Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.Wasn't Don, Jr. supposed to be the smart kid? So he, his brother-in-law (Mr. Ivanka)and Paul Manafort, the campaign manager, met with a Russian lawyer on the promise that they would receive information from Russian spies.
Trump, Jr. also has the progression of events wrong:
Trump Jr. hired a lawyer on Monday to represent him in the Russia-related investigations as prominent Republicans voiced concern about the meeting between the president's son and a Russian.Usually, when somebody does a crime, they hire a lawyer before they confess to doing something. What Trump, Jr. did was a crime.
Trump, Jr's story has ranged from "they told me that I'd get damaging information, but I didn't" (substitute "drugs" in there and see how stupid it sounds) to "three top people in the campaign took a meeting with someone they didn't know and they didn't know what would be discussed." Good to know that basically anyone could have made a cold call on the Trump campaign and gotten to see the campaign manager, Trump's smarter son and the even smarter son-in-law.
The White House is saying Trump himself knew nothing. Right. His son, his son-in-law and his campaign manager took a meeting in which they hoped to receive damaging intel on Hillary Clinton from a representative of Russian spies and Trump didn't know anything about it?
I suppose I could snark about how likely it is that anyone other than a koolaid-quaffing Trumpanzee would buy that story. But it doesn't matter. The only one who has to be persuaded at this point is Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and good luck with selling that story.
UPDATE: As to what Trump knew and when did he know it, there may be a suggestion of an answer to that.
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Corruption:
President Trump entered office pledging to cut red tape, and within weeks, he ordered his administration to assemble teams to aggressively scale back government regulations.The Bureau of Prisons is going to need to build a new wing at one of the Club Feds in order to hold all of these guys.
But the effort — a signature theme in Mr. Trump’s populist campaign for the White House — is being conducted in large part out of public view and often by political appointees with deep industry ties and potential conflicts.
Most government agencies have declined to disclose information about their deregulation teams. But The New York Times and ProPublica identified 71 appointees, including 28 with potential conflicts, through interviews, public records and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Some appointees are reviewing rules their previous employers sought to weaken or kill, and at least two may be positioned to profit if certain regulations are undone.
The appointees include lawyers who have represented businesses in cases against government regulators, staff members of political dark money groups, employees of industry-funded organizations opposed to environmental rules and at least three people who were registered to lobby the agencies they now work for.
Also in this same reporting they are making note of the fact that president four-year-old was in his tower that day, and that exact day was the first time he publicly said anything about "30,000 lost emails", so the "what did he know and when did he know it" question has become a bit more interesting.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for the conflicts of interest, Naomi Klein seems to think we should be reminding him why they are a bad idea by using them to damage his "brand":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mxExkIVw-c
-Doug in Oakland
If that it a Federal Crime (which I don't see it being, but I am not an attorney, so it may well be) than you gotta charge Hillary with Treason for her mishandling of those Classified (and Secret and higher) emails...which WAS a Federal Crime.
ReplyDeleteBut then again, to do that you'd have to have some consistency in your ability to see right and wrong.
Saying that "you have to charge Hillary with treason" is just nonsense.
ReplyDeleteB, that's an absurd comparison. One is IT security mismanagement in the course of federal employment, the other is willful collusion with foreign powers with the intent of altering an election. Are DT Jr's actions treason? I don't have the legal knowledge to say. However, it doesn't take a JD to know that your comparison is nothing more than a weak attempt to trot out the old last resort justification of a die-hard Trump supporter: "okay maybe that's bad but Hillary/Obama did bad things too so I can ignore this".
ReplyDeleteCan you please, finally, block B? All he does is troll this awesome site with his GOP talking points.
ReplyDeleteUnknown, no, not going to. Conservatives are welcome here.
ReplyDeleteB doesn't need blockage he needs to listen to himself. B, Mrs. Clinton lost, DEMS and their comsymp lackeys like me had to accept it and move on to blocking trump's sad policies.
ReplyDeleteNow rural voters (powerful because of the constitutional placation of rural slave states and gerrymandering); rust belt state unemployed; the 1% filthy rich; Pepe the Frog nazis; authoritarian personality voters; religious voters(?)-demonstrating unequalled hypocrisy by choosing a vile misfit like trump over cold, wonky, unlovable, ambitious, but basically a decent person like Mrs Clinton; the 'poorly educated' or otherwise who have problems with critical thinking who believed anything that ever fell from Donald John trump's mouth; those voters residing under rocks who emerged 11/3 to vote knowing nothing about trump's character, intelligence, honesty, compassion, fairness, patriotism...what did I leave out?...
All of you must now adjust to the probable departure of someone who is not what you wanted and not who you voted for-he's a slimy fucking traitor-like nearly 100% of the 1%, selling out his country for money and Russian 'protection' and Russian subversion expertise. Loyal to his money and his plutocrat social class not to the USA.
But B, when he's ousted the next president WON'T be Hillary Clinton, it'll be a Republican (maybe not Pence, he stinks like treason too), but somebody, B, I will hate and have to oppose, but who you will love.
So just retire this meme and get 'but Hillary's emails...' off your pasting clipboard, that dog never could hunt.