Democrats in Congress will demand to know more about those conversations now, and especially what Mr. Trump knew of them. But that may not even be the administration’s biggest headache. The issue that has always been looming just behind the Flynn controversy is the more explosive question of whether there were covert contacts between the Trump team and Russian representatives in an attempt to influence the presidential campaign.
The inquiry can intensify in several ways in the weeks ahead. Democrats are pressing for a joint House-Senate intelligence committee inquiry, or the formation of a select committee specifically charged with investigating the question of Russian interference in the election.
.. If Republicans balk at going those routes—and signals so far suggest they would—then Democrats will try to increase pressure publicly. In that effort, they may find friends in the intelligence community. It’s clear that the president has made enemies within the intelligence world, who appear willing to leak what they are finding on the Russia connection if there isn’t an official route by which it can surface.
.. There are multiple power centers within the White House, but it may be that Mr. Pence will emerge from the Flynn episode as a particularly important one. Mr. Pence seemed irritated enough at being misled by Mr. Flynn to have acted on the irritation, rather than letting it pass.
.. Mr. Pence has always had the potential to emerge as a dominant player
.. That hasn’t been the case so far with Mr. Priebus, in part because Mr. Trump reportedly has only recently indicated that he wants him to exert that kind of control.
Former CIA chief: Trump’s travel ban hurts American spies — and America
President Trump’s executive order on immigration was ill-conceived, poorly implemented and ill-explained. To be fair, it would have been hard to explain since it was not the product of intelligence and security professionals demanding change, but rather policy, political and ideological personalities close to the president fulfilling a campaign promise to deal with a threat they had overhyped.
.. Paradoxically, they pointed out how the executive order breached faith with those very sources, many of whom they had promised to always protect with the full might of our government and our people. Sources who had risked much, if not all, to keep Americans safe.
..But as a former station chief told me, in the places where intelligence officers operate, rumor, whisper and conspiratorial chatter rule people’s lives. It doesn’t take paranoia to connect the action of the executive order with the hateful, anti-Islamic language of the campaign. In the Middle East, with its honor-based cultures, it’s easier to recruit someone we have been shooting at than it is to recruit someone whose society has been insulted.
What Does Trump Know About Russia?
The president-elect has his doubts about Russian hacking. What are his motives?
The most innocent reading of these comments is that Mr. Trump is seeking to flatter his Russian counterpart into a cooperative relationship, much as George W. Bush and Mr. Obama sought to do in the early days of their presidencies... they raise the possibility that his desire for a better relationship is shaping his attitude toward the intelligence.. This is called politicizing intelligence, and it’s reprehensible whether done in the service of starting a war or passing a treaty... It isn’t a secret that the Trump Organization has long been entwined with Russian business interests: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of our assets,” Donald Trump Jr. told a real-estate conference in 2008. It isn’t a secret that Mr. Trump’s campaign was curiously studded by figures with deep business ties to Russian or pro-Russian figures, including Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and Carter Page. It isn’t a secret that businessmen from Russia and other former Soviet states have been major investorsin marquee projects such as the Trump Soho in New York and the Trump hotel in Toronto... he can begin by telling us what he knows about his Russia ties that the rest of us still don’t.
Donald Trump’s questionable intelligence: All those false claims about his academic record and derision of others bespeak profound insecurity
In contrast to his attacks on “losers,” Trump frequently retweets comments from others congratulating him for how “smart” he is.
Only someone who doubts his own intelligence would feel compelled to make these kinds of public statements.
Trump surely knows that he didn’t get into Wharton on his own merits. He transferred into Wharton’s undergraduate program after spending two years at Fordham University in New York. According to Gwenda Blair’s 2001 biography, “The Trumps,” Trump’s grades at Fordham were not good enough to qualify him for a transfer to Wharton. Blair wrote that Trump got into Wharton as a special favor from a “friendly” admissions officer who knew Trump’s older brother, Freddy. The college’s admissions staff surely knew that Trump’s father was a wealthy real estate developer and a potential donor.
.. On at least two occasions in the 1970s — “A Builder Looks Back-and Moves Forward,” on Jan. 28, 1973, and “Donald Trump, Real Estate Promoter, Builds Image as He Buys Buildings,” on Nov. 1, 1976 — the New York Times reported that Trump “graduated first in his class” at Wharton in 1968.. Trump’s insecurity about his accomplishments is also revealed in his efforts to portray himself as an up-by-the-bootstraps self-made entrepreneur.“It has not been easy for me,” Trump said at a town hall meeting on Oct. 26, 2015, acknowledging, “My father gave me a small loan of a million dollars.”.. Given this background — his lackluster academic record, his dependence on his family’s connections and wealth to get into college and to succeed in business, and his troublesome and abusive business practices — it shouldn’t be surprising that Trump is so insecure about his intellect and so thin-skinned about his accomplishments.