sold their Northern Virginia home. Mr. Flynn’s sister, Barbara Redgate, organized a fund to help pay for lawyers.

While the fund had few legal limits on its use, the money would be used “solely to defray attorneys’ fees and other costs related to legal representation,” the fund said on its website.

After Mr. Flynn’s legal troubles largely ended in 2020, there were hundreds of thousands of dollars left in the fund, unused. Ms. Redgate said in a deposition last year that she had received about $265,000 of that money for “all the time I put into running the account." Another sister, Clare Eckert, got an undisclosed amount for “writing and analyzing.”

Michael Flynn got the remainder — between $250,000 and $1 million, she said.

Mr. Binnall, the lawyer, said Ms. Redgate had worked more than full-time on the project, raising money by speaking at events and making media appearances. He declined to say how much money Mr. Flynn had received but said Mr. Flynn considered the payment reimbursement for earlier legal bills.

A New Family Business
The legal fund was just part of a stable of interconnected committees, nonprofit groups and companies — all trading on Michael Flynn’s popularity in far-right circles and several of them earning income for his relatives.

Mr. Flynn kept a schedule of appearances, charging Republican groups and candidates up to $9,000 per speech and more for consulting, according to state and federal campaign records. He headlined the ReAwaken tour, a roadshow of Christian nationalist figures. He and his son Michael, with whom the elder Mr. Flynn had once started a consulting firm, began promoting T-shirts and other branded gear online. Mr. Flynn and his brother Joseph teamed up with Patrick Byrne, the founder of Overstock.com and a major backer of efforts to contest the 2020 election, to create a nonprofit group called the America Project.

In 2021, that group paid a business controlled by Michael Flynn $200,000 for consulting and another controlled by Joseph Flynn around $150,000. (In 2022, Joseph Flynn’s earnings from the group rose to about $260,000. He is no longer associated with it.)

More recently, Michael Flynn has also gotten into the media business, joining the board of a penny stock company behind an online video and podcast venture that frequently features him in its content. He received compensation of $375,000 in restricted stock for consulting work, records show.

But no venture has become a family affair quite like America’s Future.

The group was started as an anti-Communist effort in the 1940s and has cycled through conservative causes since. In the 1980s, its leading figure was Phyllis Schlafly, the anti-feminist crusader.

But the group was largely dormant when, in 2021, its entire board resigned and its $3 million in leftover assets passed to the control of Mr. Flynn.

The group’s previous leaders did not respond to requests for comment.

Before Mr. Flynn took over, tax filings show, the group’s chairmen and board members had been unpaid volunteers. That was typical. The nonprofit industry group BoardSource found that fewer than 1 percent of charities like this one paid their board members.

Under Flynn, that changed.

Besides the salary the group paid Mr. Flynn as chairman, it also paid his brother Joseph — a health care executive — $50,000 to be the group’s treasurer in 2021. Like his brother, Joseph Flynn worked two hours per week, according to tax filings.

The group has also paid another Flynn sibling, Mary Flynn O’Neill, a former administrator at Catholic churches, $148,000 to be its executive director. A fourth Flynn — Valerie, Joseph’s wife — received $1,050 to work in a booth at a convention and to help with “decorating and office set-up,” according to court filings in a recent lawsuit.

The next year, the nonprofit group paid more Flynns. A company run by Michael Flynn’s sister, Ms. Eckert, was paid $128,000 for public relations work. And it paid $146,000 to a law firm run by Alicia Kutzer, Michael Flynn’s niece, according to tax filings.

(One Flynn not listed as a partner or vendor in any of the political ventures is Michael Flynn’s brother Charles, a general who commands U.S. Army Pacific.)

It is not illegal for nonprofit groups to pay their leaders’ relatives, as long as they disclose those transactions.

But in 2022, when an I.R.S. form asked if America’s Future had done business with companies controlled by Mr. Flynn’s relatives, America’s Future answered “no.” In fact, it had paid companies that appear to be controlled by Ms. Eckert and Ms. Kutzer. The group also omitted the payments to Valerie Flynn in its 2021 filing with the I.R.S. and left out its payments to Ms. Flynn O’Neill in state filings in Hawaii and California, records show. The America Project, the nonprofit group led by Joseph Flynn, also did not disclose its payments to family members to the I.R.S.

Mr. Binnall, the lawyer, said those appeared to be unintentional errors.

Under the law, the I.R.S. can fine nonprofit groups up to $50,000 for filing tax returns with false information. But tax-law experts said that provision was not often used, because the short-handed I.R.S. audits only a tiny fraction of nonprofit groups every year.

Tax law experts said they were struck by a disconnect in America’s Future’s finances: As its financial fortunes went down, payments to Flynns went up.

In 2022, donations to America’s Future dropped by 40 percent. Even its biggest fund-raiser was a bust: America’s Future spent so much to hold an event at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club that it lost $63,000 for the night.

