We Beat Mike Flynn In Court. Again.

The Mike Flynn Lawfarepalooza that’s devoured my spare time, mental energy, and bank balance for the last year and a half has come to an end. Again.

Flynn’s legal lackeys at the Binnall Law Group—MAGA’s go-to squad for weaponized litigation—have built quite the cottage industry around threatening critics and trying to muzzle free speech.

Like everything else basking under the dim, flickering bulb of the MAGA Sun King, their incessant whining about “lawfare” is pure projection. Donald Trump wasn’t indicted and convicted on a whim; he was neck-deep in actual criminal activity. That’s the law, not lawfare.

And me? I just endured 19 months of Flynn and Binnall’s legal harassment for the unforgivable sin of telling the truth. I won in the lower court in January of this year. They appealed, despite the legal and procedural mistakes in their case.

The Florida Second District Court of Appeal, however, wasn’t having it.

You can read the decision here.

Their decision wasn’t just a win for me—it was a powerful affirmation of free speech. Not the warped, Elon-flavored “The Nazis had some good points” free speech MAGA Twitter loves to celebrate, but actual free speech: my right to call out Mike Flynn’s character, conduct, and record. The court's ruling is worth a read—not just because we won, but because it exposes how laughably thin Flynn’s arguments were from the get-go.

But there’s a deeper point here. Flynn’s crusade against me is just one stitch in the broader MAGA tapestry of lawfare. Whether it’s their suits against the Federal Government, NBC, CNN, Nicolle Wallace, Andrew Weissmann, Fred Wellman, MeidasTouch, Jim Stewardson, or anyone else who dares to speak the truth, the strategy is clear: silence the critics of Trump World by any means necessary.

Thankfully, the lower court—and now the DCA—disagreed. Free speech isn’t a one-way street, no matter how hard Flynn and his ilk try to rewrite the rules.

Finally, on this summary judgment record (with Flynn submitting no counteraffidavits), we find no error in the trial court's determinations that Flynn's lawsuit against Wilson lacked merit and that it was brought "primarily" because of Wilson's exercise of his First Amendment rights.

We have the privilege of living in a country with a "profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks."

Sullivan, 376 U.S. at 270. Like it or not, such attacks are a characteristic feature of our democracy—regardless of the political persuasion of the speaker and regardless of the political persuasion of the public figure on the receiving end of that speech. As the trial court noted, Wilson's tweets may not have been polite, and they may not have been fair. But the First Amendment required neither, and so we affirm.

Affirmed.”

Why Was Flynn Suing Me?

Simple: punishment. That’s the entire game here.

Flynn’s arguments were always laughably flimsy. My “offense”? I tweeted “Putin Employee Mike Flynn” after he tried some shameless Vladwashing of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And their second “pillar”—and I use that word as loosely as possible—was that I retweeted Jim Stewardson, who (in part) referred to Flynn as “Q” of QAnon fame. I kept imagining the legal implications if a retweet could be found to be defamatory. The world would be in some deep legal waters.

Fun fact: at least from my perspective they seemed way more upset about the QAnon label than the whole Russia thing. Make of that what you will.

Where We Go One We Go Ooops.

What Was the Process Like?

I’ll be blunt: I wouldn’t wish this circus on my worst enemy.

Sure, I’ve mentioned this ordeal in passing before, but I’ve rarely felt comfortable airing the full insanity. Imagine the joy of a $10 million lawsuit hanging over your head, coupled with the soul-sucking expenses, and topped off with the sheer waste of time. Flynn’s crew wasn’t just playing to win—they were playing to break me.

But their enthusiasm to serve me with papers? Chef’s kiss. That’s where it got truly weird. You see, I wasn’t dodging them. I was on the road for months doing speeches, fundraising, and other events (for context, in 2023-24 cycle I was on the road for about 200 days), and, well, our property has tall fences, gates, cameras, and security. That’s before you get near the house.

After years of insane people showing up at my door, death threats, swattings, and the chan mobs posting my address and pictures of my house online, we’ve developed a pretty solid policy: if you’re through the gate, you either belong here, or you’re leaving in an ambulance.

Their process server’s notes were unintentionally hilarious:

“On July 19, 2023, Plaintiff, via process server, attempted to serve Defendant Wilson at his home. The property was secured with a locked gate, however, and the person standing outside in the garage was non-responsive to the process server’s attempts to enter the driveway.”

That “non-responsive person”? Renee. She did exactly what we’ve trained for: she calmly walked inside and called me. Because here’s the deal—random people lurking on the property isn’t exactly a hallmark of good intentions.

“Likewise, on July 24, 2023, Plaintiff, via process server, again attempted to serve Defendant Wilson at his home, and again encountered a locked gate that he was unable to bypass despite a person being at the home.”

Same story, second verse. Random gate-lurkers are never getting in. But Flynn’s legal squad decided to spin this as me “avoiding service,” and, hilariously, they even tried to make me cover the costs of their wannabe spy-for-hire. (Spoiler: it didn’t work.)

This is one invoice from their local private dick. And no, I don’t care that it’s unredacted. I’ve got bigger things to worry about than what Flynn’s goons think of me.

A brief aside into the surveillance capitalism that makes all this possible:

• Delvepoint is a skip tracing application which also gave them access to my credit reports (no debt other than my mortgage, credit scores in the 800s, fuck off), my electrical utility data (expensive), all my vehicle data (a 2018 Volvo, so bravo again, Javert), etc.

• Eventlinks DRN takes all the data from license plate cameras and provides anyone claiming to be a private detective and sells them a digital record of all your motions.

• TLOxp is a widely abused and leaked surveillance tool that can be a criminal’s best friend. TLO can provide access to every scrap of your personal data, including your social security number.

