My good friend and Breitbart colleague Mike Flynn died unexpectedly on Thursday.
I weep at his passing.
He is irreplaceable.
We worked closely on a number of investigative reports for Breitbart, and I can attest through first-hand experience that his journalistic integrity was impeccable.
We looked at the world through a similar lens, as you might expect of two Irish politicos who rejected the Democratic Party’s intrusive statism, were skeptical of the Republican establishment, and embraced constitutionally limited government and individual liberty.
“Mike was a fighter, first and foremost… [who] lived his life to advance the cause of liberty,” Breitbart Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon said, and I can attest to this as well.
Mike Flynn was his own man—independent, driven, honest, and indefatigable.
I valued his opinion, and would often run drafts of more high profile stories by him.
He knew True North, and always pointed me in that direction.
Our collaborative investigations—often conducted with a third member of Breitbart’s Irish reporting triumvirate, Matthew Boyle—exposed the hypocrisies and deceptions that are rampant among the country’s political elite. We reveled in our discoveries and our reporting.
His prose was clean and tight, free of unnecessary flourishes, but always direct and pointed.
When you read a Mike Flynn story, you usually learned something you didn’t know before. He wasn’t a cut and paste aggregator. He was a journalist who presented the facts, then added unique analysis others often missed.
His last story, published just hours before his untimely passing, is emblematic of that distinctive Flynn style.
“On Wednesday, in a wide-ranging speech criticizing Hillary Clinton’s record and fitness of office, Donald Trump renewed questions about the Clintons, their eponymous foundation and their financial relationships with China,” Mike wrote in his lede.
He packed a lot of information into that thirty-one word sentence, but it did not drag on.
Note the economical use of “their eponymous foundation,” expressing in three words what many others might have taken several more to do.
Then in the second sentence came the hard facts.
“In 2011, while Hillary Clinton was serving as Secretary of State, Bill Clinton received $750,000 for two speeches, paid for by a Chinese business group and an entity controlled by the Chinese government,” he wrote.
In the third sentence came the unique Mike Flynn take.
“Those two paid speeches merely scratch the surface of the Clintons’ ‘China Syndrome,’” he added.
I liked and admired Flynn’s writing style because it was always engaging.
Mike also had the heart of a lion. If you were in a fight, you wanted Mike next to you. There he would stand, unflinching, giving no quarter, and expecting none in return.
He was a true and loyal friend, who I always knew had my back.
We at Breitbart mourn his passing.
I will miss his friendship and his advice.
In my heart, I believe there is a celebration in heaven today, as Mike is welcomed with these words:
“Well done, my good and faithful servant.”