A historian and political analyst who cowrote a book about battlefield intelligence with Michael Flynn said Flynn was reluctant to join the Trump administration, but that the president "insisted" he serve as national security adviser, reports say.
President Donald Trump's pressure on Flynn came even as Trump's transition team was warned that the retired lieutenant general was under investigation, The Daily Beast reported.
"He did not want to be national security adviser," Michael Ledeen, who co-authored the book "The Field of Flight" last year with Flynn, told The Daily Beast. "He didn't want to be in the government. He wanted to go back to private life. But Trump insisted on it."
"He likes him, he trusted him, he was comfortable with him," Leeden said.
According to the New York Times, Flynn told Trump's transition team weeks before the inauguration that he was under federal investigation for secretly working as a paid lobbyist for Turkey during the campaign. And despite the warning, Trump picked Flynn for the national security post.
Ledeen told ABC News that Flynn is "a very talented man" who made major contributions to military intelligence.
"He revolutionized U.S. military battlefield intelligence and was attempting to do the same thing at [the Defense Intelligence Agency] when he was fired for telling the truth under oath," Ledeen told ABC News.
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