The Daily Beast took a deep dive into the relationship between Donald Trump and his short-lived National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn. According to the Beast, Trump pressured Flynn into taking the job; Flynn had preferred a job in the intelligence world, possibly at the CIA. Part of Flynn’s reluctance to take the NSA role was because, as he had alerted Trump, he was under investigation for lobbying work he had done for a foreign government.

“He did not want to be national security adviser,” Michael Ledeen, a friend of the retired Army general, told The Daily Beast on Thursday. “He didn’t want to be in the government. He wanted to go back to private life.”

“But Trump insisted on it,” said historian Ledeen, co-author of Flynn’s 2016 book The Field of Fight, their manifesto for defeating Islamic militancy. “He likes him, he trusted him, he was comfortable with him,” he said.

The Beast also reports that Trump remains loyal to Flynn, has kept in communication with his former aide, and even would like to re-hire Flynn once the investigation into his lobbying is completed.

“Trump feels really, really, really bad about firing him, and he genuinely thinks if the investigation is over Flynn can come back,” said one White House official.

One former FBI official and a second government official said Trump thought he owed Flynn for how things ended up and was determined to clear Flynn’s name and bring him back to the White House.

Trump’s loyalty to Flynn seems to be reciprocated.

One person close to Flynn say he has kept up lines of communication since offering his resignation to “protect the president” from the growing controversy involving the Trump campaign’s ties to Russian government interests.

Trumps staffers have apparently warned the president that rehiring Flynn should absolutely not happen under any circumstance.