Now that the United States has lived through almost four years of chaos and controversies generated by President Donald Trump, it’s easy to forget that the original scandal that launched the Russia investigation was the result of actions taken by then-candidate Trump’s team of notably junior foreign-policy advisors. Had inexperienced “experts” such as George Papadopoulos and Carter Page not ranked among the campaign’s highest-profile national security figures, it’s unlikely the FBI and then-special counsel Robert Mueller would ever have launched their investigations. After all, if people with more experience and better judgment had been involved from the start, it’s unlikely they would have entertained entreaties from shadowy Russian figures—contacts that set off the initial alarms at the FBI.
It shouldn’t be surprising that a reality TV star known more for his business failures than any foreign-policy insights had trouble attracting the nation’s best diplomatic, military, and intelligence thinkers early on. His chief national security aide during the 2016 campaign, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, had been fired by President Barack Obama as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency two years earlier, and had then embarked on an odd project to cozy up to Russian President Vladimir Putin, accepting tens of thousands of dollars to speak in Russia and attending a dinner with the Russian leader. Flynn lasted just three weeks as Trump’s national security advisor before being ousted for lying about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the United States.
