After news of Trump’s National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, had to resign over a storm of controversies, and while still too early to even get a grasp on the full extent of the complications, Trump’s team and the rest of the Republican Party were already doing the damnedest to try to sweep as much of the scandal under the rug as they could.
A summary from the Guardian
The US national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned late Monday amid a flow of intelligence leaks that he had secretly discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador to Washington and then tried to cover up the conversations.
In his resignation letter, Flynn claimed he had mistakenly misled the vice-president, Mike Pence, and other Trump officials about the nature of phone calls in December to the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kisilyak. When intelligence leaks about the communications began appearing last month, Pence and other White House officials insisted that the contact had only involved an exchange of Christmas greetings and arrangements for a future phone conversation between Trump and Vladimir Putin.
However, subsequent leaks suggested that they had been more substantial, and concerned sanctions the Obama administration was about to impose on Moscow for interference in the presidential elections. Intelligence officials claimed that Flynn had given the impression the sanctions might be lifted once the Trump administration came to office on 20 January.
Before they are allowed to do that, I would just like to point out that, we have seen this all before.
The Iran–Contra affair (Persian: ماجراي ایران-کنترا, Spanish: caso Irán-Contra), also referred to as Irangate,[1] Contragate[2] or the Iran–Contra scandal, was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan Administration. Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo.[3] They hoped thereby to secure the release of several U.S. hostages and to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. Under the Boland Amendment, further funding of the Contras by the government had been prohibited by Congress.
The scandal began as an operation to free the seven American hostages being held in Lebanon by Hezbollah, a paramilitary group with Iranian ties connected to the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution. It was planned that Israel would ship weapons to Iran, and then the United States would resupply Israel and receive the Israeli payment. The Iranian recipients promised to do everything in their power to achieve the release of the U.S. hostages.[4][5] Large modifications to the plan were devised by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council in late 1985, in which a portion of the proceeds from the weapon sales was diverted to fund anti-Sandinista, or Contras, in Nicaragua.[4]
While President Ronald Reagan was a supporter of the Contra cause,[6] the evidence is disputed as to whether he authorized the diversion of the money raised by the Iranian arms sales to the Contras.[4][5][7] Handwritten notes taken by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger on December 7, 1985, indicate that Reagan was aware of potential hostage transfers with Iran, as well as the sale of Hawk and TOW missiles to "moderate elements" within that country.[8] Weinberger wrote that Reagan said "he could answer to charges of illegality but couldn't answer to the charge that 'big strong President Reagan passed up a chance to free the hostages'".[8] After the weapon sales were revealed in November 1986, Reagan appeared on national television and stated that the weapons transfers had indeed occurred, but that the United States did not trade arms for hostages.[9] The investigation was impeded when large volumes of documents relating to the scandal were destroyed or withheld from investigators by Reagan administration officials.[10] On March 4, 1987, Reagan returned to the airwaves in a nationally televised address, taking full responsibility for any actions that he was unaware of, and admitting that "what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages".[11]
There’s a lot of similarities in there, no?
One of the questions that largely remained unanswered: how much of it did Reagan know about, and may have even directed?
articles.latimes.com/…
July 09, 1987
WASHINGTON — Fired White House aide Oliver L. North today said he had been fully prepared to be a scapegoat for President Reagan over the Iran- contra scandal and described how he and other Administration officials worked to shield Reagan from political damage as the affair unraveled last fall.
We have seen this all before. But, let’s not let history repeat itself. Let’s not let scapegoats take the fall for the so-called leaders who should exemplify the responsibilities of the revered position and trusts that they hold.