#Natalia Veselnitskaya a kremlin-connected lawyer

[malenipshadows]

*** Grassley warned in January that the release of a different politically volatile transcript — of the committee's interview with the co-founder of the firm that commissioned a now-famous dossier on President Donald T-rump's Russian connections — might imperil the panel's prospects of getting voluntary compliance from Kushner. Democrats, however, have long pressed for public hearings to compel testimony from Kushner and further testimony from T-rump Jr., both of whom they described as failing to comply with document requests. ***

[azspot]

As journalists who usually cover American politics have connected the dots of the story of Russian interference, those of us who normally write about Russia have cringed. Early on, it was common to point out that Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, who is now under arrest, worked for Viktor Yanukovych, who is often characterized as the “pro-Russian President of Ukraine.” In fact, there was no love lost between Putin and Yanukovych. After he was run out of town, during the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, Yanukovych did seek refuge in Russia, but during his tenure as President he was an unreliable partner for Putin at best. Perhaps more to the point, he’s a crook and a brute. He served time for robbery and assault before he became a politician, and he is wanted in Ukraine for treason, mass murder, and embezzlement. A visitor to Ukraine can take a tour of Yanukovych’s palace, famous for its marble, crystal, immense scale, and a life-size solid-gold sculpture of a loaf of bread. Manafort made a career of working for the corrupt and the crooked. That in itself tells us little about Russia or its role in the 2016 campaign.

We cringed at headlines that claimed to have established a connection between the Kremlin and Natalia Veselnitskaya, the lawyer who was at the Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, and Manafort. Veselnitskaya represents a Russian company, Prevezon Holdings Ltd., which was investigated in New York for money laundering, and Veselnitskaya has been charged with lying to prosecutors about her working relationship with the Russian prosecutor general’s office. Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York claim that Veselnitskaya collaborated with a lawyer in the Russian prosecutor’s office to draft exculpatory documents for Prevezon. In media coverage, her e-mailing with a lawyer in the Russian prosecutor’s office was portrayed as evidence of a direct line to Putin, suggesting that she met with Trump’s campaign officials as his emissary. To me, it read as a lot of bluster on the part of a minor operator. From all the available evidence, and contrary to her sales pitch, Veselnitskaya did not have any dirt to offer on Hillary Clinton. To the extent that Veselnitskaya had established connections to high-level Russian officials, they were the kind that are necessary for a lawyer to be at all effective in a corrupt system.

We cringed at the characterization of the Russian online influence campaign as “sophisticated” and “vast”: Russian reporting on the matter��the best available—convincingly portrayed the troll operation as small-time and ridiculous. It was, it seems, fraudulent in every way imaginable: it perpetrated fraud on American social networks, creating fake accounts and events and spreading falsehoods, but it was also fraudulent in its relationship to whoever was funding it, because surely crudely designed pictures depicting Hillary Clinton as Satan could not deliver anyone’s money’s worth.

What we are observing is not most accurately described as the subversion of American democracy by a hostile power. Instead, it is an attempt at state capture by an international crime syndicate. What unites Yanukovych, Veselnitskaya, Manafort, Stone, Wikileaks’s Julian Assange, the Russian troll factory, the Trump campaign staffer George Papadopoulos and his partners in crime, the “Professor” (whose academic credentials are in doubt), and the “Female Russian National” (who appears to have fraudulently presented herself as Putin’s niece) is that they are all crooks and frauds. This is not a moral assessment, or an attempt to downplay their importance. It is an attempt to stop talking in terms of states and geopolitics and begin looking at Mafias and profits.

[shihtzuman]

The Double Damage of the President’s Trump Tower Admission

His tweet about the purpose of the June 2016 meeting contradicts his earlier denials and could spell trouble for his son and him.

Brian Haskins originally shared:

THE DOUBLE DAMAGE OF TRUMP'S TRUMP TOWER ADMISSION

His tweet about the purpose of the June 2016 meeting contradicts his earlier denials and could spell trouble for his son and him.

DAVID A. GRAHAM

AUGUST 6, 2018

In an attempt to defend his son Donald Trump Jr. on Sunday, President Donald Trump may instead have incriminated him—and himself.

Responding to a _Washington Post_ report that he is increasingly concerned about his eldest son’s legal exposure, the president denied that claim in a tweet Sunday morning:

"Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics - and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!" ~Donald Trump

Both Trump Sr. and Trump Jr. have at times in the past denied that the purpose of the June 9, 2016, meeting was to get damaging information about Hillary Clinton, but the Trump Sr. has now flatly acknowledged it. Despite the limitations of the medium, Trump packed a great deal of potential trouble into less than 280 characters. First, he seems to proceed from the assumption that by declaring the purpose legal, that makes it so, when in fact the acknowledgement points to the ways the meeting may have broken federal laws.

Second, by contradicting his earlier claims, Trump again underscores his prior dishonesty. This is not just a matter of public trust: The changing accounts also get at accusations that the president obstructed justice.

Finally, the tweet is riddled with internal contradictions. If Trump is unconcerned about his son, why is he tweeting angrily about the story? And if what happened was entirely legal, why is he so quick to deny that he knew about the meeting?

When The New York Times first reported on the existence of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, in July of last year, Trump Jr. issued a statement insisting it had been focused only on Russian adoptions. Faced with emails that showed Trump Jr. had been told to expect dirt on Clinton, he was forced to concede that that was not true.

Trump Sr. scrambled to adjust. On July 13, during a press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron, he said, “I think from a practical standpoint, most people would have taken that meeting. It’s called opposition research, or even research into your opponent.” Four days later, he tweeted, “Most politicians would have gone to a meeting like the one Don jr attended in order to get info on an opponent. That’s politics!”

