Trump just put a 'for sale' sign on his forehead

CNN June 12, 2019
by Samantha Vinograd
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/12/opinions/trump-dirt-foreign-government-comment-vinograd/index.html

Trump just put a 'for sale' sign on his forehead

By putting a "for sale" sign on his forehead -- and indicating that he's open for business when it comes to receiving dirt on his political rivals -- President Donald Trump is encouraging foreign governments to attack his political opponents.

We know that Russia used various tools to attack Hillary Clinton - and then laundered that stolen information through organizations including WikiLeaks as part of an information warfare campaign. No one, especially the President, who has access to the most sensitive intelligence in the world, can claim ignorance about how Russia attacked Clinton.

Rather than learning from what happened, Trump is encouraging Russia and potentially others to do more of the same. This opens up every candidate - and perceived Trump rival - to attacks from hostile foreign powers.

President Trump's latest comments, during an ABC News interview, indicating that he would consider accepting negative material on political opponents from foreign governments, and that he wouldn't necessarily report the contact to the FBI, are just the latest in a long line of counterintelligence red flags. Trump said, "There isn't anything wrong with listening."

It is unclear whether the FBI has an ongoing counterintelligence investigation into President Trump. But if they don't, they may want to revisit why not.

Samantha Vinograd served on President Obama's National Security Council from 2009-2013.