The group ate into its savings, sold off assets and lost $637,000 for the year. But at the same time, it tripled the amount it paid to the Flynn family. And despite the financial problems, Mr. Flynn himself got his raise.

“For two hours a week, someone’s getting $60,000?” said Kelly Mathews, who advises charities as chief operating officer of the New York Council of Nonprofits. “At a time when you’re about to hit the wall financially, what is the rationale? They look to me like they’re not very sustainable over time, without a significant influx of cash.”

America’s Future declined to release details about its 2023 finances.

‘Where we go one, we go all’
The group’s first mission after the Flynn takeover was raising money for an election audit in Arizona — an extension of efforts by Mr. Flynn and other Trump allies to try to overturn the results of the election.

After that, Mr. Flynn tried to raise money by selling $99 memberships, complete with a signed copy of his book, a pocket Constitution and a T-shirt printed with “I’m a Champion for America’s Future.” But tax filings show that effort raised only $17,500 in 2022 (as a tax-exempt group, America’s Future is not required to identify its donors).

America’s Future then embraced a new cause: protecting children from sexual abuse and human trafficking.

In doing so, the group began to amplify a false conspiracy theory, similar to the one at the heart of the QAnon movement: that a global cabal of pedophiles controls the media and politics.

In a video on its website, members of the group’s board and advisory board echoed the false “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, a QAnon precursor alleging that prominent Democrats were trafficking children at a Washington pizza parlor. Ms. Flynn O’Neill warned of an organized effort to use children’s body parts.

“They have organ harvesting,” she says in a video. “They have also found a way to take the blood, and use the blood, to make themselves youthful.”

It was not the first time the Flynns had shown signs of support for the QAnon movement. Michael Flynn had once filmed himself and family members reciting its motto “Where we go one, we go all.” His slogan — “Digital Soldiers” — became a QAnon rallying cry.

Privately, Mr. Flynn has expressed disdain for the conspiracy theory. In a recorded conversation leaked in 2021, he said he believed QAnon to be “total nonsense” and a disinformation campaign created by the left and the C.I.A.

Yet, the nonprofit group’s new messaging opened up a new stream of revenue: a series of traveling seminars called “Get in the Fight,” where attendees pay $40 to hear Mr. Flynn offer tips about spotting victims and traffickers.

On a recent Friday evening, Mr. Flynn spoke to a few dozen people sitting in pews at the Portage Community Chapel near Kent, Ohio. He described what he said was a sudden outbreak of child exploitation and spoke of a “moral decay” eroding the nation.

Approached by a Times reporter, Mr. Flynn declined to comment and ordered the reporter to leave.

Mr. Flynn’s niece followed his remarks with a slide presentation. His sister, Ms. Flynn O’Neill, watched from the front row."

[Typical Lax Dad]

I'm quoting your words, not mine. You posted "on the take" & "in Joe's pocket". Idiot.

No personal attacks.

Maybe he can go back to defending the pardoned criminal Mike Flynn, who has turned out to be -- surprise -- a seditious whore?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/23/us/p ... qanon.html

"In 2021, retired Gen. Michael T. Flynn, Donald J. Trump’s first national security adviser, became chairman of a 75-year-old nonprofit organization — the kind of small charity where chairmen typically work for free.

But Mr. Flynn received a salary of $40,000, for working two hours per week.

The next year, he got a raise: $60,000, for two hours.

Mr. Flynn’s charity also paid one of his brothers, two of his sisters, his niece and his sister-in-law. By the end of its second year, his nonprofit group, America’s Future Inc., was running in the red, burning through reserves — and still paying $518,000, or 29 percent of its budget, to Flynns.

Since leaving the Trump administration under an ethical cloud, Michael Flynn has converted his Trump-world celebrity into a lucrative and sprawling family business. He and his relatives have marketed the retired general as a martyr, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for a legal-defense fund and then pocketing leftover money. Through a network of nonprofit and for-profit ventures, they have sold far-right conspiracy theories, ranging from lies about the 2020 election to warnings, embraced by followers of QAnon, about cabals of pedophiles and child traffickers.

“This is one that goes up to the highest levels of corporations, up to the highest levels of the government,” Mr. Flynn said recently at a meeting hosted by America’s Future in Kent, Ohio. “People that you know and that you think you respect.”

A New York Times investigation found Flynn family members had made at least $2.2 million monetizing Michael Flynn’s right-wing stardom in recent years, with more than half of that going to Mr. Flynn directly. That total includes several payments not previously reported, but it is still a low estimate, since not all financial records are public. The Times’s reporting also raised questions about whether America’s Future had properly disclosed its payments to Mr. Flynn’s relatives.

