blackmail – Deep Left Field

Back in 2016, when it became clear that Donald Trump might just be the 2016 GOP presidential nominee, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) warned that nominating Trump would be catastrophic for Republicans, posting his warning on Twitter.

If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…….and we will deserve it.
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) May 3, 2016

Trump did indeed win the nomination and then went on to win the 2016 election, defeating Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and Graham suddenly became one of the Donald’s staunchest defenders.

So what happened? Why did Graham do a 180 so quickly? Could it have been blackmail?

That question was poised to former Republican operative Tim Miller by Ron Filpkowski this week when Filipkowski asked what member of the GOP had most disappointed Miller in recent years.

Miller named Graham, noting that the senator had been a “hoot” to have on the 2016 campaign trail. At the time, Graham was supporting Jeb Bush and making appearances on the former Florida governor’s behalf:

“Me and Lindsey got to hang out a lot, like, two months. And his hatred for Trump, Ron, was greater than ours…. he would say stuff to me and every once in a while I’d be like, ‘OK, Lindsey, you’re going a little far. He’s really bad, but he’s not Hitler. He’s too stupid to be Hitler.”

That led Filpkowski to ask Miller if he thought perhaps Graham had become an ardent Trumper because Trump had blackmailed him.

Miller replied:

“No, I don’t. I don’t think Trump is good enough at keeping secrets to have blackmail… Lindsey, I think, is just a really weak person.”

On the podcast, I asked Tim Miller which politician he was most disappointed in selling out to Trump. He said Lindsey Graham. I then asked him if he thinks Trump has blackmail on Lindsey. https://t.co/cBwIQgLExf pic.twitter.com/pCsiqjA9hF
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 24, 2022

Others, however, disagree, and Jon Cooper of the Democratic Coalition said in 2019 that a Republican told him Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin did indeed have dirt on Graham and it was sexual in nature:

A Republican just told me that he doubts @LindseyGrahamSC is kowtowing to Trump (and indirectly Putin) because he’s being blackmailed over his sexual orientation (an open secret) or even financial corruption. Rather, he thinks it probably involves some pretty serious sexual kink.
— Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) January 13, 2019

Michael Cohen, who served as Donald Trump’s personal attorney for over a decade, says he believes his former client may attempt to share top-secret information with foreign countries if the Justice Department indicts him for violations of the Espionage Act.

Appearing on MSNBC Sunday, Cohen was asked by host Michael Steele:

“Based on everything you know about him, why do you think he wanted to keep those top secret documents at Mar-a-Lago.”

Cohen responded:

“He’s gonna use it as a get out of jail free card. It’s a way to extort America turn around to say if you put me in jail, if you go after me — he’ll even say his children — I will have my loyal supporters who you do not know who has copies of information that may have been, and again this is my conjecture, that I would take those documents, I will release them to Iran, to China, to North Korea, to Russia.
“You want to take me down, I’ll take the whole country down.”

Cohen added:

“Remember, and I’ve said this with you 1000 times, Mike, Donald Trump doesn’t care about this country,” he continued. “He doesn’t care about anyone or anything other than himself.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mGz5ZoKjQ0&feature=emb_logo

Based on Trump’s past actions and behavior, Cohen is probably correct. But if the failed, one-term president does indeed give away classified information to our adversaries, he needs to keep in mind that he could wind up like Ethel and Julius Rosenberg: On federal death row, waiting to be executed, and so can anyone who assists him.