They’re trying to figure out if he’s sufficiently corrupt to work in the Trump WH.
Let them (the lawyers) stand in the breach on this appointment. Come on McGahn, we’ve read the reports that you are looking for an exit. Can you do this one thing first? Bolton shouldn’t be in this position in any realty - not even in Trump’s alternate/delusional reality.
Per some of the problems (I say from memory - not necessarily with accuracy - but with a mood of glee as to where the below could lead…) :
I believe I heard on MSNBC last night that Bolton’s PAC had a lot of Mercer Money flowing through it to Mercer’s Cambridge Analytica.
Have we reached a point yet where anyone barely paying attention hasn’t yet heard Mercer’s name enough times, tied to these anti-democracy efforts? His and his daughter’s time of playing in the shadows is - well if it isn’t yet over, I bet by the end of the month’s news cycles it will be over.
You win (even though all of the first posts today are also winners).
“While it was unclear what aspects of Bolton’s background might raise red flags,…”
I really got a laugh at that line. What aspect of Bolton’s background doesn’t raise a red flag.
Why would they concern themselves with conflicts by the minions when the big cheese is the king of conflict?
White House lawyers looking into potential conflicts of interest?? That’s hilarious!!
Trump: No Conflict. No Conflict. No Conflict. You are the Conflict… We both love Russia unconditionally.
The big cheese doesn’t want people talking about conflicts at all, for obvious reasons. It’s like when the kids running an open-air drug market start a war and bodies start falling—the police response can reach higher in the organization. Quiet is good for corruption.
Yeah. You can really count on those guys to be fair, impartial and critical during this review.
And after they have fairly and impartially identified all of the areas of conflict, they will develop a strategy to destroy all pertinent documents they can get their hands on, intimidate any people who might contradict them, and, for the stuff that’s left, develop a spin propaganda campaign which turns this blood-thirsty war-mongering hawk into a puddy-tat.
20-1 says they approve Bolton.
After all, they want to keep their jobs too (since nobody else will hire them now.)
White House ‘ethics’ lawyers. That’s rich.
Bolton also internally announced that he would step down as chairman of his foundation — Foundation for American Security and Freedom — in March
Jared Kushner will be setting up a secret back channel communication arrangement between Bolton and Foundation for American Security and Freedom.
Go ahead, ask him about it, he'll tell you all about how it's not happening.Well, I’m not a fancy elitist ethics lawyer, but shouldn’t the WH have done this before he was appointed??
Oh, who am I kidding? There is no WH, only Trump.
Trump famously lies and welches on promises. I can see a person vying for a job with him wanting a public offering of the job before going through all the work and bother of producing volumes of documents for the vetting process. At least that way you have Trump marginally on the hook to follow through with the promised job before you lay the groundwork of abandoning your current responsibilities and baring your soul to a bunch of sycophantic Trump nit-wit legal functionaries.
It’s not an ethics issue. Unlike his putative boss, Bolton has a well known ideology which creates innumerable conflicts between his policy positions and the Constitution, treaties to which the US is a party, and international law.
There can only be one King of Conflict, all others must bow down to the King.
Jeff Sessions recused himself in the first blush of the “Trump Administration” because he was under the quaint notion that some semblance of decency and tradition still held. Fourteen months later, we all know that (and certainly Sessions’ now rues the day) - nothing matters - at all. No obstacle too egregious matters to Congress. PAC money? Mercers? Meh. In the scheme of things, barely an eyebrow.
White House ethics? An oxymoron.
White House Lawyers Reviewing Bolton’s Potential Conflicts of Interest
I think you mean, “Reviewing the blatant conflicts and then immediately waiving them anyway,” as they have done with dozens of other WH appointees.