Excuse me, wasn't Jeff Sessions also a "volunteer" advisor to Trump's campaign?

[Tom Rinaldo]

Wasn't Mike Flynn also a "volunteer" advisor to Trump's campaign? Were they just bit players too? People like Sessions, and Flynn and yes George Papadopoulos, don't get paid to advise presidential candidates - not with a salary anyway. They get paid with proximity to power, political connections, political I.O.U's and sometimes future paid positions - maybe in politics but sometimes in the private sector; after "a good word is put in for them".

The initial foot work for high stakes high level international negotiations is never conducted by the leading figures themselves. Lower level staff or intermediaries handle initial inquiries and the behind the scene preparatory logistics. That way the major principles don't get soiled if things don't play out the way they anticipated they would. That type of grunt work is left to those like George Papadopoulos. And that is exactly the role he performed for the Trump Administration in regards to Russia.

[louis-t]

1. They were all 'volunteers'.

They were never going to get paid and they knew it. Drumpf doesn't pay and he doesn't listen. To 'advisors', to attorneys, to ANYONE.

[Tom Rinaldo]

5. Well yeah, there's that. But the assertion the White House is making is utterly meaningless

The fact that F.I.C.A. payments weren't coming out of a Trump campaign paycheck to him is being bandied about as "proof" that the role George Papadopoulos played in Trump's efforts was insignificant. By that test virtually Trump's entire current cabinet could be called "nobodies" during the Trump campaign.

[PJMcK]

2. Trump: "I don't know any of those people. Never met 'em." (n/t)

[Vinca]

3. Manafort was also unpaid . . . at least in dollars.

[Tom Rinaldo]

7. Yeah, they keep repeating that point.

For that manner neither were Ivanka or Jerad. I suppose that makes all of them all insignificant players also. Trump barely knows them no doubt.

[DUgosh]

4. RedDon claims to not take a salary

That makes him and unpaid volunteer

[coolsandy]

6. Why would one need a salary when you can rob the entire country?

[whathehell]

8. Oh hell, Pence is probably a "volunteer" Vice President.

[Tom Rinaldo]

9. Like any of them are into this for "public service" and "piddly" (in their world view) gov paychecks

"Win" an election, the rig the tax codes. Salaries doen't even register as a blip. "Privatize" a swath of the economy one year and then cash in from it for the rest of your non governmental life, when you exit to that private sector

Salaries? They don't need no stinkin' salaries!.