The choice of servants is of no little importance to a prince, and they are good or not according to the discrimination of the prince. And the first opinion which one forms of a prince, and of his understanding, is by observing the men he has around him; and when they are capable and faithful he may always be considered wise, because he has known how to recognize the capable and to keep them faithful. But when they are otherwise one cannot form a good opinion of him, for the prime error which he made was in choosing them.
-- MachiavelliThe character of Trump's subordinates says a lot.
Rick Schapiro reports at The New York Daily News that Jason Miller abruptly gave up the post of White House communications director He had said he wanted to spend more time with his family.
But AJ Delgado, a senior advisor in Trump’s transition team, posted several tweets hinting that Miller was at the center of a sex scandal.
“Congratulations to the baby-daddy on being named WH Comms Director!” she wrote in one now-deleted tweet.
“The 2016 version of John Edwards,” she wrote in another, referring to the disgraced ex-Democratic senator who fathered a child with his mistress.
“When people need to resign graciously and refuse to, it’s a bit...spooky,” she tweeted.
A Twitter follower asked who she was referring to. “Jason Miller. Who needed to resign...yesterday,” she replied.
Delgado later deleted her Twitter account.
Miller and Delgado have been the subject of salacious headlines once before.Ben Jacobs reports at The Guardian:
The pair were reportedly among a trio of Trump senior advisors who spent the night before the third and final presidential debate partying at a Las Vegas strip club.
Donald Trump will appoint a real estate lawyer with minimal experience of foreign relations as his special representative for international negotiations, a role that involves overseeing negotiations between Israelis and the Palestinians.
Jason Greenblatt, who served as Trump’s top adviser on Israel policy during the campaign along with fellow lawyer David Friedman, will take on the role in the president-elect’s administration. Friedman has already been announced as Trump’s controversial pick for ambassador to Israel.
...David Kocieniewski and Peter Robison report at Bloomberg:
Aside from his work for Trump, Greenblatt practiced law at the firm of Fried Frank, Harris, Shriver and Jacobson, and also formed a business called The Credit Workshop in 1992 with his brother, Joseph Greenblatt, who is currently serving up to 18 years in New York prison for fraud. The father of six also runs a parenting blog with his wife, Naomi.
Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, partnered this year with a controversial technology company co-run by a man once convicted of trying to sell stolen biotech material to the Russian KGB espionage agency.
Subu Kota, who pleaded guilty in 1996 to selling the material to an FBI agent posing as a Russian spy, is one of two board directors at the company, Boston-based Brainwave Science. During years of federal court proceedings, prosecutors presented evidence they said showed that between 1985 and 1990 Kota met repeatedly with a KGB agent and was part of a spy ring that made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling U.S. missile defense technology to Russian spies. Kota denied being part of a spy ring, reached a plea agreement in the biotech case and admitted to selling a sketch of a military helicopter to his co-defendant, who was later convicted of being a KGB operative.
