Why Donald Trump, Jr. Should Release More Emails - Joe Conason

[DonViejo]

July 18, 2017 7:00 am

For many months, Donald J. Trump and his closest associates have assured Americans that their presidential campaign had “absolutely no contact” with any Russians seeking to influence the course of the 2016 presidential election. Among those who issued the most vehement denials were Paul Manafort, the Washington influence peddler who served as campaign manager, and eldest son Donald J. Trump, Jr., who called any such suggestions “disgusting.”

Truly disgusting are the brazen lies uttered by all of these individuals. Everyone now knows about the June 9, 2016 meeting in Trump Tower where Trump, Jr., Manafort, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner hosted Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin.

Considering the history of falsehoods and evasions by Trump, Jr., Kushner, and Manafort — plus the strong incentive to conceal wrongdoing — their accounts must be treated with profound skepticism. But both Veselnitskaya and Akhmetshin (an immigrant who once served in Russian military intelligence) say that they came to offer “evidence” of alleged offenses by Democratic donors to Clinton.

And both say they sought to persuade the Trump camp that the Magnitsky Act of 2012 — an American law intended to sanction the officials who imprisoned and killed Sergei Magnitsky, a tax lawyer and auditor who exposed massive fraud committed by Russian bureaucrats and businessmen — should be repealed.

To many Americans, that must sound like an obscure topic, distant from American politics. Certainly Trump, Jr. and the White House have attempted to spin it that way. Yet the sanctions imposed by the Magnitsky Act, a statute under consideration in other countries, are a major irritant to Putin.

more
http://www.nationalmemo.com/trump-jr-release-more-emails/

[Shell_Seas]

1. I wonder if Mueller already has his entire email history...