Sunday’s tweet is the most direct statement yet that the purpose of the June 2016 meeting was to get damaging information from Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer who has deep ties to the Kremlin. Trump Jr. had also been told in an email ahead of the meeting that the government of President Vladimir Putin supported his father’s candidacy. But declaring the meeting legal does not make it so. Over the last week, the president and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani have focused on the claim that “collusion” with the Russians, or anyone else, is not a crime per se.

That may be true, but as Bob Bauer explains in Lawfare, accepting anything of value from Russians could easily fall afoul of laws that ban accepting electoral assistance from foreign nationals. Trump Jr. and Veselnitskaya have both insisted that there was no actual “dirt” exchanged, but Trump Sr. has tweeted out an apparent admission that his son intended to break campaign-finance laws.

Sunday’s tweet connects with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump obstructed justice, too. Roughly three weeks after the Times initially revealed the June 2016 meeting, the Post reported that the president had dictated his son’s initial, false denial while flying home from Europe on Air Force One. That lie has created a cascading series of problems. At the time, the Trump attorney Jay Sekulow denied that Trump had any role in the statement. Speaking Sunday on ABC’s This Week, he acknowledged that that was not true. “I had bad information at that time and made a mistake in my statement,” Sekulow said. His flip-flop raises further questions about whether he intended to misdirect investigators.

More broadly, Trump's repeated dishonesty about the June 2016 meeting undermines the credibility of every statement he makes about the meeting. Although the president and his son—the latter under penalty of perjury—have both said that Trump only learned of the June 2016 meeting last year, Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen last week claimed that the president was aware of the meeting before it happened. Why should anyone give Trump the benefit of the doubt now?

It’s not just that Trump has misled the public. Sekulow’s lament about “bad information” is a euphemism: The implication is that the president wasn’t even honest with his attorneys about his role in dictating the statement. Has Trump withheld any other damaging information from his attorneys? Meanwhile, even as Mueller is reportedly poring over Trump’s Twitter feed as part of the obstruction inquiry, the president continues to provide new fodder. Tweets like Sunday’s seem intended to dig out of a hole, but in practice they threaten to dig deeper.

Trump's admission about the Trump Tower meeting comes at a moment of high tension, even by the standards of this administration. As he spends much of August away from Washington, at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump has been tweeting prolifically and angrily, especially about the Mueller investigation. He has also held several campaign rallies, and although the ostensible purpose of these rallies is to boost Republican candidates ahead of November’s midterm elections, the president tends to speak more about himself, and his feeling of persecution by the press, than about any GOP hopefuls.

Trump’s public appearances and utterances give an impression of a man who is increasingly agitated and concerned about the Mueller inquiry. And for good reason: Several of Trump’s legal troubles are converging at the moment. The trial of Paul Manafort continues this week in northern Virginia. Mueller has charged Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, with laundering tens of million of dollars, although the alleged crimes mostly occurred outside the auspices of the presidential campaign.

Cohen’s legal troubles threaten Trump as well. The former aide has not been charged with any crimes, but he’s embroiled in controversy over payments to two women who allegedly had affairs with Trump. Not only has Cohen signaled a willingness to offer damaging information about Trump, but prosecutors in New York have also subpoenaed the longtime Trump Organization moneyman Allen Weisselberg. Trump has proven extremely combative whenever questions are raised about his business empire. In the midst of all this came Trump’s disastrous meeting with Putin in Helsinki.

For Trump to even address the threat to his “wonderful son” is an unusual show of vulnerability for a man who tries to project unstinting strength. Yet whenever he has tried to shield Trump Jr., it has only caused grief. The statement the president dictated aboard Air Force One has become a piece of the obstruction investigation, while Sunday’s tweet could incriminate Trump Jr. It’s said that a man who represents himself has a fool for a client. A son who allows Donald Trump to be his advocate may be in even worse shape.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/trump-tower-meeting-russia/566840

[vagabondretired]

Collusion confusion? Lemme help u out....

Here is what the Trump team did: Senior campaign officials, including then-chairman Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, met in June 2016 with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Kremlin-connected lawyer. They were told the lawyer could give them “very high level and sensitive information” on Ms. Clinton, as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Here is what the Clinton campaign did: It employed a U.S. law firm that hired a U.S. research outfit that brought in Christopher Steele, a British ex-spy, to gather information on Mr. Trump from his network of sources. That network included Russians. For all of Mr. Trump’s efforts to muddy the waters, the two cases are decidedly different. There is no evidence of any direct meetings or even tenuous connections between Ms. Clinton’s senior staff and Russian operatives. When the information he was gathering on Mr. Trump seemed alarming, Mr. Steele informed the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his concerns. When the Russian government offered dirt on Mr. Trump’s opponent, his campaign didn’t alert authorities about this sketchy behavior. It eagerly took the meeting.

[micdotcom]

Trump Jr. reportedly knew dirt he was promised on Clinton came from Russian government

Trump Jr. was told in an email that the purported damaging information he was looking to receive on Hillary Clinton was part of the Russian government’s quest to help his father’s presidential bid, the New York Times reported Monday night.

The email informed Trump Jr. that the damaging information he was promised was from the Russian government, according to the New York Times report.

Trump Jr. has insisted there was nothing untoward about his meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. Read more (7/10/17)

Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. says he wanted dirt on Clinton “so badly”

Natalia Veselnitskaya — the Kremlin-connected lawyer, who met with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort is sending shockwaves through the Trump White House — said she never had the compromising information on Hillary Clinton that Trump Jr. was seeking.

