Staffing the campaign and preparing to staff an administration is the most important starting position for any Presidential candidate. The ability to field a fully staffed executive branch is imperative because there is no time to wait or waste to keep the government in business. The changeover from one administration to the next must be seamless.
Therefore, voters are advised to inspect the resumes of candidates to see how well they have performed at staffing. If a candidate has a tumultuous time getting a campaign staff together, and keeping it together during the short campaign period, that does not portend well for the ability to staff the government.
In the instance of Donald Trump and his corporate experience, he staffed his business with his children. The Trump empire is a one-man band with support from his family. That does not transfer to his having the ability to staff the complex federal government enterprise. The business models are completely different in scope, scale, and diversity.
Mrs. Clinton has experience about the workings of government and has been the senior executive in charge of the Department of State. She has much government staffing experience, by contrast.
Most important is having the ability to staff positions with those who can secure government secret-level credentials. Mr. Trump's failing to vet his campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is a disastrous example. How many of Trump's prospective candidates might have trouble getting clearances? Can Trump pass the test?
While Trump has yet to release his tax records, rest assure, the FBI and other agencies are vetting him, especially given the relationship between Manafort and the Ukraine and Russians.
Some mistakes are absolutely fatal, and Trump's relationship with Manafort could be one of them.
"Report: FBI, DOJ looking at Manafort in Ukraine investigation
By Megan R. Wilson - 08/19/16 06:44 PM EDT
The Department of Justice and the FBI are looking at Paul Manafort as part of a broad investigation into alleged corruption in Ukraine, according to CNN.
Manafort, who resigned on Friday as Donald Trump's campaign manger, is not the only focus of the probe.
The investigation is instead broadly examining whether U.S. corporations and financial institutions had been used to aid former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was driven out of office, CNN reports.
Manafort worked for Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, though much of his activities are not publicly known. He has said the work did not trigger disclosure under the U.S. foreign lobbying law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
The Podesta Group and Mercury, two Washington lobbying and PR firms, worked for a client introduced to them by Manafort — the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a non-profit that had ties to Yanukovych’s political party.
The former client — who paid the the two firms $2.2 million from 2012 to 2014 — assured them that it had no backing from foreign governments or parties.
The CNN report says that other firms that had been involved with Manafort have also been caught up in the Justice Department investigation, including the Podesta Group. However, the report does not list Mercury as being part of the probe.
CNN cites law enforcement officials saying that prosecutors “haven’t ruled anything out.”
The Podesta Group on Friday announced that it had hired a law firm to look into whether the former client misled it about its sources of funding."
http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/292063-report-fbi-justice-department-looking-at-manafort-in
Photo from Bloomberg
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