Testing Trump's Team

Testing Trump’s Team

Posted: June 23rd, 2020

By Walter Pincus

Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010. He was also a team member for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and the George Polk Award in 1978.

OPINION — US Government officials, civilian and military, alike may be facing unusual tests in the next four months: Does their loyalty rest with the oath they took to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, or to President Trump?

Maybe those officials should look no further than last week to see what that test could look like. Let’s consider whether the Trump Justice Department used Director of National Intelligence John C. Ratcliffe and Gen. Paul Nakasone, Director of the National Security Agency and Commander of U.S. Cyber Command, as props for last week’s, last-minute, legal effort to prevent the publication of former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s tell-all book, The Room Where It Happened.

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