LOW HANGING FRUIT (profanity alert):

Generally, an intelligence officer looks for a person's vulnerabilities and explores ways to exploit them. It usually comes down to four things, which--in true government style--the CIA has encompassed in an acronym, MICE: Money, Ideology, Coercion, Ego. Want to get someone to betray his country? Figure out which of these four motivators drives the person and exploit the hell out of it.

It is important to note, too, that a person might not know he is doing something he shouldn't do. As former CIA Director John Brennan testified in May, "Frequently, people who go along a treasonous path do not know they are on a treasonous path until it is too late." Sometimes, such people make the best assets. They are so sure in their convictions that they are acting in their own best interest or in the best interest of their country that they have no idea they are being completely manipulated.

The Russians know all this, too.

From an intelligence point of view, the people surrounding Trump, and Trump himself, make easy targets for recruitment. [...]

Michael Flynn: Money, Ideology, Ego [...]

A top military figure, with a large ego, who felt slighted by Obama, the intelligence community and the military, Flynn was down. From the heights of JSOC to being fired--wrongly fired, no less, in his view--Flynn at this point would have made any foreign intelligence officer salivate. The man was vulnerable on several levels. His ego had taken a massive, public blow. He also firmly believed he was right, that he knew better than the president how to save the country from Islamic terrorists. Add to the mix that so many other military men had gone on to make millions in the private sector, cashing in on their military careers, their time in war zones, their connections to people both in government and in large defense companies. Flynn launched his own security consulting company and certainly might have thought: Where is mine?

This would have been a good moment for the Russians to send in a clever operative, stroke his ego, and tell Flynn how smart he was and how ridiculous Obama was for firing him. We've got a lot of people at RT who agree with you, the person might have added, while making it clear, "Our president agrees with you." Payments, made through speaking fees and consulting contracts, would have helped smooth the deal. [...]

Jared Kushner: Money, Coercion

Kushner had a rocky entrée into Manhattan real estate. His purchase of 666 Fifth Ave. at $1.8 billion in 2007--that is, just before the market tanked--was perhaps not the strongest display of business acumen. And now, with payments due and business going badly, he was in a pickle. Perhaps the Russians had a great way for him to get out of that pickle. So they introduced him in December 2016 to Sergey Gorkov, the head of the Russian state investment bank Vnesheconombank, or VEB, who would have made it clear that he was in a position to help.

Donald Trump Jr.: Money, Ego

Junior is a lot like dad in his need to feel important. He was certainly a target because he manages access to his father, and his arrogance makes him easy to read. There is probably quite a bit of insecurity behind the smugness. Sure, he's done a few international deals, but it's going to take more than that to please daddy (Junior certainly could see that his dad never really pleased his father; Junior didn't want to repeat that). Access to deals and money would certainly be a way to manipulate him, but mostly it would be stroking the Trump ego. The most important thing for Junior was that daddy win, at any cost. The perks and business deals would be a nice bonus, but I don't think Junior even equated those perks with aid to his father's campaign. Why wouldn't he accept help for his father's campaign? He likely didn't even realize there was anything wrong with a foreign adversary lending a hand. As he wrote when approached with derogatory information on daddy's opponent, "I love it."

Donald Trump: Ego [...]

Ego is clearly the best way to get Trump to do anything. The Saudis certainly understood this, feting him with gold and orbs and displaying his enormous portrait on the side of a hotel, right next to the king's portrait. The Saudis had this man in the palm of their hands, hence Trump's pro-Saudi stance since the trip, despite his campaign rhetoric shouting down the kingdom.

Trump's ego wanted to win and, he figured, everyone else wanted him to win, too. He was under the impression that everyone loved him and appreciated his greatness. Of course everyone wanted to help him win. If he accepted help from Russia, it's possible he didn't realize there was anything wrong with doing so. Why wouldn't they help him win, he might have thought, and why shouldn't he accept that help? For an experienced chekist like Putin, manipulating his ego is almost too easy.

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