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Friday, January 31, 2020

About The Vindmans--And Bolton

I didn't know this, and maybe some regular readers weren't aware of this either. According to an article at American Greatness,
The Vindman Twins Are Creatures of John Bolton
The American people have the former national security advisor to blame for the presence of the self-serving brothers on the National Security Council staff.

Bolton is behind Impeachment Theater in more ways than one. The article states that Bolton in fact hired both of the Vindman twins. It also goes on to make some interesting observations about Bolton's MO which--from everything I've read--sounds in character and the author seems to have the background to know whereof he speaks:

Joseph Duggan is ...is a former White House speechwriter for President George H. W. Bush.

Excerpts:


During his four decades as an accumulator of power in the nation’s capital, a holder of high offices in the State Department, and finally a stint as President Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton has been well known for his scrupulous attention to the hiring and firing of his staff.
He always has demanded unwavering personal loyalty as well as fealty to his own—not his president’s—policy agenda. He has performed the most rigorous vetting on all who have been selected to serve on his various staffs, both the small number of political appointees a political appointee such as himself is allowed to have as well as the more numerous personnel selected from the foreign service, civil service, military services, and intelligence agencies. 
... 
... Bolton’s loyalties are never to his superiors but always to himself and to others only so long as they remain his sycophants. 
The strange case of the Vindman twins (Alexander and Yevgeny) should be examined in the light of Bolton’s Roi du Soleil [Sun King, i.e., Louis XIV, absolute monarch of France] management style. 
In July 2018, three months or so after becoming President Trump’s national security adviser, Bolton hired both Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman as a Ukraine policy specialist for the National Security Council and his identical twin brother, Army Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, as deputy legal counsel in the NSC’s “ethics” office.
Bolton is totally responsible for this pair of unusual hires. There is no explaining this strange duo of appointments as something that the bureaucracy simply slipped over on Bolton. That is not Bolton’s way. 
Anyone who has been involved in national security affairs in Republican administrations since 1981 knows that it is impossible that the Vindman brothers were given sensitive jobs in Bolton’s NSC without Bolton having become assured of their usefulness and loyalty to Bolton and his agenda. Both the Ukraine policy and the “ethics attorney” slots are of vast personal priority to Bolton.
... 
So here we are. Acting on his own, without authorization, Alexander Vindman reported his jaundiced view of President Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to friends in the State Department and intelligence agencies whom Vindman—unilaterally and going over the head of his superiors—asserted had a “need to know.” This led directly to the “whistleblower” complaint that ignited the impeachment conflagration.
Alexander Vindman also conflated his policy disagreement with President Trump into an ersatz “ethical” concern, and he shared his version of the phone call with his preferred in-house ethics lawyer, his own twin brother. Yevgeny Vindman is not the only ethics lawyer on the NSC staff. Alexander could have exercised a prudent compartmentalization of the information he considered so sensitive as to require the impeachment of his commander-in-chief. But instead of avoiding involvement of his brother in this matter, reportedly his first recourse was to decide that Yevgeny had a “need to know.” 
All of this happened under the all-seeing eye of John Bolton. 
The Justice Department’s legal counsel issued an authoritative statement that the highly classified information Alexander, with his own spin and Yevgeny’s blessing, fed to his friend in the intelligence community, was in no way a matter for the jurisdiction of the intelligence community inspector general.
Nevertheless, the IC’s inspector general took his own invalid action to cloak the Vindmans’ friend with “whistleblower” protection while the leaks to the mainstream media, the disingenuous interactions with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and his staff, and the histrionic impeachment farce ensued. 
President Trump fired the insubordinate Bolton on September 10. During the week that followed, the “whistleblower” complaint emerged in the news, at first connected to a communication between President Trump and an unidentified foreign leader. On September 18, the Washington Post reported that Trump had made some kind of “promise” to the foreign leader. On September 19, the IC inspector general gave a secret briefing to Schiff and other congressional leaders. The same day, the Washington Post reported that the whistleblower complaint involved Ukraine. 
The sanctimonious Alexander Vindman is suspected of perjury in his October performance in front of the House Intelligence Committee. Vindman had sworn in a deposition that he did not know the whistleblower. When, in an open hearing, committee ranking member Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) asked Vindman to identify the specific agency within the intelligence community employing the person with whom he had shared his version of the Trump-Zelensky call, Schiff interrupted the proceedings to say that Vindman was not allowed to answer the question because it would “out” the whistleblower. Schiff also is widely suspected of having lied when saying he does not know and has not had contact with the whistleblower. 
Yevgeny Vindman reportedly is the NSC staffer given charge of reviewing John Bolton’s self-sanctifying memoir manuscript, which somehow leaked to the New York Times last week.
...

There's a lot more than even this extensive excerpt offers. I urge you to follow the link.

But it remains disturbing to me that Trump failed to follow the advice of well wishers re hiring John Bolton: Don't do it!

22 comments:

  1. Now this starts to have the ring of truth. It provides a framework to explain Bolton's lobbying for the NSC job, the mechanics of the Ukraine leak, the posturing over testimony, and the lightning speed of the book writing.

    Bolton was gunning for Trump from the beginning.

    I confess I don't really know anything about Bolton. I always thought he was someone I should respect, but I guess my attitudes about hawkishness have been changing.

    Perhaps Bolton was always a Never Trumper or he became one after Trump's Syria actions.

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    1. What Mistcr said about Bolton in his last two paragraphs reflects, almost exactly, my thoughts.

      Delete
  2. Well, W fired Bolton and later, supposedly, had this to say about him ...