“It’s quite possible that maybe they were longing for such information,” Veselnitskaya said in an interview with NBC News, when asked how the three men had the impression that she had dirt on Clinton. “They wanted it so badly.” Read more (7/11/17 8 AM)

[science-criticaltheory]

The Russia Scandal Has Gone From Phony War To Heavy Shelling by Richard Wolffe

‘So who cleans up now that the Trump campaign is the subject of so many investigations?’ Photograph: Elsa/Getty Images

Gone are the days when we need to debate about what constitutes ‘collusion’ and whether that’s any standard to judge the Trump campaign.  

Indictments do strange things inside a White House. They twist the minds of an already neurotic nest of frenemies, turning suspicions into paranoia, press leaks into prosecutorial intelligence and financial concerns into colossal legal bills.

Live Trump finds Russia investigation 'very distracting', says John Kelly – live

Follow all the latest news as former Trump aides Paul Manafort and Rick Gates are charged with money laundering and tax evasion Read more

Normal life ceases (if it ever existed) for everyone from the president down, as the indictments grow in number, the grand juries call ever more witnesses, and impeachment looms ever closer.

Welcome to the first year of the Trump presidency, in which our protagonists have already proved themselves wholly incompetent in a succession of crises. There may be Black Sea ferries that leak as much the Trump White House, but they still run a tighter ship than this gang. Lest we forget, this is a president who wanted Anthony “the Mooch” Scaramucci to run his clean-up operation.

So who cleans up now that the Trump campaign is the subject of so many investigations?

The indictments of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, along with the guilty plea of George Papadopoulos, have now taken the whole Russia scandal from phony war to heavy shelling.

Gone are the days when we need to debate about what constitutes “collusion” and whether that’s any standard to judge the rogues’ gallery that peopled the upper ranks of the Trump campaign.

We just moved far beyond the false equivalence with Hillary Clinton’s private email server, which so dominated the media coverage of her campaign, the final days of the election and a significant proportion of presidential tweets forevermore.

It turns out that “mistakes” on legal disclosure forms, “misremembering” facts in front of federal agents, and distracting “stories” on Fox News do not constitute much of a legal case against the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and its former director Robert Mueller, who now enjoys the title of special counsel.

Who are the key Russian players in the Trump collusion accusations?

Natalia Veselnitskaya

A Russian lawyer whose work has focused on ending US sanctions on Russia and who met with Trump representatives Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort at Trump Tower in June 2016. Read further.

Sergey Kislyak

Until recently, the Russian ambassador to the US. A hub for contacts with Trump representatives including Kushner, attorney general Jeff Sessions, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and the president himself. Read further.

Sergey Gorkov

The Kremlin-connected head of Russian state investment bank Vnesheconombank. He met with Kushner during the presidential transition, but “no specific policies were discussed”, according to Kushner. Read further.

Dimitri Simes

President of the Center for the National Interest, a Washington thinktank, which hosted an April 2016 foreign policy speech by Trump. Trump, Sessions and Kushner appear to have met with Kislyak at the event, although both Kushner and Sessions have said any meeting was only in passing and they don’t recall what was discussed. Read further. 

Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t such a great idea to try to stop the Russia investigation by firing the FBI director who succeeded Mueller. Across the street from the White House, at FBI headquarters, they might consider that obstruction of justice.

But first, the facts we learned today. Papadopoulos is not a janitor-like figure in this enterprise, even though we barely knew his name. Here’s one Donald J Trump describing his foreign policy aide, at the point in his campaign when unkind souls were suggesting he didn’t have any foreign policy aides.

“George Papadopolous, he’s an energy and oil consultant, excellent guy,” Trump told the Washington Post editorial board, alongside four more names that represented his foreign policy team. “We have many other people in different aspects of what we do, but that’s a representative group.”

This excellent guy was, according to his guilty plea, tasked with improving US-Russia relations. With that mission in mind, he pursued meetings with a Kremlin-connected professor in London, who promised that Russia had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails”.

Over several months, Papadopoulos was diligent in working his Russian contacts, including the Kremlin’s ministry of foreign affairs, as he tried to organize a meeting between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

Within a month of Trump calling him an excellent guy, Papadopoulos was emailing not just his fellow Trump aides but also a “high-ranking campaign official” with a very kind offer for Trump himself. To wit: “Putin wanting to host him and the team when the time is right.”

A few months later came an alternative offer: if a trip was too difficult, perhaps “a campaign rep” could make a meeting? If not, Papadopoulos kindly offered to make the trip himself in an “off the record” capacity. His unnamed “campaign supervisor” told him he should go ahead, but the trip never happened.

For some reason, Papadopoulos lied to FBI agents about the “extent, timing and the nature of his communications” with the Russians, according to his guilty plea. Now, instead of a five-year prison term and a $250,000 fine, Papadopoulos islooking at less than six months in prison and less than $9,500 in fines.

There are many ways you could describe this sequence of events. Collusion would be the mildest word. There are also many ways that Trump and his inner circle have flatly lied about such collusion. In addition to being tired of winning, America might now be tired of hearing such lies.

“I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING,” screamed the president-elect on Twitter, just nine days before his inauguration.

Just in case you didn’t catch that the first couple of dozen times, President Trump tweeted on Monday morning: “Also, there is NO COLLUSION!”

Tweeting in ALL CAPS doesn’t quite match a couple of federal indictments and a guilty plea. But when that’s all you’ve got left, you may as well let loose.

Trump attempted to claim that the news about Manafort and Gates was so much blah blah “before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign”.

Nice try, Mr President.

Let’s set aside the 12 counts of the indictments, including “conspiracy against the United States,” money-laundering, tax evasion and failing to register as a foreign agent.

Let’s set aside the alleged $75m in payments through offshore accounts, laundered by Manafort into property to hide the income from the prying eyes of the US government.

