Well, no, I suppose he wasn't.
$40 million in work related expenses paid in gold bars? Sounds completely legitimate.
Zelensky: "60? you mean $20m, right?"
CIA boss: "very funny"
Zelensky: "no seriously."
CIA boss: "...we'll call you back."
They do all the dirty work and get paid in pennies. What do you guys expect?
Personally, I am ok if they steal 40 mil from the government on their way out, instead of brokering a nuclear arms deal or letting themselves get paid to train a private militia in some shithole for a local warlord.
The commander in chief just gave 14 million to his golf club buddy renovating the reflecting pool without even giving other companies the chance to get that contract.
He siphons hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money into companies where he or his family is personally invested, but this guy gets all the outrage, even though it’s clear that trusting someone with a few hundred kilos of more or less anonymous currency means he must have done a pretty good job warranting that kind of trust.
DON'T LOOK UP!!
Unfortunately, the character traits that make you an excellent CIA operative are the same you need to be an excellent criminal, it’s expected that you need to pull on their leash from time to time so they remember who is in charge. And that they will try out how far they can go before you choke ‘em out.
This is really a lot of peoples fault. How can you be a CIA operative without them having checked your background extensively? Why did he become one in the first place, after inflating his resume and showing that he is willing to lie the CIA in the face.
And the same guys being responsible for these kind of security clearance checks are probably still with the CIA and have recruited dozens of other potential problems out of negligence. If you do this on purpose, it’s kinda treasony.
Weaponized incompetence should carry a lengthy prison sentence for government employees.
Also, there are more than a dozen people with exorbitant salaries that are tasked to keep them in check, unfortunately, they also know how to manipulate those people, so once in a while someone slips through the cracks.
This is a story that should not exist in the first place because everyone involved did their job properly.
How in hell was our post-Snowden Creep State unable to notice such things?
Because it doesn't exist. The data got stored, sometimes, somewhere. But a lot of it is deleted or corrupted or never computed on. Believing there is a secret core of competence in the American state is appealing. But from what I can tell, the evidence doesn't sustain it.