There’s something seriously wrong with the official story about the firing of Trump assistant John McEntee.
President Donald Trump’s personal assistant, John McEntee, was fired and escorted from the White House on Monday after being denied a security clearance over financial problems in his background, according to senior administration officials and people close to the former aide.
According to the report, McEntee was not allowed to return to his office and was thus forced to depart into the cold without a jacket. CNN is reporting that McEntee is “currently under investigation by the Department of Homeland Security for serious financial crimes.” That might explain why he is also reported to have failed a background check.
McEntee has been with the president since 2015 and he has been described as a “bodyman” whose responsibilities included making sure the president has pens to sign autographs and delivering messages to the president while he’s upstairs in the residence of the White House.
But if McEntee has committed serious financial crimes and needed to be aggressively escorted off the White House grounds, then why did the Trump administration immediately announce that he would be “joining the reelection effort as a senior adviser for campaign operations”?
Obviously, there’s an ethical question there. Why hire a suspected criminal to serve on your campaign? Why trust him if he’s not trustworthy enough to serve in the West Wing?
But it also raises questions about whether we’re getting an accurate description of what’s going on. It seems like we’re getting explanations and excuses from various people who are not singing from the same hymnal. Could it be that the Trump administration was forced to part ways with McEntee but doesn’t want him to become a disgruntled former employee who is willing to cooperate in the investigation of the president? Could they be trying to keep him close by offering him a job and not officially discussing the circumstances of his dismissal, but that others are giving out portions of the actual story?
All I know is that it doesn’t make a lot of public relations sense to announce that you’re hiring someone in the same breath that you reveal that they’ve failed a background check and been fired. It makes even less ethical sense. If they were planning on hiding the circumstances that led to his termination and the way that he was removed from the premises, that plan obviously failed its first contact with the news cycle.
The only thing that really makes sense to me is that they want to keep him happy and make sure he doesn’t go blabbing about what he’s learned from spending more than three years at Donald Trump’s side.
At this point I’m just assuming everyone who’s ever been close to Trump has the ability to blackmail him.
Yep, I wounder how much he is getting paid in his new position. You got to wonder if the donors are ok with their money is just used for hush money and atty fees.
Trump’s whole White House smells to high heaven, but I agree that this story in particular stinks all by itself. With regular leaks coming out on an almost daily basis, we can never know who is saying what. It’s bad enough that the turnover is incredibly short in this administration, but it’s really hard to understand why a man being fired for security concerns gets immediately rehired in a campaign job.
Lord knows we’ll never get a straight answer from Sarah Huckabee Sanders; she can lie without batting an eyelash. And Trump himself backtracks on just about every decision he makes, depending on whoever has his ear at that moment. I believe we will never know all of the terrible things that are happening in the White House.
I wouldn’t be a part of that shitshow for all the gold toilets in the world.
I feel the same way. I so don’t understand people who sell out. What good does money, fame or rides around town in limousines do if one’s conscience isn’t clean. Perhaps some people lose touch with their conscience (assuming they ever had one). Would love to know what causes some to make choices that others would never consider.
Years ago in a psychology class, I learned about Lawrence Kohlberg’s various stages of moral development. Later, James Rest developed the Defining Issues Test to objectively measure a person’s moral development. Some answers can be found in their work.
In some cases you get hooked into it. When you’re ass deep in alligators its hard to step back and see the entire swamp. The stories of bit by bit entanglements with mob and foreign agents are ubiquitous. You start with something truly innocuous and end up in shit to your eyeballs. This does not exonerate or excuse what happens … it is what it is.
An administration awash in human fuck-ups.
The president’s pardon power is plenary. There might be practical constraints on the timing of its exercise, though.
“but doesn’t want him to become a disgruntled former employee who is willing to cooperate in the investigation of the president? “
What a den of vipers.
Heh. We’ll see just how quiet he’s willing to stay when it’s Mueller Time for him.
At this point I’m pretty sure that Trump views firings as his particular tool. He uses them to take the focus on what the front page story about him is, to obscure charges made against him or just baffle all of us with his bullshit.
He seems to hold back his firings; see how long he held onto Tillerson, so that he can pull them appropriately out of his hat to match the size of the front page he’s trying to divert attention from.
The assistant may just be Kelly’s idea and Trump feels bad so took care of him. Tillerson’s firing got Stormy off the front page and may have bought him time on N Korea talks.
ummmmm… you don’t get escorted out because the chief of staff wants you gone. You get escorted out to prevent you from doing anything in your office … like start a bleach-bit run.
I take your point, but Tillerson’s exit had been predicted for a very long time. As the story of Stormy built and refused to get off the front page, Trump arguably used what he already wanted to do in a moment that took over the front page.
The aide is clearly a Kelly decision when he was faced with the reality of yet another felon he let skate.
Good thing the adults are in charge.
“Ethical sense”. Um, how does that work again? I guess this Manatee guy doesn’t rate as a body guard so is described somewhat lewdly as a bodyman. Whatever. I agree with the idea that this guy knows too much. “Keep your friends close but keep your (potential) enemies closer.
It helps if you understand that the Trump Administration is little more than a badly managed crime family.
Isn’t it also possible that both the administration and campaign have become so toxic that they are having a hell of a time finding people who are willing to work for them?
This guy can’t hold one position because he can’t pass a background check, so shuffle him around and put him somewhere that isn’t required. At this point they all look like criminals so I don’t see why that would be of particular concern.
I read that his serious financial crimes were related to online gambling and tax (evasion?) problems. Could he have been using WH computers to gamble? Might he be on the cusp of being charged with something?
If I were trying to write a Politico story on this I’d say it’s a sign of Trump’s declining influence in the White House. He was able to carry out the long planned maneuver (leaked in December) to dump Tillerson, because everybody on all sides understands Tillerson is truly incompetent, but he’s unable to protect McEntee from getting fired. Instead he asserts his relevance by getting him a position elsewhere.
The White House is a war zone now, though, where nobody is really in charge.
Oh I know! I know!
Is the reason Drumpf is hiring a criminal to his campaign staff because Drumpf himself is also a criminal?
Gotta be…right?
Hoping there’s a prize…
Wonderful question.
Here’s another: why isn’t the useless corporate media able to ask such questions?
I would have thought that professional journalists would have torn an intelligence-insulting spewer of toxic waste like Huckster-Sanders limb from limb by now.
How about McEntee needs some cash (he’s 27), and Trump can get him to sign one of those famously strict confidentiality agreements? Won’t defeat an actual subpoena, but it will require McEntee to insist on a subpoena, to tell Trump when McEntee gets a subpoena, and the subject matter (this term exists in the Daniels NDA, and is pretty standard anyway).
According to Politico, he is a Schiller protege. And (guesswork a little) looks like he was without a job for some period of time (before working for Fox News). Schiller too (who would have otherwise likely been unemployable) got a campaign job when he had to go.
Lastly, “serious financial crimes”? Escorted out? Has to be something the Secret Service discovered themselves (see WSJ article) and is so bad they could take action (who else would escort him out?) without any fear of repercussion. And of course McEntee can supposedly fake a signature (Politico article), and his brother works personally for the Secretary of the Treasury.