Let’s even ignore the fact that Manafort ran the Trump campaign as its chairman, for no salary. During that time, he fended off a potentially disastrous delegate challenge at the nominating convention in Cleveland, where he also oversaw the rewriting of the party platform to be solidly pro-Russia and astonishingly anti-Ukraine.

For now, let’s just focus on the essential promise of the Trump campaign.

Even more than making America great again, Trump talked endlessly about his corrupt opponent. He trashed Clinton at every turn for her emails, warning gravely that her presidency would be crippled by FBI investigations, especially in the closing days of the contest.

���Lock her up” was the rallying cry of his entire general election, based on this supposedly serious FBI inquiry.

Only now, the shackles are on the other foot. We always knew that Trump accused others of his own failings. Even Lyin’ Ted Cruz, in a rare moment of honesty, accurately described Trump as a pathological liar and a serial philanderer.

Now Trump can serve out the remainder of this presidency living the life he predicted for Hillary Clinton. Making his final case to the voters before his election, Trump said the FBI investigations would trigger “an unprecedented and protracted constitutional crisis” because of “a criminal massive enterprise and cover-ups like probably nobody ever before.”

He’s rarely been so right and so wrong at the same time.

[joost5]

Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday asking why the Department of Justice settled a major money-laundering case involving a real-estate company owned by the son of a powerful Russian government official whose lawyer met with Donald Trump Jr. last year.

Trump Jr., the president's eldest son, on Tuesday tweeted an email chain from June 2016 in which he entertained accepting damaging information from a "Russian government attorney" about Hillary Clinton as part of the Kremlin's support for his father's campaign.

That attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya, represents the family of Pyotr Katsyv, the former vice governor of the Moscow region, whose son, Denis, owns the real-estate company Prevezon. The DOJ had been investigating whether Prevezon laundered millions of dollars through New York City real estate when the case was unexpectedly settled two days before going to trial in May.

"Last summer, Donald Trump Jr. met with a Kremlin-connected attorney in an attempt to obtain information 'that would incriminate Hillary,'" the Democrats wrote, citing the emails he published. "Earlier this year, on May 12, 2017, the Department of Justice made an abrupt decision to settle a money laundering case being handled by that same attorney in the Southern District of New York.

[malenipshadows]

  *** If it walks like Illicit Collusion, and talks like Illicit Collusion--.***

[her-culture]

America and Russia: Friends or Foes?

On November 8, 2016, America elected Donald J. Trump as its president. Although many expected Democratic Nominee Hillary Clinton to win, Democratic National Committee (DNC) email leaks that were published on WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016 may have lowered her chances of becoming the 45th President. These leaks initiated a CIA investigation in December 2016 that concluded that Russia had meddled with the U.S. election to prevent Clinton from winning. Throughout Donald Trump’s campaign and presidency, many connections have been found between Russia and the president, his campaign team, his family, and others in his administration, prompting numerous inquiries. However, these links don’t necessarily mean that the two countries are allies; in fact, it may be the exact opposite.

Up until January of this year, Trump completely denied Russia (or anyone) helping him to win the election. However, after admitting in a news conference on January 11, 2017 that he believed Russia was behind the election hacks, the Trump campaign had contact with the Russian administration, proven by the emails released last month requesting the Trump team to meet with state officials.

Additionally, the president appointed Michael Flynn, a retired United States Army Lieutenant General, as his National Security Advisor despite former President Barack Obama advising against this. Flynn was soon fired on February 13th for the events following five phone calls he had exchanged with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian Ambassador to the U.S., on December 29, 2016. The calls were about the sanctions that Obama had placed on Russia that day in response to the hacking efforts. However, when questioned by Vice President Mike Pence and others, Flynn maintained that the sanctions hadn’t come up in the calls, causing the Trump team to release false statements to the public. Nevertheless, Trump has continued to speak positively about Flynn and has ostensibly even tried to end an investigation into Flynn’s possible collusion with Russia. This inquiry was spurred by work Flynn did for a company linked to the Turkish government while on the Trump campaign and his undisclosed payments from foreign sources (such as the $45,000 he received from RT, the Kremlin-financed TV network, for attending and speaking at a Moscow gala).

Raising further questions about President Trump’s ties to Russia, on May 9, 2017, he fired FBI Director James Comey, who was investigating whether Trump’s advisors were colluding with Russia to alter the result of the presidential election. Although he explained that firing was due to Comey’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s usage of a private email server while she was Secretary of State, Comey’s work has benefitted Trump, sparking debates about his real motives. With all the scenarios of Russia collusion that have occurred, the administration had landed itself in hot water. On May 17, 2017, the Justice Department Appointed Robert Mueller as the special counsel to oversee the Russian probe. Mueller would later find many connections between the two parties that could potentially cause the impeachment of the Trump administration.

Two months later, at the G20 summit, Trump sat down with Vladimir Putin to discuss whether Russia had interfered with the U.S. election. Predictably, Putin denied any involvement in the U.S. election by the Russian government, and despite the detailed investigation done by the U.S. intelligence community, Trump believed him. Furthermore, the U.S. president announced that he and Putin had agreed to work together in order to stop election hacking, a decision that was met with huge amounts of criticism from the American public.

