Contributors

Tuesday, May 09, 2017

Flynn Was Just Following the Trump Business Plan

There's a lot of analysis going on in light of Sally Yates' testimony before Congress about how Michael Flynn lied about taking money from the Russians, opening himself up to blackmail by Russian spies.

Flynn also failed to report acting as a foreign agent -- a serious crime for a former high-ranking military official -- when he took half a million dollars from the Turks during Trump's presidential campaign. The Turks hoped to use Flynn to influence Trump to extradite Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in Pennsylvania who has been fighting against Recep Erdoğan's creeping dictatorship.

The question is, why did Trump wait almost three weeks after finding out that Flynn had taken money from the Russians and then lied about it? After Yates told Trump's White House counsel, Donald McGahn, that Flynn had committed a crime by taking Russian money and lying about it, Trump fired Yates instead of Flynn.

The Times has a timeline of the affair. Here's a snippet:
A day after Mr. Flynn was fired, Mr. Spicer spent most of his daily briefing responding to questions about the 18-day delay. He described the warning from Ms. Yates as a “heads-up” and repeatedly said that the information she provided had been quickly relayed to the president.
“Immediately after the Department of Justice notified the White House counsel of the situation, the White House counsel briefed the president and a small group of his senior advisers.”
But Mr. Spicer added that Mr. Trump had doubts, believing Mr. Flynn had done nothing wrong and ordering a review of the situation.
Get that? Trump knew that Flynn had lied to him and the vice president about taking Russian money, but Trump didn't think there was anything wrong with that. Why?

Because that's what Trump has done his entire life: taking people's money and lying.

That's the Trump business plan in a nutshell, from his bankrupt casinos to the infamous Trump University.

Donald Trump is so ineffably and irreversibly corrupt that he can't understand the basic concept of public officials being compromised by outside entanglements with foreign agents.

This is one of the many reasons Trump is not fit to be be president. Because Trump has so many foreign entanglements -- real estate in the Philippines, golf courses in the Middle East, hotels in Panama and Ireland -- he is open to extortion from the leaders of those countries, who could threaten his businesses unless he makes foreign policy decisions in their favor.

Any decision Trump makes as president will always be tainted by the possibility that he is feathering his own nest or bending to pressure by a foreigner who has compromised him, rather than working the best interests of the American people.

This is only one reason why so many people think that Trump's impeachment is not a question of if, but when.

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