Trump had a four point plan to protect himself fro

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Trump had a four point plan to protect himself from the Russia scandal. That plan is collapsing.

In hindsight, it’s becoming fairly clear how Donald Trump used the transition period and his earliest days in office to set things up so that he would be insulated from his Russia scandal.

He put his co-conspirators in key positions so they could protect him. He groomed and recruited others who were already locked into key positions. He thought he’d walled off the inevitable investigation in at least four different ways. And yet now that’s mostly collapsing in on him.

This month’s meltdown of Congressman Devin Nunes appeared to have come out of nowhere. But looking back, Donald Trump and his strategists had been playing Nunes like a fiddle for months. They knew that, as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he’d end up being in charge of one of the two congressional investigations into Trump-Russia. So they added the bumbling Nunes to the White House transition team just to make him feel special.

Then they recruited Michael Ellis as White House counselor, who had previously worked for Nunes (link). From that point they sat back and waited, until they needed to activate their asset.

Once it became clear to Trump and his team that the Democrats on the House Intel Committee were able to make noise on Trump-Russia despite being in the minority, they used Ellis to trick Nunes into setting himself on fire so the flames would engulf the entire investigation. But because Nunes was so bumbling about it, the whole thing backfired and has made the Trump-Russia controversy bigger, not smaller.

But Nunes is far from the only firewall which Donald Trump thought he had in place. Trump appeared to have had the same plan in mind for Senate Intel Committee Chairman Richard Burr. But after the White House conned Burr into misleading a few reporters early on, and the scandal became public, Burr then decided to being playing things straight.

Moreover, Trump wasn’t counting on Republican Senator Susan Collins siding with the Democrats to give them a majority on the committee, forcing a serious investigation to proceed. Burr couldn’t sabotage it now even if he wanted to, because unlike Nunes, he’s outnumbered. So that’s two assets down.

http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/five-poin...fall/2122/

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