Unfortunately for the Trump administration, emails from June 2016 between Donald Trump Jr. and Rob Goldstone, a trusted intermediate, about the prospect of Russia having damaging information about Clinton surfaced. The emails set up a meeting between Trump Jr. and Kremlin-connected Lawyer Natalia V. Veselnitskaya, adding yet another link between the Trump campaign and Russia. However, when questioned about the meeting, Trump Jr. released a public statement explaining that it was about adoptions of Russian children by American families (which had ended a few years prior).  Despite claims that nothing came out of the meeting and that it was a waste of time, officials are investigating the meeting as a possible source of conspiracy. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, also attended the meeting. Both men are under investigation for ties to Russia: Kushner had left several interactions that he had had with Russians during the campaign off of his federal disclosure form, and Manafort had done a large amount of profitable work for wealthy pro-Russia Ukrainian politicians and a Russian oligarch close to Putin, raising questions about his finances.

Although the Trump administration seems to have close ties with Russia, a sanctions bill written by Congress has worsened the relationship between the two countries. The legislation aims to punish Russia for the election meddling, annexation of Crimea, continuation of military activity in East Ukraine, and human rights abuses along as well as curb Trump’s power to ease the sanctions already in place. It also includes sanctions against Iran and North Korea. Though the bill passed almost unanimously in the House and the Senate, President Trump was in a serious predicament when the bill landed on his desk. If he vetoed it, he would look even more guilty of colluding with Russia, but approving it would anger the Russians and his previous efforts to improve the relations would be rendered useless. In the end, he went with the second choice, and as predicted, Russia wasn’t too pleased. In response, Putin ordered the U.S. to cut staff at its diplomatic missions to Russia by 755 people and the Kremlin seized two U.S. diplomatic properties.

While many people in the Trump campaign team, administration, and family are linked to Russia, these connections have caused the U.S. to pass legislation that prompted the removal of more than half of the U.S. diplomatic staff in Russia, demonstrating that the United States and Russia are starting to drift apart. However, Trump called the bill flawed which was presumably an attempt to reconcile with Russia though it didn’t seem to have an effect on them. Overall, whether this will lead to another Cold War is up to what the future holds, though based on the current state of affairs, it doesn’t seem too unlikely.

 Sources:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/21/politics/trump-russia-hacking-statements/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/us/politics/james-comey-fired-fbi.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/us/politics/michael-flynn-fifth-amendment-russia-senate.html

https://www.vox.com/world/2017/7/9/15944060/trump-putin-g20-russia-hacking-campaign-2016-dnc-emails

https://www.vox.com/world/2017/7/24/16008272/robert-mueller-fbi-trump-russia-explained

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/us/politics/trump-russia-email-clinton.html?_r=0

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/02/politics/donald-trump-russia-sanctions-bill/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/30/world/europe/russia-sanctions-us-diplomats-expelled.html

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/13/15952212/trump-russia-investigation-evidence

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-campaign-emails-show-aides-repeated-efforts-to-set-up-russia-meetings/2017/08/14/54d08da6-7dc2-11e7-83c7-5bd5460f0d7e_story.html?utm_term=.08e62e72c451

[olivierknox]

‘Ridiculous!‘: White House dismisses talk of treason after Trump Jr. revelation

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The White House said Tuesday it was “ridiculous” for lawmakers to use words like ���treason” in response to the revelation that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer in June 2016 in order to receive damaging information about his father’s rival, Hillary Clinton.

Deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders largely stonewalled questions about the disclosure after reading a statement from President Trump: “My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency.”

Sanders added that the president “absolutely” still wants ongoing investigations in Congress and by a special counsel at the Justice Department to continue.

“We’d love to get this matter closed,” she said.

In the wake of Trump Jr.’s disclosure, Democratic lawmakers have turned up the heat on the White House over the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., his party’s vice presidential candidate in 2016, told reporters: “Nothing is proven yet, but we’re now beyond obstruction of justice, in terms of what’s being investigated.

Kaine added: “This is moving into perjury, false statements and even into potentially treason.”

Asked about the escalation in rhetoric, Sanders replied: “Those new words are ridiculous.”

Trump Jr. on Tuesday tweeted an email chain about setting up a meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and including in the meeting campaign chief Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, Trump Jr.’s brother-in-law and currently a top White House adviser.

“This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” noted one of the emails, from music publicist Rob Goldstone.

Goldstone had sent an initial email to Trump Jr. with the subject line “Russia – Clinton – private and confidential” saying that a Russian pop star, Emin Agalarov, had reached out to Goldstone on behalf of his father, Aras Agalarov, a Russian real estate developer who helped bring the elder Trump’s 2013 Miss Universe pageant to Moscow.

“Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting,” wrote Goldstone on June 3, 2016. “The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump — helped along by Aras and Emin.”

Trump Jr. responded 17 minutes later, asking to set up a meeting and suggesting that the information would be useful to drop later in the summer.

“Thanks Rob I appreciate that,” wrote the president’s eldest son. “I am on the road at the moment but perhaps I just speak to Emin first. Seems we have some time and if it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

Additional contributions from Gabby Kaufman and Christopher Wilson.

[dylan-stableford-blog]

Trump rails against Clinton’s emails amid Russia firestorm: ‘My son Don is being scorned’

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. (Photos: Markus Schreiber/AP, Patrick Semansky/AP)

President Trump took to Twitter early Sunday to complain about the media’s coverage of his son’s controversial meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer who was said to have dirt on Hillary Clinton.

“Hillary Clinton can illegally get the questions to the Debate & delete 33,000 emails but my son Don is being scorned by the Fake News Media?” the president tweeted.

HillaryClinton can illegally get the questions to the Debate & delete 33,000 emails but my son Don is being scorned by the Fake News Media?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 16, 2017

“With all of its phony unnamed sources & highly slanted & even fraudulent reporting, #Fake News is DISTORTING DEMOCRACY in our country!” Trump fumed.

With all of its phony unnamed sources & highly slanted & even fraudulent reporting, #Fake News is DISTORTING DEMOCRACY in our country!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 16, 2017

It’s not the first time the president has cited his former opponent in an effort to decry the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia. Just last month, Trump claimed he was the subject of disproportionate scrutiny compared to his election foe.

