Yes, I stood downwind and caught a big whiff of what Trump was long before he ever got elected. Now that he is basically being tried for Treason (under the Espionage Act) people need to start actually thinking. As someone who was born a Republican, I’m disgusted at the Nazi regime that has bubbled to the top of the Republican party. The fact that not one GOP presidential candidate came out and denounced Trump for this blatant crime against America makes me want to vomit.
Robert Hanssen
The recent passing of Robert Hanssen was probably ignored by most of you. It shouldn’t be. It is highly relevant in the Trump Era, not just because a cell is now available for Trump in SuperMax. You all need to rent the 2007 movie Breach. You also need to at least read this article about the NPR Morning Edition story on Robert Hanssen and the author of a book about him. There are two quotes from the article that you really need to pay attention to.
While “financial pressures” played a role in getting Hanssen started in the spy game, Vise says, “the main reason he spied wasn’t about money. It was about ego.”
NPR article and book
The author describes Hanssen’s personality as a “fractured ego seeking recognition.” Vise says that as a young boy, Hanssen was abused physically and emotionally by his father, a Chicago police officer.
NPR article and book
Ego and Abuse
This is a short clip of a much longer multipart Trump documentary covering his childhood.
Abuse and humiliation create a fractured ego. When it comes to those who can be turned, the best targets for turning are those with fractured egos. They are also the most difficult to identify with background/clearance checks.
Elaine Shannon, author of The Spy Next Door: The Extraordinary Secret Life of Robert Philip Hanssen, the Most Damaging FBI Agent in U.S. History, gives a great NPR interview you can listen to here. Just a couple of minutes into the conversation you will learn that Robert Hanssen didn’t negotiate. He volunteered to be a spy and let the Russians pay him whatever they wanted. At one point in one of the two interviews I’ve mentioned here, Hanssen actually wrote a letter to his handlers saying he could not accept large transactions because he could not spend it. His treason didn’t have a price tag.
The security watchdogs monitor your credit history, bank accounts, and financial transactions when you have meaningful clearance. He was only paid $1.4 million in cash and diamonds over 20 years of spying.
How Hanssen Treason Relates to Trump
Watch the movie, read and listen to the interviews. Getting paid for secrets isn’t what you go to jail for, you go to jail for handing them off. Trump was showing these to God-knows-who. (Actually the DOJ has identified some according to a few reports). Knowingly exposing classified information to someone without clearance is what you go to jail for.
Did these documents help fund the LIV Golf league? How many got copies and sent to his good friend Supreme Leader Putin?
The trial will hopefully tell us.