Big questions after the bombshell

[struggle4progress]

By Aaron Blake
July 10 at 1:12 PM

... this was three people very close to the then-presumptive Republican presidential nominee — Donald Jr., Jared Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort — granting a meeting with a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin for the purposes of opposition research ...

Given the meeting is now public and Donald Jr. insists the information was not useful, it would behoove him to tell us what Veselnitskaya was selling ...

This meeting was seen as significant enough for all three of them to make a point to attend, and yet nobody shared details of the meeting with the guy whose campaign they were acting as members of? The president is going to have to address this ...

Why has the White House failed to get its story straight on so many occasions? ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/07/10/5-big-questions-after-the-bombshell-about-donald-trump-jr-and-the-russian-lawyer/?utm_term=.e8d2055466f3

[struggle4progress]

1. Music promoter says he arranged meeting

JASON SILVERSTEIN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, July 10, 2017, 1:04 PM

... Publicist Rob Goldstone says ... he set up the meeting on behalf of his client Emin Agalarov, a Russian singer who had Donald Trump appear in one of his music videos ...

Agalarov’s father is a prominent Moscow developer worth about $2 billion, according to Forbes ...

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/music-promoter-russia-ties-arranged-trump-meeting-article-1.3315189

[struggle4progress]

2. Pop stars publicist says he set up meeting

Donald Trump, Aras Agalarov and pop star Emin Agalarov at the Miss Universe Pageant Competition.

By Ruth Brown
July 10, 2017 | 1:09pm

... Trump appeared in a music video with Goldstone’s client, Emin Agalarov, in 2013. The video was filmed while Trump was in Russia for the Miss Universe pageant.

Agalarov is the 36-year-old son of Aras Agalarov, a billionaire Russian real estate mogul with ties to Putin ...

http://nypost.com/2017/07/10/pop-stars-publicist-says-he-set-up-meeting-between-trump-jr-and-russian-lawyer/

[madokie]

16. Kinda off topic, But

check out tRumps hand and its closer to the camera and is about the size of the other two cretins. Narco rubio was right he has little hands. tiny brain to go with them too

[struggle4progress]

3. Unpacking Donald Trump Jr.s Admission

BY TIERNEY MCAFEE
POSTED ON JULY 10, 2017 AT 12:55PM EDT

... Trump Jr.’s admission contradicted his earlier account of the meeting, which he initially claimed was focused on American adoptions of Russian children. A statement Trump Jr. released on Saturday — before the Times story was published — did not mention Clinton at all.

Trump Jr. also confirmed the Times‘ reporting that the meeting was attended by then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner ...

The meeting, which took place on June 9, 2016, two weeks after Donald J. Trump clinched the Republican nomination, is the earliest known private meeting between members of the president’s inner circle and a Russian, according to the Times.

Newsweek notes that Trump Jr.’s admission contradicts the repeated claims by President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence that no one from Trump’s campaign had any contact with Russians or Russian officials ...

http://people.com/politics/donald-trump-jr-meeting-russian-lawyer-damaging-information-hillary-clinton/

[MineralMan]

4. "Why has the White House failed to get its story straight..,"

Because it's so crooked, twisted and kinked up that it will never be straight again. Time to throw it out and get a new one.

That story is like an old pair of earbuds from the Dollar Store. It's been tied up in knots and there's no way to untangle it. Just drop it in the trash and grab a new pair. They're cheap as dirt, so why waste time.

Let Trump et cie. keep picking at the tangle. They'll just make it worse.

[struggle4progress]

5. Some thoughts on Junior's changing story.

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
JUL 10, 2017

... Sergei Magnitsky was an auditor from a Russian law firm who uncovered the biggest case of tax fraud in the history of Russian kleptocratic corruption, which is something. In response, Magnitsky was arrested and put on trial for tax evasion in front of a bunch of crooks in lovely kangaroo suits. He died in prison of untreated medical problems and (probably) from being beaten to death by the good people from the Interior Ministry. In 2012, the Congress passed a law that froze the assets and effectively rendered non-persons 18 Russian officials who were tied in some way to the persecution and murder of Sergei Magnitsky. This got up the nose of Vladimir Putin, who responded by suspending the adoption of Russian children by American families. He also launched a PR blitz headed by a well-connected hack lawyer named Natalia Veselnitskaya. Which is where Junior comes in.

Veselnitskaya was the person with whom Junior — along with Paul Manafort and the inevitable Jared Kushner — took the meeting ...

This .. is Junior's official explanation: I thought we were colluding to ratfck the Democratic candidate, and the presidential election in general, but then she started talking about getting the mobsters' money back. Bitch set me up ...

What I believe I see here is an incredibly corrupt American family doing business with criminal gangs that are way, way out of their league, and that are in league with the institutions of government, and the formidable security apparatus, of an authoritarian state. Talk about punching out of your weight class. This isn't cheating some poor subcontractor. These people throw you out windows. And the Trumps have being doing business in this financial abattoir for years. This doesn't make them sharp. This makes them compliant minnows in a shark tank ...

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a56218/trump-junior-russian-meeting/

[Achilleaze]

9. Excellent. This deserves an OP of its own

[NewJeffCT]

20. agreed

excellent analysis from Pierce.

[rufus dog]

6. Very interesting - all of us on the left know exactly what they wanted

But he just admitted to the world, the tRump team wanted dirt on HRC and they fucking didn't care where it came from.

