Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said in an interview this week that fired White House national security adviser Michael Flynn “latched onto” Donald Trump during the 2016 election out of frustration with the way he was treated by Democratic President Barack Obama.
Flynn was forced to retire as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 after facing pressure to leave from Clapper and other top Obama administration officials, with whom he had repeatedly clashed throughout his tenure.
“I think it ate at him that he was terminated and retired early, and I think he became an angry man,” Clapper told Axios in an interview published Monday.
“[Flynn] was trying to reach out to several Republican candidates and latched onto Trump – and the rest was history,” Clapper added.
Flynn, who served as a national security adviser to the Trump campaign before joining the White House, was fired last February for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Russian officials.
He pleaded guilty last December to a charge of lying to the FBI, and remains a main focus of the special counsel investigation into Russian election meddling and possible collusion.
Flynn was reportedly seen as such a problematic figure by Obama that the outgoing president warned Trump two days after his election victory about tapping the retired three-star Army general to join his administration.
