According to an article on Politico, recently fired Trump personal aide and “body man” John McEntee may soon be rehired. According to reports from numerous news sources, he was fired because his security investigation revealed that he was a heavy gambler, gambling tens of thousands of dollars at a time. Given the fact that his financial disclosure statements when he was hired apparently indicated that his only significant assets were two bank accounts having a total value of between $115,000 and $300,000, gambling tens of thousands of dollars at a pop seems to be a pretty certain way of quickly running into serious financial trouble.
The Politico report indicates that there’s no indication his gambling was illegal, but it’s difficult for me to believe that one who doesn’t live in Las Vegas could possibly gamble that kind of money and NOT be placing illegal bets. One of my former law partners served for a time on the attorney disciplinary committee of the local bar association. He said the single most frequent reason that attorneys gave for stealing money from clients is that they ran up gambling debts they couldn’t afford to repay. And even if he hasn’t been placing illegal bets yet, when somebody with total assets of well under a million bucks is gambling tens of thousands of dollars at a time, he’s clearly a compulsive gambler, And compulsive gamblers are clearly security risks.
When McEntee was fired from his White House job and immediately hired by the Trump campaign, I posted my reaction that they must have felt like they had to take care of him because he knew too much. If he actually ends up being rehired on the taxpayers’ money, I’ll be even more convinced that Trump must think he knows things that could totally sink the Trump ship.