Earlier this week, two of Michael Flynn’s siblings announced that
they had formed a legal-defense fund to help Flynn, the former
national-security adviser, pay his legal bills. In early February,
Flynn, who had become a focus of the ongoing F.B.I. investigation into
Russia’s actions during the Presidential election, resigned from the Trump
Administration after twenty-four days on the job. His lawyers’ fees are
already “well into the seven figures,” his brother
Joe told Fox News on Monday.

Flynn is one of nine siblings. They grew up in a small house in
blue-collar Middletown, Rhode Island, where bedtime was “a never-ending
revolving search to nab one of a few fold-up cots or a bunk bed that was
open,” and breakfast could involve fighting “for the last glass of
powdered milk,” Flynn writes, in his book, “Field of Fight.” The
siblings ran as a pack, and now, it seems, they have come to their
brother’s aid.

This winter, I spoke to Flynn and people close to
him about
his decorated military career; his troubled tenure as the director of
the Defense Intelligence Agency; his alliance with Donald Trump on the
campaign trail; and his brief, tumultuous time in the White House. The
scandal that led to his ouster began a week before Inauguration Day,
when the Washington Post columnist David Ignatius broke
news about
a conversation that Flynn had in late December with Sergey Kislyak, who at the time was the Russian
Ambassador to the United States. The Flynn story dominated the first days of
the Trump White House, and before long he was out. His legal troubles
have only mounted since.

In early March,
Flynn registered with
the government as a foreign agent, conceding that lobbying work he’d
done for a Turkish client last fall—during the campaign—may have
benefitted the government in Ankara. Members of the Trump team had
apparently known about this situation before taking office, but Flynn
had been allowed to become national-security adviser anyway. Also in
March, documents turned over to congressional investigators showed that
Flynn once
received more than eleven thousand dollars to speak at a conference hosted by an
American subsidiary of Kaspersky Lab, a Russian cybersecurity firm; on
Monday, the Senate
voted to
ban Kaspersky software from federal computers due to concern over
Kaspersky’s relationship with the Russian government.

That month, Flynn’s lawyer, Robert Kelner, offered to let his client
testify before congressional and federal investigators in exchange for
immunity. His offer prompted many to remember that just last year, while
discussing the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation on NBC’s “Meet the
Press,” Flynn
had said,
“When you are given immunity, that means you probably committed a
crime.” But Kelner presented his offer as if Flynn were the one who had
the leverage. “Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much
wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit,” the attorney said in
a statement.

That tone changed a couple of months later, when Kelner informed the
Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting a parallel
investigation into Russia’s election-meddling campaign, that Flynn
intended to ignore its subpoena for records. He was apparently not so
eager to tell his story anymore. Around this time, at a dinner with some
friends, Flynn said that he remained loyal to Trump, adding, “I just got
a message from the President to stay
strong,” according to
Yahoo News. (In the end, Flynn complied with the subpoena.)

This week, in his interview with Fox, Joe Flynn said that his brother
“bleeds red-white-and-blue” and that it was a “disturbing” thing for
Flynn’s family to hear his brother called a “turncoat” and a “traitor.”
Presumably, Flynn and his family deemed Fox’s audience of Trump
supporters a likely group to pitch in and donate money. Flynn served in
the Army for thirty-three years. He was deployed in war zones for long
stretches at a time, even missing his son’s wedding while in Iraq. He is
a man of loyalty.

The question—the one some of his friends and former military colleagues
have been asking all along—is where Flynn’s loyalties rest. In the days
after Flynn’s resignation, there were suggestions that, before
Inauguration Day, he may have been conducting a kind of rogue, shadow
diplomatic mission with the Russians, without Trump’s blessing or
sanction. But, at the time, a senior military-intelligence official told
me that theory seemed unlikely: “Mike’s a soldier. He did not go
rogue.”

Based on recent news reports that Robert Mueller, the special counsel,
and his team are picking
locks,
subpoenaing records, and expanding the scope of their investigation, it
seems increasingly likely that Flynn may at some point face a choice, if
he hasn’t already: coöperate with Mueller, or further imperil himself
for the sake of the man who vaulted him to national renown.

In January, just two days before the Inauguration, I asked Flynn whether
he’d follow convention as the national-security adviser and act as an
“honest broker” with the President. No, he replied. “The honest broker?”
Flynn told me. “It’s Donald Trump.”

I’ve wondered about Flynn’s answer ever since: Was he just being
prudent, signalling his devotion to an insecure boss who read everything
his advisers said about him in the press? Or did he truly believe that
Trump, a man with no experience in national-security matters, possessed
a unique degree of probity and judgment? In recent years, Flynn’s
practical inclinations—the ones that might lead him to coöperate with
investigators, for instance—have given way to more ideological ones.
Perhaps the sight of his brother asking for money on television will
induce a different kind of pressure, and compel him to coöperate. If
not, he may need all the money his siblings can raise.