Josh Marshall: Big Trouble [View all]
Big Trouble
By Josh Marshall
Published May 18, 2017 11:49 am
We have a small landslide of new news this morning tied to the growing tangle of Trump administration scandals. Let me try to piece them together and sort the important from the less important. (Everything is relative when we’re moving at this velocity.)
Let’s go through the headlines. I’m choosing just three – there are a handful of others that on any other day would be siren-blaring news.
Reuters says that Mike Flynn and other Trump campaign officials were in contact with Russian government officials at least 18 times between April and November of last year.
McClatchy reports that shortly before President Trump’s inauguration, Mike Flynn effectively killed a military operation against ISIS that would have used Kurdish paramilitaries. The plan was later revived after Flynn’s ouster. But his decision delayed it for months. Any US operations with the Kurds would be firmly against the wishes of Turkey. This was while Flynn was working on behalf of the Republic of Turkey as an unregistered foreign agent.
The Times reports that on January 4th, Flynn notified Trump Transition lawyer and now White House Counsel Donald McGahn that he was being investigated for his undeclared lobbying work on behalf of Turkey.
For the moment I would say that the latter two reports are the most serious, though the first (Reuters on the contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia) may be part of what ends up being the bigger story.
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