Nothing to See Here!

Nobody could have foreseen etc.:

One of the Trump administration’s first decisions about the fight against the Islamic State was made by Michael Flynn weeks before he was fired – and it conformed to the wishes of Turkey, whose interests, unbeknownst to anyone in Washington, he’d been paid more than $500,000 to represent.

The decision came 10 days before Donald Trump had been sworn in as president, in a conversation with President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, who had explained the Pentagon’s plan to retake the Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa with Syrian Kurdish forces whom the Pentagon considered the U.S.’s most effective military partners. Obama’s national security team had decided to ask for Trump’s sign-off, since the plan would all but certainly be executed after Trump had become president.

Flynn didn’t hesitate. According to timelines distributed by members of Congress in the weeks since, Flynn told Rice to hold off, a move that would delay the military operation for months.

OK, but surely the Trump administration could not have been aware of Flynn’s corrupt ties to Turk…

Michael T. Flynn told President Trump’s transition team weeks before the inauguration that he was under federal investigation for secretly working as a paid lobbyist for Turkey during the campaign, according to two people familiar with the case.

Despite this warning, which came about a month after the Justice Department notified Mr. Flynn of the inquiry, Mr. Trump made Mr. Flynn his national security adviser. The job gave Mr. Flynn access to the president and nearly every secret held by American intelligence agencies.

Oh, and this also means…

This is pretty brutal for Pence. Either he was lying or he was left completely out of the loop as head of the transition https://t.co/QM6UbOWs1N

— Michael Cohen (@speechboy71) May 18, 2017

Still weaselly shitbag Highly Principled Public Servant Until He Can Secure That Gig As Tucker Carlson’s Clinton Foundation Special Correspondent Jason Chaffetz says there’s nothing to see here, so I feel confident Mueller will find nothing further untoward about this very tight administrative ship.