Donald Trump’s former national security adviser nurtured and then profited from the QAnon conspiracy theorists who wreaked havoc on American politics, according to an investigation by the Intercept. According to the report, Flynn banked on QAnon back in the summer of 2019 when he was in legal trouble over allegedly lying to the FBI. It was then that he worked behind the scenes to leverage QAnon’s popularity in his favor, all the while profiting from their viral popularity, according to the Intercept, which claims that the “money-making virtual empire that Flynn, his lawyer Sidney Powell, and other Trump loyalists have built on the back of the QAnon phenomenon has long been hiding in plain sight.”

The report goes on to show how the January 6 insurgency in Washington, D.C. provided the impetus dig into the financial, legal and business relationships QAnon had nurtured with people in Flynn’s inner circle, according to data and records reviewed by The Intercept created by the January 6 Research Consortium. Around the time Flynn fired his defense team which advised him to accept a plea bargain, that was later deemed unnecessary due to a Trump pardon, Flynn tried to trademark the term “digital soldiers” and resilientpatriot.com, which then helped line his pockets, the Intercept reports.