Federal prosecutors believe the Trump inaugural committee may have taken illegal overseas contributions.
Following the news – which, as with much of the news out of the Trump administration, is astounding but not surprising – that Trump’s inauguration committee is under federal investigation for potentially illegally accepting funds from countries including Saudi Arabia, Trump has plumped for his usual line of defence: deny, and claim ignorance.
In fact, about the only stable thing about this government of instability is how reliable it is in giving a response, like the Shaggy song, of blanket denial in the face of overwhelming evidence: it wasn’t me .
As is often the case, the denial came not from Trump directly, but from Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, who hilariously said on Wednesday that she wanted her tenure to be remembered for being “transparent and honest” but, of course, will actually be remembered for the impossible contortions into which she has bent language in trying to extricate her boss from one lie after another.
The inauguration committee “doesn’t have anything to do with the president or first lady,” Sanders told a press gaggle on Thursday when the news of the investigation broke. “The president was focused on the transition during that time and not on any of the planning for the inaugural.”
This is, of course, disingenuous nonsense. “It’s HIS inauguration. When your name is plastered in large type at the top of every single event invitation, you don’t get to say, ‘I was too busy to oversee my own activities,’” Norm Eisen, ethics chief in the Obama White House – there is no equivalent in this current administration – tweeted on Thursday.
