A Haley Bail-y Tale-y

The latest departure from the Trump regime is UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who apparently blindsided everyone in the White House when she submitted her resignation last week, effective at the end of the year.

Haley discussed her resignation with Trump last week when she visited him at the White House, these sources said. Her news shocked a number of senior foreign policy officials in the Trump administration.

Background: Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, was easily confirmed four days after President Trump's inauguration in 2017.

She has overseen Trump's shift in dealing with the UN, including the U.S. exit from the UN Human Rights Council, which Haley called the organization's "greatest failure."

Worth noting: Haley wrote a public op-ed in September challenging the N.Y. Times' anonymous op-ed:

• "I don’t agree with the president on everything. When there is disagreement, there is a right way and a wrong way to address it. I pick up the phone and call him or meet with him in person."
• "Like my colleagues in the Cabinet and on the National Security Council, I have very open access to the president. He does not shut out his advisers, and he does not demand that everyone agree with him. I can talk to him most any time, and I frequently do."
• "If I disagree with something and believe it is important enough to raise with the president, I do it. And he listens."

Not anymore, he does.   And why would Haley up and leave?  Like most Trump regime officials, if you're not actually Trump, being openly corrupt still gets you busted.

Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley should be investigated to determine if she complied with ethics regulations when she accepted seven free flights for herself and her husband on luxury private aircraft from three South Carolina businessmen, according to a request filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) with the State Department’s Inspector General.

Ambassador Haley’s 2017 public financial disclosure report listed her acceptance of gifts of seven free flights on private aircraft from three South Carolina businessmen for herself and her husband. Those flights were between New York, Washington, DC, and three cities in her home state of South Carolina, and appear to have been worth tens of thousands of dollars to her. In her financial disclosure report, Ambassador Haley asserted that each gifted flight qualified for an exception based on a personal relationship with the giver. The report, however, does not provide enough information to demonstrate that this exception was applicable to the flights. Whether the exception applies depends partly on whether the three businessmen were the only sources of the gifts; if business entities were sources of the gifts, the exception was inapplicable.

Federal ethics regulations prohibit employees from soliciting or accepting gifts given because of the employee’s official position. They also direct employees to consider declining otherwise permissible gifts if they believe a reasonable person would question their integrity or impartiality as a result of accepting the gifts. At a minimum, Ambassador Haley should have been conscious of the appearance concerns surrounding her acceptance of gifts of private luxury air travel at a time when her colleagues in the administration were making news with their own lavish air travel.

“By accepting gifts of luxury private flights, Ambassador Haley seems to be falling in line with other Trump administration officials who are reaping personal benefits from their public positions,” said CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder. “Our ethics laws are clearly written to prevent even the appearance of corruption and improper influence. We’re calling on the State Department’s inspector general to further investigate the nature of these gifts, determine whether they are in line with ethics rules, and ensure that employees like Ambassador Haley are fully trained on the application and importance of ethical standards.”

This CREW legal request came today, the same day Haley's resignation was announced, so there's about a 99% chance that we actually found the one person in the regime who still is capable of shame when it comes to ethics violations.

And if you believe that, well...

Haley joins a long list of corrupt Trump regime officials who overstayed their welcome by grifting on the public dime, of course the biggest violator is Trump himself, and he could not care less about that.

Here's my gut feeling:  Jeff Sessions is done as AG as soon as the midterms are over.  Trump will need a new AG.  My money is on Lindsey Graham.  Which means Graham's Senate seat will be open.  Both Haley and Graham are from SC.

It's not hard to be this cynical, but that's what is coming.  Graham becomes Trump's hatchet man, the Saturday Night Massacre happens, and Haley gets appointed to fill out Graham's term.

I hope I'm wrong, but to me, Haley's sudden resignation screams that this is in the works.

We'll know soon enough.