Blood in the water: Flynn's out, and in less than a month the Trump administration has been hobbled

[DonViejo]

Trump's national security aide quits in disgrace, confronting congressional Republicans with a nasty quandary

SIMON MALOY

Many days after he should have been summarily fired, Michael Flynn has resigned as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. Flynn’s position within the administration had become unsustainable after the Washington Post reported last week that he lied about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. prior to Trump’s inauguration. Trump sat on his hands and his aides ducked all comment on the matter leading up to Flynn’s abrupt resignation on Monday night.

Let’s pick this apart a bit, shall we? As a policy matter, Flynn’s departure from the West Wing is an unalloyed good. Flynn was an incompetent manager whose brief tenure as national security adviser left the National Security Council in disarray. His only major public action was to announce that the administration was putting Iran “on notice” — a term that sounded serious and threatening despite the fact that no one knew what it meant. Furthermore, he is an Islamophobic nut who was likely to use every lever of power within his grasp to persecute Muslims in the name of “national security.”

In terms of the broader scandal, well … the national security adviser just resigned after less than a month on the job. That’s big. He quit because he lied about his contacts with a foreign government, and because other senior administration officials vouched for his lies. The Washington Post reported that in late January the Justice Department, under then-acting attorney general Sally Yates, warned the White House that Flynn had not been truthful about his contacts with Russia and, as a result, may have compromised himself. (Yates was fired by Trump days later, after she refused to enforce the president’s executive order banning travelers from certain Muslim nations.)

The big questions surrounding all this is what Flynn talked to the Russians about and how much Trump knew about it. The Justice Department’s warning about Flynn was conveyed to White House counsel Don McGahn, but nobody knows where that information went after McGahn received it. The controversy swirling around Flynn’s contacts with the Russians and the challenges to his credibility certainly aren’t recent developments, so it’s natural to wonder whether Flynn was acting with Trump’s consent or whether Trump disregarded his top national security adviser’s compromised position. For the moment, the White House doesn’t have any coherent explanation for what transpired.

more
http://www.salon.com/2017/02/14/blood-in-the-water-flynns-out-and-in-less-than-a-month-the-trump-administration-has-been-hobbled-by-scandal/

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. What did the President know and when did he know it?

deja vu indeed

[PJMcK]

2. Here's a key point for the future

This paragraph is near the end of this article:

What they didn’t anticipate was that Trump’s administration would be consumed by scandal so quickly — none of the Republicans’ major legislative items have even been drafted, let alone passed. The GOP took a big risk on Trump, and to this point it has backfired horribly before the party has had a chance to wring any political benefit from it whatever.

Thanks for the link DonViejo.

[manicraven]

4. Great observation! So, what do they do? Continue watching the bleeding or take action?

They look like bigger and bigger hypocrites as they sure went after Hillary Clinton repeatedly, yet are silent when possible treason is happening under their noses and within their own party, not to mention the incompetence and foolishness of the trump administration.

[manicraven]

3. Trump defended Putin during the campaign, even after learning Russia was behind the hacking.

Trump lied and played evasive games. Then, when told that Flynn was compromised by the Russians, he did nothing. Why not? The only thing that makes sense is that the Russian dossier is legit and trump is also compromised plus stands to gain an incredibly amount of wealth by lifting the sanctions.

I bet trump will attempt to divert our attention away from this...

Meanwhile, is the GOP just sitting back waiting for trump to implode all by himself?