I’ll bet good money the private detective turned over everything they trawled from the databases to the Flynn folks. Not that there’s anything scandalous in my life at this point, but privacy is an illusion in America, circa 2024.

Why Didn’t I Talk More About the Case?

Because I’m a grown-ass man with excellent lawyers, and I know how to listen when they tell me, “We’ll win this in court, not on Twitter.” Painful as it was to sit on my hands (y’all know I love a good brawl), I took their advice to heart.

Len Collins, my brilliant attorney and friend, deserves a damn medal. The guy’s a Jedi master when it comes to Florida defamation law and Anti-SLAPP statutes. He knew from day one that we’d torch this lawsuit with cold, hard facts—and oh, did we ever. We didn’t just win; we carpet-bombed Flynn’s arguments into oblivion, laying his entire history bare for the court to see. Judicial notice? Taken.

Now, did I want to write, talk, tweet, thread, and generally troll the hell out of Flynn during this process? Oh, hell yes. But sometimes, discipline wins the day.

What Did It Cost? Who Paid for All This?

Let’s not sugarcoat it: the entire point of these SLAPP lawsuits is to bleed their targets dry—financially, emotionally, mentally. It’s about silencing critics and making people think twice before speaking out.

Well, newsflash: I’m not that guy.

How much did it cost? The technical term is a metric fuckton. Many zeroes. Six figures.

Who covered it on my side? Me. Just me.

Not the Lincoln Project, not insurance, not some shadowy cabal, just yours truly.

And who’s footing the bill for the Binnall law firm’s antics? That’s the real mystery, isn’t it? Rumors about about where the money for Flynn’s many many many lawsuits is coming from, but I’m confident it’s not from Flynn’s pocket. Either way, their whole operation screams, “We’ve got money to burn.”

But here’s the thing: while they were trying to drain me, they underestimated one critical fact—I’m still standing, and I’m still talking.

Will I Get My Legal Fees Back?

Hell yes, I will.

We’re bracing for the usual circus acts: dilatory filings, sudden claims of bankruptcy, outbreaks of bubonic plague, complaints about a bad harvest, and the inevitable teary pleas of, “I’m just a humble, retired soldier scraping by on a fixed income!”

Let me spell it out for you, Mike: every single goddamn dollar is going to be paid.

And if it’s not, I’ll happily retain the most bloodthirsty collections agents in existence to hound Flynn and his law firm until the debt is paid in full. To share an inside family joke, “I know a guy in Orlando...”

As for Flynn’s side of the ledger, the money trail is murky, to say the least. He’s juggling more nuisance lawsuits than I suspect anyone else in the nation, but I’m confident the Binnall law firm isn’t exactly working pro bono for Flynn, Kash “Trash” Patel, and Trump.

These guys are the legal Death Star of Trumpworld. Flynn’s SuperPAC is cutting some of those checks, but let’s not ignore the Trump legal gravy train. And there’s even chatter that Patrick Byrne, the Overstock.com conspiracy whisperer, is funneled funds into Flynn’s legal follies.

But hey, don’t take my word for it—Trump himself posted on his Dollar Store social media echo chamber that, “Any lawyer who takes a TRUMP CASE is either ‘CRAZY,’ or a TRUE AMERICAN PATRIOT.” (Translation: they’re either hungry for cash or gunning for a future Fox News gig.)

Oh, and speaking of that stellar legal track record, let’s not forget Flynn’s latest L. This week, the case he brought against the Federal government for “malicious prosecution” crumbled into a fine powder.

Shocking, I know. It seems the MAGA legal brain trust just can’t buy a win this week—no matter how many PAC dollars or secret benefactors they throw at the problem.

The Personal Side

This entire ordeal was a level-up in my relationship with Renee, who became the bedrock I didn’t know I’d need so badly. Through every twist and turn, she was unflappable, steadfast, and laser-focused on keeping me out of the mental quicksand of “What if Flynn wins?” She had this uncanny ability to snap me back to reality, reframing the case as just another front in the endless war against the MAGA horde—and that perspective kept me steady, even when the weight of it and my other responsibilities felt overwhelming.

One night, just before Christmas 2023, we were sitting on the couch, wading through the dense word salad of yet another ridiculous motion from Flynn’s team. She looked up from the page, raised an eyebrow, and deadpanned, “He’s suing you because you were mean to him on Twitter? Has he READ what you say about Trump?” The timing, the delivery—it was perfect. She always managed to lift the weight of this absurd lawsuit, even if just for a little while.

Renee had the unenviable task of seeing from the inside that the bad guys play for keeps in this day and age. That’s not just unsettling; it’s infuriating. It forced us to recalibrate, to rethink plans, to put our lives on pause in ways I hated. And yet, Renee never wavered. I know she was as furious at the Flynn team’s crap as I was.

She didn’t just endure this mess—she conquered it, with a calm determination that became my compass through the chaos. Renee didn’t just support me; she was my co-pilot, strategist, and shield. This battle wasn’t just mine; it was ours.

The End?

If the purpose of terror is to terrorize, the purpose of lawfare is also to terrorize. The tools and techniques of lawfare, particularly these loonbucket defamation suits, would terrify people without means, experience, and strong legal representation.

The good news in this decision is that some of the other nuisance suits brought by Flynn will soon suffer the same ignominious ending. I wish all the rest of his targets swift and total victory.

Can they appeal? Maybe. Will they? I guess if they’re flush with cash from events for the Flynn SuperPAC they can keep this up indefinitely. It’s all OPM - Other Peoples Money.

Will we fight them until the last dog dies? Absolutely. Will we seek to collect what they owe me in legal expenses? Every dollar.

This has been on hell of a ride.

Now, it’s my turn.