Why is that Hillary Clintons family and Dems dealings with Russia are not looked at, but my non-dealings are?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2017

Crooked H destroyed phones w/ hammer, 'bleached' emails, & had husband meet w/AG days before she was cleared- & they talk about obstruction?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2017

Those tweets were in response to a Washington Post report that Justice Department special counsel is looking into whether he obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James Comey.

In April, Trump pushed back against the ongoing investigations into his campaign by rehashing a controversy from the 2016 Democratic primary.

“Did Hillary Clinton ever apologize for receiving the answers to the debate?” Trump tweeted. “Just asking!”

Did Hillary Clinton ever apologize for receiving the answers to the debate? Just asking!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2017

The president was referring to emails that showed former acting Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile had provided questions to the Hillary Clinton campaign in advance of a town hall and debate hosted by CNN during the Democratic primary.

But the emails that revealed Trump Jr. took the June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a lawyer with alleged ties to the Kremlin and its spy agency, has sparked yet another firestorm for the Trump administration.

Trump Jr., campaign chief Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and top White House adviser, also attended the meeting, which was brokered by Robert Goldstone, a music publicist who had previously helped ink a business deal between President Trump and a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin.

In his initial email to Trump Jr., Goldstone claimed a “Russian government lawyer” had “very high level and sensitive information” that was part of the Russian government’s support for the elder Trump’s candidacy.

“Thanks Rob, I appreciate that,” Trump Jr. replied. “If it’s what you say I love it, especially later in the summer.”

Trump Jr. posted the emails on his Twitter feed Tuesday morning after the New York Times had informed him they were set to publish them. Critics have pointed to the emails as proof that the Trump campaign tried to collude with the Kremlin.

Related: Trump Jr.’s meeting with Russian lawyer: A timeline

During a press conference in Paris on Thursday, Trump insisted that most people would have taken the meeting.

“My son is a wonderful young man,” Trump said of Donald Trump Jr., 39. “He took a meeting with a Russian lawyer, not a government lawyer, but a Russian lawyer. It was a short meeting. It was a meeting that went very, very quickly — very fast — two of the people in the room, one of them left almost immediately and the other was not really focused on the meeting. I do think this from a practical standpoint, most people would have taken that meeting.

“It’s called opposition research or even research into your opponent,” the president added.

On Twitter Sunday, Trump thanked Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign adviser, who told CNN last week that he “never once” heard anyone on the Trump team discuss Russian attempts to meddle in the election.

“Thank you to former campaign adviser Michael Caputo for saying so powerfully that there was no Russian collusion in our winning campaign,” Trump tweeted.

Thank you to former campaign adviser Michael Caputo for saying so powerfully that there was no Russian collusion in our winning campaign.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 16, 2017

“No one ever breathed the word ‘Russia’ to me,” Caputo said in the interview, which aired Friday. “We were so busy just trying to keep up with the sun rising and setting on that campaign that I can’t imagine anyone had the time, nor the wherewithal to go out there and even do something like this.”

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[vinayv224]

Foreign intelligence operations are not meant to leave traces behind that could be used in a courtroom.

After nearly two years of investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on what’s generally referred to as the question of collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, Attorney General William Barr has informed us in precisely worded language that Mueller “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

There is interesting mystery and ambiguity in this statement, however, just as in any spy story.

A footnote in Barr’s letter says Mueller defined “coordination” as an “agreement — tacit or express — between the Trump campaign and the Russian government on election interference.” Note the three key elements: a tacit or express agreement, with the Russian government, about election interference.

The wording is important, particularly given how intelligence operations work. And so it is worth parsing this a bit, not only because Trump has declared this means he was exonerated, but also to highlight the lurking uncertainties at a moment when Congress is deciding how hard to press for direct access to the report itself, or at a minimum, to sworn testimony by Barr and Mueller about any hidden elements.

One of the core functions of the CIA, where I worked, is to carry out covert action. Covert action is defined as “a special activity abroad in support of foreign policy where the role of the US government is neither apparent nor publicly acknowledged.”

Both Barr’s letter and Mueller’s indictments make clear Russian intelligence services aimed to disrupt the 2016 election. Those intelligence operations against our democratic institutions, which persist, operate in similar ways to the aforementioned covert action. They are designed to support and advance Russia’s foreign-policy agenda while hiding the hand of the Russian government.

How does an intelligence service hide its government’s involvement? It does this by building into the operation what we call “plausible deniability” — more colloquially known as a cover story.

Remember in high school when you sent a friend over to the girl you liked to get a sense of whether she would go out with you if you asked? The friend could claim he was asking out of his own curiosity, to save you from embarrassment if the girl was uninterested. You could claim you never asked your friend to talk to the girl. The girl might guess you sent your friend, but she might not be able to prove it. That is plausible deniability. Your friend was acting as a “cutout” — to hide your involvement — with a cover story, that he was asking for his own curiosity.

In an intelligence operation, plausible deniability is a bit more sophisticated. Intelligence officers use individuals or businesses that are not part of the government but are, at arm’s length, working on behalf of the government as cutouts, and they can develop much more complex cover stories by using witting and unwitting foreign agents and front companies.

Another country’s intelligence services might be able to uncover some of these cutouts and cover stories. Using their own intelligence methods, they might collect information that points to the conclusion that a particular government is behind those cutouts and cover stories — a task that US intelligence agencies were able to accomplish not only in the case of the Russian influence operation but also in some notorious hacking incidents. Or they might not be able to do this, depending on how well the opposing service did its job. And even if the opposing service does leave some traces, the targeted country could still find it challenging to develop the sort of evidence that a prosecutor could bring to a courtroom.