[struggle4progress]

7. It Took 3 Days For Don Jr. To Cop To Meeting

By ALLEGRA KIRKLAND
Published JULY 10, 2017 11:02 AM

Donald Trump Jr. has offered three different explanations over the course of three days ...

“It was a short introductory meeting,” he said ...

“After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton,” he said .. Sunday ... “Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information. She then changed subjects and began discussing the adoption of Russian children and mentioned the Magnitsky Act.”

As Trump Jr. himself clarified, once he learned that Veselnitskaya did not possess information relevant to the 2016 election, he felt that the meeting was a waste of time ...

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/donald-trump-jr-shifting-accounts-veselnitskaya-meeting

[struggle4progress]

8. Lawyer Raised Alarm Bells In U.S. Before Meeting

July 10, 2017 15:45 GMT
Carl Schreck

Prior to her controversial meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump’s son, Russian lawyer Natalya Veselnitskaya drew the attention and ire of American officials over her alleged lobbying against a U.S. law despised by the Kremlin and a hefty hotel bill handed to U.S. authorities for reimbursement.

Veselnitskaya’s June 2016 face-to-face with Donald Trump Jr., Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and others also came months after she told a U.S. federal court that she had been denied a U.S. visa but was granted an exception to defend a Russian businessman in a money-laundering case closely watched by top officials in Moscow ...

In November 2015, then-U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara submitted a letter .. saying that Prevezon submitted more than $50,000 in expenses during a four-day deposition in New York that were reimbursed from assets "properly seized" by federal authorities.

Those expenses included pricey, boozy meals, as well as a two-night stay at the Plaza Hotel "in a $995/night room for Natalia Veselnitskaya, who was not deposed and did not even attend the depositions in person," Bharara wrote ...

https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-lawyer-raised-alarm-bells-in-us-before-meeting-trumps-son/28606661.html

[barbtries]

10. well because on top of everything else

they're stupid and comically inept.

[struggle4progress]

11. Meeting "highly inappropriate," Michael Morell says

By LAUREN MELTZER
CBS NEWS July 10, 2017, 11:55 AM

... On Monday.. Michael Morell, who was deputy and acting director of the CIA, said "the meeting should never have happened" during a discussion on "CBS This Morning."

"I think it is highly inappropriate for an American campaign to meet with a foreign official, whether that foreign official is connected to a government or not, because it allows a foreign national to potentially influence the outcome of an election," Morell said.

From a national security perspective, Morell says there are several issues that come to light in regards to the meeting, including the fact that Kushner has made a habit of not reporting "a meeting with a foreign official on his form to get his security clearance" ...

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-jr-russian-lawyer-meeting-michael-morell/

[struggle4progress]

12. Conway: No meaningful information received

By MICHAEL EDISON HAYDEN
Jul 10, 2017, 11:07 AM ET

... Stephanopoulos .. asked Conway about her earlier statements that there were no meetings between the campaign and Russians.

"Why did the administration allow those denials to stand for so many months?" he asked.

"Some of the disclosure forms have been amended since that time to reflect other meetings," including the meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Veselnitskaya, she said ...

The meeting with Veselnitskaya was only recently disclosed by Kushner, now a senior White House aide, when he resubmitted a form necessary for his security clearance. Kushner's attorney Jamie Gorelick released a statement on Saturday regarding the revelation, explaining, "As we have previously stated, Mr. Kushner's SF-86 was prematurely submitted and, among other errors, did not list any contacts with foreign government officials."

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/conway-meaningful-information-received-trump-jrs-meeting-russian/story?id=48540547

[struggle4progress]

13. Potentially confessed a crime

Andrew Buncombe

... “I think the main thing is what Donald Trump Jr admitted to in his statement,” said Matthew Miller, a .. former spokesman for the Department of Justice.

“It is a crime to solicit or accept anything of value from a foreign national in a campaign. Now, the thing of value has never come up in this context before because we’ve never had a campaign like this that potentially colluded with a foreign government,” he said ...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-jr-russia-meeting-crime-confessed-potentially-msnbc-matthew-miller-a7833796.html

[broadcaster90210]

14. Answer to last question.

Brcause they are stupid.

[Amaryllis]

17. Because when people are lying, it's hard to stick to the same story as the other people in on it.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

18. Three people in the meeting will have three stories & three avenues for Mueller.

They won't be able to maintain the cover story in the same detail and one will crack and squeal on the others.

Maybe Kushner since he is quasi-independent despite marriage to Ivanka. He also has his own financial troubles that he might think will be solved by distancing his brand from the Republican-Trump brand.

{excerpt}Kushner has been under investigation after failing to disclose his own meetings with Russian officials during Trump’s transition in December, and the Times found this new revelation through a revised version of a form that Kushner filled out to receive a government security clearance.{/excerpt} http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/donald-trump-jr-met-with-russian-lawyer-after-being-promised-damaging-intel-on-hillary-clinton-report_us_59629482e4b0615b9e926ea0

Mini-Trump is family and presumably wants to inherit, so he's unlikely to shit on the family business.

Manafort has probably decided his business interests lie with right wing Eastern European & Russian politics. But he might break if the option for standing pat is jail time. On the other hand he might bolt to Russia and burn his bridge to the USA.

[Amaryllis]

19. What i was thinking too. Three stories and eventuallly someone will crack hoping for immunity.

[Solly Mack]

15. K&R