By Tony Shaffer

General Jim Mattis’s Atlantic interview is simply the latest example of a former senior official who has betrayed the public trust. While many see this as unusual, it is not — it was simply a tactical error and linked to a larger pattern.

Mattis was among a group of people whom we entrusted with awesome power and access to tools and intelligence and who feels entitled to use that former position for personal gain. He now has been shown to violate that trust. He is not alone.

As noted by Deroy Murdock, Mattis’s criticism of President Trump is both incorrect and misguided — the Insurrection Act of 1807 has been used 19 times by 12 different presidents from Jefferson all the way to George H.W. Bush. One president — Lyndon Baines Johnson — even brought in the military to put down riots in Washington, DC.

So why would Jim Mattis leave out this pertinent and important fact?

We have seen those we trusted in positions of leadership and trust cash in and gain financially from politicizing their former positions of authority. In essence, their post-government work has jeopardized the very social contract we all subscribe to by creating conditions where violence is accepted as political speech and profiting from it personally.

We must ask: What are their real motivations? Is this about personal power, or what is right and best for the nation?

American citizens are not expected to endure attacks by their fellow citizens based on grievances for which they bear no responsibility. Yet that is what these profit-seeking individuals have done — open the door for the mass violation of rights by weakening the institutions they all served or led. The very work of these individuals threatens the social contract of order that holds our republic together.

The list of former national-security leaders who have worked to weaken the fabric of our Republic is shockingly extensive.

We’ve never seen so many people who tarnished their offices and damaged the very institutions they swore an oath to protect … and in all cases aided our nation’s enemies by diminishing the power of these institutions to protect the American people.

We trusted these people. They had a sacred responsibility to the American public. In return for giving them this trust, they have done nothing but cause damage and show us what real “entitlement” is.

General John Kelly has joined in with this entitled group by conveniently forgetting that he was the commander of United States Marine Corps forces that were deployed to help stop the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, even while he calls the president names.

Jim Comey’s “higher loyalty” was to destroy the FBI and discredit the institution by his lying, manipulation, and hatred for the system he swore to shield. When he was done, he made millions by writing a book outlining his treachery.

Lieutenant General Jim Clapper lied repeatedly — publicly and under oath — while serving as director of national intelligence. He is now paid to lie professionally as a commentator for CNN.

Rod Rosenstein recently gave testimony intended to absolve him of all personal accountability for allowing the “Russian-Collusion Narrative Hoax” to perpetuate and expand via the Muller investigation — a probe that, according to Rosenstein, started with zero evidence of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign.

Andrew McCabe, who was fired after lying to FBI investigators for leaking information to the press, served as the quarterback of the Russia-collusion hoax, yet this serial offender of the FISA warrant system remains free to lie and manipulate the truth for personal gain.

Lisa Page, who was shown to be the go-between for the FBI and the White House because Obama “wants to know everything we are doing” in the Russian-collusion-narrative setup, is now a “legal analyst” at NBC.

Susan Rice, who personally documented the wrongdoing of the entire Obama White House in the framing of Mike Flynn, has sold her lies in book form and continues to profit from her former position of power by sowing hatred and discontent as a method of financial gain. Rice reportedly is being vetted as a possible Democratic vice presidential nominee.

Joe Biden, the presumptive Democrat presidential candidate, personally engaged in the illegal and fraudulent targeting of the Trump campaign both before and after the November 2016 presidential election. Biden’s son, meanwhile, was enriched by serving with no prior qualifications on a foreign company’s board of directors while the elder Biden threatened to withhold money from that country if its president did not fire the prosecutor investigating Burisma, on whose board Biden’s son served. Quid pro quo, anyone?

Barack Obama is the man at the center of both the Russian-collusion initiative and the Mike Flynn framing. Although Obama previously has said there is only room for one president at a time, he has broken tradition and helped to stir up hate and dissension by encouraging political violence, and now profits from a huge Netflix contract — yet another TV deal!

The common thread among all of these formerly trusted leaders is their abuse of former positions of authority to enrich themselves, advance their political objectives, and betray the American people.

We cannot forget the blood and sacrifice our military has made to maintain our right to peacefully assemble and have free speech as we see in today’s protests — men and women have died to preserve these rights. Their memory has been tainted by the serial and widespread abuse of these “leaders.”

In reality, through the damage they caused while in office and their continued use of their former positions for political gain, they are helping the Russian, Chinese, and Iranian regimes undermine the institutions we rely upon to protect the American people and our interests.

This is but a partial list of Washington elites who abandon their oaths of office. Jim Mattis joined this list when he violated his own good advice, which he actually articulated for the Atlantic article: “When you leave an administration over clear policy differences, you need to give the people who are still there as much opportunity as possible to defend the country.”

Apparently, defending the country, its citizens, and the Constitution no longer interests or concerns any of these individuals.

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer is a retired senior intelligence operations officer and president of the London Center for Policy Research.