Think of it like this: You’re a detective working on a murder case, and you come upon a safe that is smoking and smells of gunpowder. But without being able to open that safe, there is no way to say with certainty that a smoking gun sits inside.

The narrow wording of Mueller’s partial sentence that Barr quoted in his letter limits the question of coordination to a “tacit or express” agreement “with the Russian government.” Yet the Russians’ interventions — which aimed, in part, to help Trump win and to denigrate Hillary Clinton — were surely meant to hide those two elements. This wording leaves open the possibility that Mueller found plentiful coordination with others who were not part of the government but were a step, or several steps, removed.

A Russian lawyer such as Natalia Veselnitskaya, who has connections to the Kremlin but is not herself a member of the government, and who participated in a meeting with campaign officials where Russian dirt on Clinton was supposed to be shared, certainly fell into this category. And Mueller’s investigation and public reporting have surfaced a variety of other characters — such as Joseph Mifsud, Aras Agalarov, Rinat Akhmetshin, Konstantin Kilimnik, and Oleg Deripaska — who had some Kremlin connections without evidently being direct employees and who were in discussions with Trump campaign officials.

What does Mueller’s report actually say?

The bracket around the first letter of the Mueller quote is another small clue that more may be behind the curtain than we’ve been allowed to see so far. “[T]he investigation did not establish that the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” The bracket around the T indicates there is a phrase that begins that sentence.

This, of course, is speculation, but the first part of that sentence — at one end of the spectrum — might be: “Although we detailed a number of troubling links between the Trump campaign and people associated with the Russian government, including links with worrisome national security implications, the investigation did not establish that the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Alternatively, the first part of that sentence might also more reassuringly read: “After running every lead to the ground, the investigation did not establish that the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

But without seeing the actual report, we just don’t know. And given the public record of the Trump campaign’s contacts with many Russians and its officials’ repeated lies about those contacts, it is difficult to believe Mueller found nothing with national security implications.

Barr’s letter also states Mueller did not find anyone in the campaign who participated in the specific crimes of the Internet Research Agency influence operations or in the hacking and stealing of Democratic emails by Russian military officers.

But Barr’s letter does not address whether Mueller concluded that Trump or his associates were compromised by Trump’s efforts to build a Trump Tower Moscow, a project that required Russian government approval and was slated to net him hundreds of millions of dollars, at precisely the time the Russian government was running an intelligence operation aimed at helping him win the presidency.

Such a project might not amount to “tacit or express” coordination on “election interference,” but the overlapping timing of the campaign and the construction planning leaves open the possibility that Trump was vulnerable to manipulation. An intelligence asset might be unwitting — a “useful idiot,” as we say in the intelligence world — but that doesn’t diminish the threat that asset might be to national security, nor negate that he may actively have been used to some end.

The president’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner told some interns in July 2017, for example, that the campaign was so disorganized or decentralized “we couldn’t even collude with our local offices,” according to Foreign Policy. But intelligence officers are skilled at gaining someone’s cooperation without them directly knowing what they are doing or why — and none of that sort of connivance would be readily prosecutable.

The language in Barr’s letter also does not address if Trump made an agreement to change US foreign policy — on issues such as the sanctions imposed over Ukraine — in order to get his coveted tower. Such an agreement would not fall under the narrow definition of “election interference” and would not even necessarily be illegal, but would still be a grave US counterintelligence concern.

A case that may not be black and white

None of this is to say Trump is a foreign agent under Vladimir Putin’s control. It’s important to know there is a gray area between “no collusion” and “Trump is a foreign agent.” We don’t know from what we’ve been able to read so far in whose interest he is acting. Even if he is acting in his own interest and solely on his own accord, many of his public actions (and we don’t know how many of his private actions) have fulfilled Russia’s overarching agenda of vilifying America’s institutions and hurting US national security. Supporting, and even publicly encouraging, a hostile foreign power to hack a former secretary of state’s emails is, to say the least, reckless. Mueller’s report likely would help put context to the many disturbing episodes we know about and help the public understand the nature of those meetings and relationships with Russians, from those at the lowest levels to Putin at the very top.

Importantly, Barr’s letter says Mueller’s investigation does back up the intelligence community’s overall findings that Russia interfered in the election, an idea Trump has consistently refused to accept. Furthermore, the letter confirms that “Russian-affiliated individuals” made “multiple offers” to assist the campaign. Notably, no one on the campaign ever reported those offers to the FBI and everyone consistently lied about them when asked. We need to discuss, as a nation, if this is acceptable for US politicians going forward. The standard of merely having “no criminal liability” is comically low for the position of US president; other, higher standards of ethics and morality should be discussed.

Because Russia’s interference in our democratic institutions involves covert action designed to hide the Russian government’s hand, drawing a conclusion about how successful Russia was with their many approaches to Trump and his team is difficult without access to the underlying intelligence that Mueller saw and the information gathered from more than 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, 230 orders for communication records, and nearly 50 orders to monitor phone call records. And given the nature of intelligence, coming as it does from classified sources and methods, we, the public, may never see it.

Even if we did, it might not rise to the level of criminality, which is why setting that bar was never going to be satisfactory. Many things intelligence officers from all countries get people to do are not illegal, but they can still be unethical or even dangerous to US security. Our laws also allow all kinds of unethical behavior at the nexus of money and politics.

In the end, the question comes down to this: Has the president faithfully executed the responsibilities of the office, free of untoward foreign influence? Without access to Mueller’s report, we cannot say for sure.