    Bush grew more agitated at the mention of his own former senior diplomat. “Let me just say from the outset that I don’t consider Bolton credible,” the president said bitterly. Bush had brought Bolton into the top ranks of his administration, fought for Senate confirmation and, when lawmakers balked, defied critics to give the hawkish aide a recess appointment. “I spent political capital for him,” Bush said, and look what he got in return."

    https://web.archive.org/web/20190130053129/https:/www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/magazine/31bush-t.html

    The article is a treasure trove.

    W wanted to "liberalize immigration" amongst other things, but 9-11 stopped that.

    No Child Left Behind?

    I spit on that and curse W! Yes, I voted for him 4 times (gov and prez), but sorry, when your own ELEMENTARY children cry over a federal mandated test and later one kid gets extra school for passing, but trending down on said test, NO!!!

    Anyways.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What business does the federal government have in elementary and high schools?

      None, in my book, other than defending students' civil rights to pray and to eat the foods that their parents pack.

      Delete
  3. John Solomon just reported on Laura Ingraham's show that Bolton, a few months before he took the job as Trump's NSA, was paid over $100k by Victor Pinchuk -- Ukraine oligarch -- for two speeches.

    And then he hired the Vindman twins and gave them jobs in NSC.

    Hmmmm.

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    Replies
    1. True. I'll bet Rudy and others knew that long ago.

      Delete
    2. A financial disclosure shows that Bolton accepted $115,000 from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation for a pair of speeches in September 2017 and February 2018.

      At the former speech in Kiev, Bolton sat on a panel and basically expressed that the national security establishment would not allow Trump to become unconventional on policy, stating, “The notion that [Trump’s presidency] is going to represent a dramatic break in foreign policy is just wrong. Calm down, for God’s sake.”

      As the Washington Post noted, Pinchuk has exceeded $10 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation.


      More - from Patrick Howley - here:

      https://nationalfile.com/john-bolton-took-six-figures-from-ukrainian-oligarch-clinton-foundation-donor/

      Delete
    3. Thanks for the correction and the rest of the info. Pretty revealing when put in the context of what's been going on.

      Delete
  4. Is part of the genius of Trump his ability to lure his adversaries and enemies (both known and unknown) into making fools of themselves...or worse...usually to Trump's great advantage...

    Jeb Bush? Hillary Clinton? James Comey? John Brennan? Jim Mattis?

    We'll see where Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and, now, John Bolton end up...

    Take on PDJT at your peril!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's true. It always seems that Trump winds up playing the Roadrunner to their Wile E. Coyote. It sure keeps me on the edge of my computer chair, though.

      Delete
  5. I'm still trying to understand Bolton's intention with those two.

    Were they plants to be used as revenge if/when he got kicked out? Or were they to be used at any convenient opportunity?

    I believe he was removed after this whole Ukraine thing started - would this have been the reason he was let go?
    Trump was pretty harsh afterward.

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    1. Bolton's intention was always to substitute his own foreign policy for Trump's and to make that substitution permanent by implanting his own people. Bolton, no doubt, still looks bad, but his people are still in place.

      Trump's major foreign policy idea was to come to a modus vivendi with Russia in order to work together to contain China. The Deep State policy is to dominate Russia and Central Asian gas.

      Why Trump thought hiring a determined opponent of his most basic ideas was a good move is anyone's guess.

      Delete
    2. I used to like Bolton, not that I paid any too muich attention to all the moves he made. I seem to recall he was an early Trump supporter, but I may be mistaken.

      It now seems Bolton is just another DC sociopath. That he is going after Trump, publicly, indifferent to the risk this brings to the Republic, in its present straits, or Trump's presidency, sinks him forever in my mind.

      What's the difference between Hillary Clinton and John Bolton? One of them wears a dress.

      I'm interested to see where he ends up on the talk show circuit because, boy, has he burned some bridges. If he starts showing up on CNN and MSNBC, we'll know the whole Bolton is one of us motifs was a con from the Sammy Glick get-go.

      I'm also past tired of men who didn't serve, in Bolton's case, he finagled his way out, advocating war. Bolton is past his sell by date.

      And I do wish him ill.

      Delete
    3. TexasDude,

      "What's the difference between Hillary Clinton and John Bolton? One of them wears a dress."

      Since Clinton always seems to wear pantsuits, what proof do you have that Bolton is a cross-dresser?

      LOL.

      Delete
  6. Once an admired figure in American policy, recent actions displayed by Bolton and his hired henchmen proves that the quest for personal power oversees what's good for America and my mistake in believing in him.
    The two Vidmen flunkies, one probably the "whistleblower" need to pay a price along with Bolton for what they have tried to do to this president.

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    Replies
    1. While Bolton and other Deep State actors claim to be acting out of principled strategery, there's no doubt that they benefit personally.

      Recent reporting offers just one example out of many: Bolton gave two talks for which pro-Hillary Ukrainian oligarch Pinchuk paid him $100K apiece.

      Delete
  7. Joseph Duggan is a native of St. Louis. His father, the late Martin Duggan, was the editorial page editor of the old St. Louis Globe-Democrat. The Globe was the conservative morning paper and a competitor to the liberal afternoon paper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

    Martin and his late wife, Mae, were devout Catholics are among the early pioneers of school choice for parents and students.

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  8. Sorry, Titan 28, that I addressed you as "TexasDude."

    For Mr. Wauck, Brennan trained his sights on Alexander after he voted to reject calling witnesses?

    Do you think that Johnny Boy is seeing more and more light coming through the tunnel as though a freight train is about to run him over?

    That's a rhetorical question.

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  9. I'm reading my local paper about the President's acquittal and it's by the AP. Does AP mean Always Pravda? Holy Cow, they're terrible.

    ReplyDelete