In a statement, Parscale—who has spoken at conferences in Portugal, Monaco, and Croatia—told The Washington Post that the “handful of international speeches” he’s delivered were simply an opportunity to “see the world with his wife” and get some R&R from the grind of the campaign. “We did not grow up with the opportunity to travel internationally, and speaking opportunities have allowed me to share my talent with other professionals in a university setting while having a brief break from the rigorous campaign schedule that I maintain,” Parscale said. “This speaking engagement was fully vetted and approved through the necessary channels in advance.” He added, “This is yet another effort by the biased fake-news media to systematically target another person in President Trump’s orbit.”

While political operatives from both major parties have agreed to give foreign speeches or serve as consultants, as the Post notes, they typically do so after their campaigns end. (Neither of the managers for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, nor the full-time staffers for George H.W. Bush, John McCain, Jon Huntsman, or John Kasich, reportedly gave paid speeches—domestic of foreign—while overseeing their campaigns.) “I’ve never heard of anything like this before,” campaign strategist John Weaver told the Post. “There are too many opportunities where there could be potential conflicts between a presidential campaign and the policies that the candidate could espouse and potential income. It is a conflict-of-interest zone that you just never enter into.” Longtime ethics lawyer Richard Painter said “the appearances are terrible . . . You would certainly think that a campaign manager would not take money from foreign nationals in this political environment.” But when it comes to Team Trump, you’d think wrong! “It appears the Trump political organization has learned nothing from 2016 about the dangers of senior campaign personnel’s entanglement with foreign money,” Trevor Potter, president of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, told the Post.

Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Parscale’s trip was in line with his sense that Trump and his staffers have “a general approach that if something is not strictly illegal, then it’s fine. And the potential for the appearance of impropriety or the appearances of a conflict of interest? It’s just not something that concerns them.”

Although Romania is a U.S. ally, a member of the European Union, and oriented against Russia as part of the NATO military alliance, it has been criticized for attempts to weaken judicial independence and labeled by Transparency International as one of the most corrupt countries in Europe . . . Leaders there have effectively decriminalized low-level corruption among government officials. Romanian Parliament this month approved a new law that would wipe clean the criminal records of top politicians, despite protests from prosecutors, judges, and civil society.

In other words, a Trump official would feel right at home.

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