One of the stories of this past week has been the leak of diplomatic correspondence from the United Kingdom’s Ambassador to the U.S.  For those with memories, almost a decade ago, it was American diplomats who were the subject of disclosure of similar correspondence on Wikileaks.  And that correspondence was pretty similar to the current correspondence — a frank discussion of — in the eyes of the diplomats — of what was occurring in the government of the country in which they were posted.  Needless to say, such frank comments do not always paint the host country’s government in the best light and can be embarrassing when such opinions become public.  On the other hand, having a frank and honest assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the host government — and what the ambassador’s country needs to expect in terms of being able to achieve certain goals in dealing with the host county is absolutely essential for the ambassador’s government in terms of setting their foreign policy agenda.  And from what we have seen posted of the British ambassador’s assessments, they were pretty accurate in describing the chaos that we have had to put up with for the past thirty months.

Earlier today, the British Ambassador opted to resign.  This decision followed from the statements of two gutless politicians.  First, the tweeter-in-chief ranted on twitter about the ambassador including comments that he (whether he meant himself personally or the U.S. government as a whole) would not deal with the ambassador.  Of course, the President could have simply expelled the ambassador.  Such a step would have been extreme, but no less extreme than refusing to talk with the official representative of one of our closest allies.  And this President has a history of refusing to take personal responsibility for any personnel decisions.  The other gutless act was from Boris Johnson, the former Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom and one of the two finalist in the race to be the choice of the governing Conservative Party for the next prime minister.  In a candidate’s debate last night, Boris Johnson refused to commit on whether he would keep the ambassador — a career civil servant — for the last six months until his retirement.  In contrast, Jeremy Hunt, the current Foreign Secretary was willing to back his ambassador.  Under these conditions, in which he could no longer do his job, the ambassador took the courageous and responsible step of resigning.

On the other hand, we have the example of our current Labor Secretary.  When he was a U.S. Attorney, Secretary Acosta made a sweetheart deal with a wealthy donor who was facing potential charges related to sexual offenses (reducing sex trafficking charges to soliciting prostitution).  In making this deal, Secretary Acosta failed to notify the victims of those offenses as required by law.  Now, perhaps, the deal was appropriate in light of the evidence that Secretary Acosta had.  It is hard to get a guilty verdict on cases involving sexual offenses.  Even with changes to put a limit on irrelevant questions designed to impugn the character of the victims of sex offenses (some of which we saw on display last fall), it is hard to get a conviction in sex cases.  And sometimes, victims are hard to reach during the key parts of plea negotiations.  But, especially with that financier back in the news for new offenses, Secretary Acosta’s past is beginning to overshadow his ability to serve in his current position.  But rather than accepting personal responsibility and resign, Secretary Acosta is attempting to rewrite history to claim that he actually accomplished a lot with the deal.  And our President, gives his typical, “we will look into it” response.  Given that the financier was a friend of President Trump and that this issue arose at the time of Secretary Acosta’s confirmation hearing, this is something that should have been looked into a long time ago.  Of course, this administration has repeatedly shown an inability to do a decent background check of potential nominees before they are nominating.  It is clear that what mattes most to this President is whether he likes a potential nominee and they are properly subservient to him, not rather this person should hold high public office. Continue Reading...