Trump is an ignorant willful child who can and will do extraordinary damage if he lasts four years in office. That can’t be allowed. Some say, well, let’s organize and take back the House and Senate in 2018. Then he can be stopped. No. We don’t have the luxury of waiting that long. Happily, the Trump / Russia investigation is just now igniting. Sooner rather than later it will suck all the air out of the room, just like Watergate did. Early on, few except for a few crazed hippie radicals like myself thought Nixon would fall. Yet, Nixon did fall. Trump will too.
Carter Page and Michael Flynn have already been thrown under the bus by Trump in a desperate vain attempt to stop the damage. It won’t work. Just as in Watergate, the investigations are moving up the chain of command, implicating ever more White House staffers and Trump campaign higher-ups.
Flynn is deep, serious trouble. Being investigated by an Inspector General is deadly serious. IGs are independent and feared. Not only is ex-military specifically banned from receiving money from foreign governments, Flynn was directly told by the Pentagon not to do it, took the money anyway, then lied about it on his disclosure statement, which is a crime. He probably has no choice except to cooperate, in addition to prison, he could lose his military pension, which is revocable if there are national security violations.
Pentagon warned Flynn in 2014 against taking foreign payments; IG launches investigation
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn was warned by the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 against accepting foreign payments as he entered retirement, according to new documents obtained by the House oversight committee.
The inspector general of the Department of Defense also opened an investigation of Flynn earlier this month, according to an April 11 letter released by the oversight committee Thursday.
Flynn worked in the White House for a mere 24 days. The Trump Administration refuses to provide a log of Flynn’s phone calls. I’m guessing they are trying to cover-up who Flynn called, like Russians being monitored under FISA warrants.
Flynn and Page are now non-players. All their juice is gone. No one in D.C. will want to even acknowledge they know them. This also means they may be willing to cooperate with law enforcement to save their sorry, corrupt asses, perhaps dealing to receive lesser sentences when convicted.
So far, neither Page nor former national security advisor Michael Flynn seem candidates for immunity in the Russian scandal. They are left in the place where only the undead dwell. People formally known as players but whose names are no longer uttered in polite Beltway conversations.
In the end, Page may long for Russian handlers. They could prove the only non-canine friends he has.