Many of Mr. Trump’s closest allies have tried to turn political fame into private income, hawking everything from T-shirts to coffee beans to podcasts. Other than Mr. Trump himself, few have done it on the scale of Mr. Flynn.

Mr. Flynn’s reinvention could lead to resurrection: In the last year, Mr. Trump has alluded several times to his intention to bring the retired general back into his administration should Mr. Trump win the White House in November.

Mr. Flynn and his relatives did not respond directly to questions. A lawyer for Mr. Flynn, Jesse Binnall, said in an interview that the Flynns had earned their payments from America’s Future and other groups and that any errors in their filings were unintentional.

“General Flynn’s dedication to the cause of American freedom is steadfast and resolute, especially as it relates to the freedom of children,” Mr. Binnall said in a statement, adding that the Flynn family’s “strength, unity and dedication to America should be celebrated, not attacked.”

A Pardon and a Windfall
This spring, Mr. Flynn traveled around the country on a bus with one of his sons, Michael Flynn Jr, and a collection of right-wing influencers, stopping in churches and other venues where V.I.P. ticket buyers paid as much as $200 to meet the retired general.

The occasion was the showing of a hagiographical movie about Mr. Flynn’s rise out of a large Irish American clan in Rhode Island to the pinnacle of power — and, in its telling, his unjust fall at the hands of enemies in the government.

One of the movie’s themes is Mr. Flynn’s financial strain after leaving the White House. He served less than a month on the job before resigning amid reports that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about phone calls with a Russian diplomat. He later twice pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about the communication but retracted the plea. The Justice Department ultimately dropped the case, and Mr. Flynn was pardoned by Mr. Trump in the final weeks of his term.

Paying for his legal morass took a financial toll. Mr. Flynn and his wife sold their Northern Virginia home. Mr. Flynn’s sister, Barbara Redgate, organized a fund to help pay for lawyers.

While the fund had few legal limits on its use, the money would be used “solely to defray attorneys’ fees and other costs related to legal representation,” the fund said on its website.

After Mr. Flynn’s legal troubles largely ended in 2020, there were hundreds of thousands of dollars left in the fund, unused. Ms. Redgate said in a deposition last year that she had received about $265,000 of that money for “all the time I put into running the account." Another sister, Clare Eckert, got an undisclosed amount for “writing and analyzing.”

Michael Flynn got the remainder — between $250,000 and $1 million, she said.

Mr. Binnall, the lawyer, said Ms. Redgate had worked more than full-time on the project, raising money by speaking at events and making media appearances. He declined to say how much money Mr. Flynn had received but said Mr. Flynn considered the payment reimbursement for earlier legal bills.

A New Family Business
The legal fund was just part of a stable of interconnected committees, nonprofit groups and companies — all trading on Michael Flynn’s popularity in far-right circles and several of them earning income for his relatives.

Mr. Flynn kept a schedule of appearances, charging Republican groups and candidates up to $9,000 per speech and more for consulting, according to state and federal campaign records. He headlined the ReAwaken tour, a roadshow of Christian nationalist figures. He and his son Michael, with whom the elder Mr. Flynn had once started a consulting firm, began promoting T-shirts and other branded gear online. Mr. Flynn and his brother Joseph teamed up with Patrick Byrne, the founder of Overstock.com and a major backer of efforts to contest the 2020 election, to create a nonprofit group called the America Project.

In 2021, that group paid a business controlled by Michael Flynn $200,000 for consulting and another controlled by Joseph Flynn around $150,000. (In 2022, Joseph Flynn’s earnings from the group rose to about $260,000. He is no longer associated with it.)

More recently, Michael Flynn has also gotten into the media business, joining the board of a penny stock company behind an online video and podcast venture that frequently features him in its content. He received compensation of $375,000 in restricted stock for consulting work, records show.

But no venture has become a family affair quite like America’s Future.

The group was started as an anti-Communist effort in the 1940s and has cycled through conservative causes since. In the 1980s, its leading figure was Phyllis Schlafly, the anti-feminist crusader.

But the group was largely dormant when, in 2021, its entire board resigned and its $3 million in leftover assets passed to the control of Mr. Flynn.

The group’s previous leaders did not respond to requests for comment.

Before Mr. Flynn took over, tax filings show, the group’s chairmen and board members had been unpaid volunteers. That was typical. The nonprofit industry group BoardSource found that fewer than 1 percent of charities like this one paid their board members.

Under Flynn, that changed.

Besides the salary the group paid Mr. Flynn as chairman, it also paid his brother Joseph — a health care executive — $50,000 to be the group’s treasurer in 2021. Like his brother, Joseph Flynn worked two hours per week, according to tax filings.

The group has also paid another Flynn sibling, Mary Flynn O’Neill, a former administrator at Catholic churches, $148,000 to be its executive director. A fourth Flynn — Valerie, Joseph’s wife — received $1,050 to work in a booth at a convention and to help with “decorating and office set-up,” according to court filings in a recent lawsuit.

