Trump Defines Loyalty: Always Protect Me; Don't Expose Wrongdoings; Hide the Truth

Loyalty in the Eye of the Beholder 

(Or, suffer the “Wrath of Don”)

The analogy used in this post today is used to make my knowledge and understanding of history and now current events relating to Trump and his revenge trek and growing enemies list now is full operation.

For example, the Nuremberg Trial and numerous Nazi's defense for their horrible war crimes was the collective phrase: “Befehl ist Befehl.” 

(German translation: “An order is an order”).

Disloyalty to Donald J. Trump means for anyone who tells the truth about him or his unlawful or illegal actions – he gets rid of them.

Setting the Scene: Trump’s decision to freeze the release of security assistance to Ukraine violated the law, the GAO said in their report.

Specifically they said that OMB withheld the appropriated funds last summer not as a programmatic delay but in order to advance the president’s own agenda, and, by doing so the White House violated what’s known as the Impoundment Control Act (ICA).

Now this critical question: What ties Trump and “his hunt for enemies with his revenge list” have to do with “just following orders and the Nuremberg war crimes?” 

Simple: Disloyalty to Trump means he fires anyone who tells the truth about anything regarding him.

This revenge move by Trump comes in the aftermath of the House’s impeachment inquiry in which staffers testified against him (Dr. Fiona Hill, LTC Alexander Vindman, Amb. Marie Yovanovitch, et al).

So, what does Trump do? He hires a 29-year old “spy” to hunt down and identify traitors in the halls of the White House and some agencies and give the list to him.

That man is 29-year old John McEntee, who then in turn hired a 23-year old college senior, James Bacon, to assist him in the hunt for: “Never-Trumpers” who work in government. 

McEntee once worked as Trump’s “body man” suggested that some firings would have to happen after the 2020 election and/or anti-Trump individuals could be shifted around in a way that could to deny them government promotions 

More on McEntee from here – worth reading (March 2018):

Trump’s personal assistant, John McEntee, was fired and escorted from the White House 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 reported that McEntee is “currently under investigation by the Department of Homeland Security for serious financial crimes.”

McEntee had been with the president since 2015 and he has been described as a “Bodyman with responsibilities that 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?

All this does not 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. But, it sure makes sense that Trump wants to keep McEntee happy to make sure he doesn’t go blabbing about what’s he had learned from spending more than three years at Trump’s side.

Now up-to-date on all this: John Rood, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the Pentagon got the Trump boot and suddenly resigned at the request of Trump.

So with all that above it is now easy to see where the proof meets the pudding in this, the “rest of the story:

Rood was in Trump’s firing line for raising concerns last year about the president’s plan to deliberately withhold military aid to Ukraine – a key issue that helped trigger the impeachment inquiry who said the act was illegal and unlawful and now:

The GAO report confirmed that action was in fact unlawful.

Legal Fact: Following a superior’s order known to be illegal or unlawful is no excuse for breaking the same law – case in point:

The Trump administration’s OMB decision to freeze the release of security assistance to Ukraine violated the law, the GAO reported and it was not as a programmatic delay but in order to advance the president’s own political agenda and that violated what’s known as the Impoundment Control Act (ICA) – detailed in that GAO report:

“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law. OMB withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act (ICA)...Therefore, we conclude that OMB violated the ICA.”

My 2 cents is related from in part the conclusion taken from this American University International Law Review.

What Trump is doing now based on the above story and evidence is not a “war crime” per se, but it ties in with his lawbreaking and then punishing those around him for telling the truth about his lawbreaking (e.g., withholding that aid money from Ukraine).

Background: Since World War II, the law regarding obedience of superior orders as a defense to law of war violations remains as it was applied at Nuremberg for the Nazi pleading “I was just following orders” and more recent legal war crimes proceedings – it is not a legal defense, period.

The fact that the law of war has been violated pursuant to an order of a superior authority, whether military or civil, does not deprive the act in question of its character as a war crime, nor does it constitute a defense in the trial of an accused individual, unless he did not know and could not reasonably have been expected to know that the act ordered was unlawful.... That the individual was acting pursuant to orders may be considered in mitigation of punishment.

That is not the case with John Rood and others, who warned that withholding the Ukraine aid was illegal and unlawful. Trump didn’t care, but we must care.

Thanks for stopping by.