The next year, the nonprofit group paid more Flynns. A company run by Michael Flynn’s sister, Ms. Eckert, was paid $128,000 for public relations work. And it paid $146,000 to a law firm run by Alicia Kutzer, Michael Flynn’s niece, according to tax filings.

(One Flynn not listed as a partner or vendor in any of the political ventures is Michael Flynn’s brother Charles, a general who commands U.S. Army Pacific.)

It is not illegal for nonprofit groups to pay their leaders’ relatives, as long as they disclose those transactions.

But in 2022, when an I.R.S. form asked if America’s Future had done business with companies controlled by Mr. Flynn’s relatives, America’s Future answered “no.” In fact, it had paid companies that appear to be controlled by Ms. Eckert and Ms. Kutzer. The group also omitted the payments to Valerie Flynn in its 2021 filing with the I.R.S. and left out its payments to Ms. Flynn O’Neill in state filings in Hawaii and California, records show. The America Project, the nonprofit group led by Joseph Flynn, also did not disclose its payments to family members to the I.R.S.

Mr. Binnall, the lawyer, said those appeared to be unintentional errors.

Under the law, the I.R.S. can fine nonprofit groups up to $50,000 for filing tax returns with false information. But tax-law experts said that provision was not often used, because the short-handed I.R.S. audits only a tiny fraction of nonprofit groups every year.

Tax law experts said they were struck by a disconnect in America’s Future’s finances: As its financial fortunes went down, payments to Flynns went up.

In 2022, donations to America’s Future dropped by 40 percent. Even its biggest fund-raiser was a bust: America’s Future spent so much to hold an event at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club that it lost $63,000 for the night.

The group ate into its savings, sold off assets and lost $637,000 for the year. But at the same time, it tripled the amount it paid to the Flynn family. And despite the financial problems, Mr. Flynn himself got his raise.

“For two hours a week, someone’s getting $60,000?” said Kelly Mathews, who advises charities as chief operating officer of the New York Council of Nonprofits. “At a time when you’re about to hit the wall financially, what is the rationale? They look to me like they’re not very sustainable over time, without a significant influx of cash.”

America’s Future declined to release details about its 2023 finances.

‘Where we go one, we go all’
The group’s first mission after the Flynn takeover was raising money for an election audit in Arizona — an extension of efforts by Mr. Flynn and other Trump allies to try to overturn the results of the election.

After that, Mr. Flynn tried to raise money by selling $99 memberships, complete with a signed copy of his book, a pocket Constitution and a T-shirt printed with “I’m a Champion for America’s Future.” But tax filings show that effort raised only $17,500 in 2022 (as a tax-exempt group, America’s Future is not required to identify its donors).

America’s Future then embraced a new cause: protecting children from sexual abuse and human trafficking.

In doing so, the group began to amplify a false conspiracy theory, similar to the one at the heart of the QAnon movement: that a global cabal of pedophiles controls the media and politics.

In a video on its website, members of the group’s board and advisory board echoed the false “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, a QAnon precursor alleging that prominent Democrats were trafficking children at a Washington pizza parlor. Ms. Flynn O’Neill warned of an organized effort to use children’s body parts.

“They have organ harvesting,” she says in a video. “They have also found a way to take the blood, and use the blood, to make themselves youthful.”

It was not the first time the Flynns had shown signs of support for the QAnon movement. Michael Flynn had once filmed himself and family members reciting its motto “Where we go one, we go all.” His slogan — “Digital Soldiers” — became a QAnon rallying cry.

Privately, Mr. Flynn has expressed disdain for the conspiracy theory. In a recorded conversation leaked in 2021, he said he believed QAnon to be “total nonsense” and a disinformation campaign created by the left and the C.I.A.

Yet, the nonprofit group’s new messaging opened up a new stream of revenue: a series of traveling seminars called “Get in the Fight,” where attendees pay $40 to hear Mr. Flynn offer tips about spotting victims and traffickers.

On a recent Friday evening, Mr. Flynn spoke to a few dozen people sitting in pews at the Portage Community Chapel near Kent, Ohio. He described what he said was a sudden outbreak of child exploitation and spoke of a “moral decay” eroding the nation.

Approached by a Times reporter, Mr. Flynn declined to comment and ordered the reporter to leave.

Mr. Flynn’s niece followed his remarks with a slide presentation. His sister, Ms. Flynn O’Neill, watched from the front row."

It’s not illegal…..like I have said, right wing politics pays well.

[njbill]

And let’s not forget that this grift is to supplement his $200,000 per year military pension. And can we finally put to bed the canard that he sold his Virginia home because he needed the money? He sold his Virginia home because he was moving back to Rhode Island. You know, like virtually everybody does when they move from one state to another.