The only thing that Barr’s summary of Mueller’s report tells us for sure is that Mueller could not establish a “tacit or express” agreement with the Russian government as fact. That is, he did not feel he could prove it in court. This does not mean Mueller found no links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government’s actions.

While most have painted this partial sentence to mean Mueller found no evidence of collusion, it actually states Mueller could not find enough evidence to state conclusively, at a level that would stand up in court, that members of the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russian government.

Amid all the lingering questions, one thing is utterly clear from Barr’s summary: Until we see a fuller picture, the president’s “no collusion” victory lap feels premature.

Alex Finley (@alexzfinley) is the pen name of a former journalist and an officer of the CIA from 2003 to 2009, who is now writing analyses of Robert Mueller’s investigation. She is the author of Victor in the Rubble, a satire about the CIA and the war on terror. The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative journalism organization in Washington, DC.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/2FwsbBr

[gabbykaufman]

WSJ torches Trump and Don Jr.: ‘They have created the appearance of a conspiracy’

U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he attends a “Made in America” products showcase event at the White House in Washington, U.S., July 17, 2017. (Carlos Barria/REUTERS)

The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board published a scathing assessment of President Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr.’s conduct in the wake of the fallout caused by the latter’s meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign.

Titled, “The Trumps and the Truth,” the editorial urges “radical transparency” from the White House in their approach to the Congressional and Department of Justice Russia probes.

“Even Donald Trump might agree that a major reason he won the 2016 election is because voters couldn’t abide Hillary Clinton’s legacy of scandal, deception and stonewalling,” the paper wrote. “Yet on the story of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, Mr. Trump and his family are repeating the mistakes that doomed Mrs. Clinton.”

Trump Jr.’s changing statements concerning the meeting, and his eventual admission that he attended because he was offered incriminating information from the Russian government on his father’s opponent, earned a less-than-rosy evaluation from the Journal.

“Even if the ultimate truth of this tale is merely that Don Jr. is a political dunce who took a meeting that went nowhere — the best case — the Trumps made it appear as if they have something to hide. They have created the appearance of a conspiracy that on the evidence Don Jr. lacks the wit to concoct.”

Trump Jr., along with Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser Jared Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort all attended the June 2016 meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a lawyer with connections to the Kremlin. The White House long insisted that no such meeting took place, but Trump Jr. copped to it last week just before the New York Times published a story on emails arranging it.

In the emails, the meeting was pitched to Trump Jr. as an opportunity to collect damaging information about Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. It later emerged that in addition to the three people on team Trump and Veselnitskaya, publicist Rob Goldstone and Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhemsthin, who served in the Soviet military, and at least two others were also reportedly in attendance.

The Journal urged Trump, his family, and his associates to release any pertinent information regarding meetings, communications, and business dealings with Russians or anyone connected to Russia, with the rationale that the “short-term political damage” is more favorable that “death by a thousand cuts of selective leaks.”

Although Trump is regularly pilloried by more liberal editorial boards, the Journal’s caustic attack against the Republican commander in chief is striking. The paper is under the umbrella of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate that also operates the Trump-friendly Fox News.

The editorial board also noted that Trump is unlikely to heed its advice.

“Mr. Trump somehow seems to believe that his outsize personality and social-media following make him larger than the Presidency,” the Journal cautioned. “He’s wrong. He and his family seem oblivious to the brutal realities of Washington politics. Those realities will destroy Mr. Trump, his family and their business reputation unless they change their strategy toward the Russia probe. They don’t have much more time to do it.”

[malenipshadows]

Editorial: “Donald Trump Jr. is an idiot,”

 by the New York Post Editorial Board.  Published online 7-11-2017.

   We see one truly solid takeaway from the story of the day: Donald Trump Jr. is an idiot.    In the heat of your father’s presidential campaign, a bozo British publicist emails you to set up a sit-down with a “Russian government attorney” promising “documents and information” to “incriminate Hillary” courtesy of the “Crown prosecutor of Russia” as “part of” the Russian government’s “support” for Dad — and you eagerly take the meeting.

   “If it’s what you say I love it,” wrote Junior.  As if the government of former KGB spymaster Vladimir Putin would do anything so clumsy.  (Our former colleague Kyle Smith put it nicely: “Don Jr. is why Nigerian email scammers keep trying their luck.”)    Worse, he dragged brother-in-law Jared Kushner and then-campaign chief Paul Manafort into the meeting, which proved to be a bid by a Moscow fixer to undo a U.S. law causing trouble for her clients.  (Reportedly, Kushner walked out within 10 minutes, while Manafort did work on his phone.)    Oh, and someone was so careless with the email trail that it all wound up being fed to the New York Times, for days of headlines that (at best) undermine President Trump’s agenda as both health and tax reform hang in the balance in Congress.    Dumb. Dumb.  Dumb.  As were Junior’s shifting, incomplete accounts of the meeting under days of Times questioning.    Democrats and the media are frothing to find something criminal in it all, with the most unhinged talking treason. What it clearly was was criminally stupid.

 *** Hyperlink: http://nypost.com/2017/07/11/donald-trump-jr-is-an-idiot/.  

[michaelwalshblog-blog]

‘Had to listen’: Trump Jr. confirms meeting Russian lawyer to discuss Clinton

Donald Trump Jr. campaigns for his father, Friday, Nov. 4, 2016, in Gilbert, Ariz. (Photo: Matt York/AP)

The president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., on Monday dismissed a new report on his meeting with a Russian lawyer who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton.

“Obviously I’m the first person on a campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent… went nowhere but had to listen,” he tweeted.

The tweet confirmed a New York Times report over the weekend that Natalia Veselnitskaya, an attorney with connections to the Kremlin, offered to give Trump Jr. compromising information on his father’s opponent in the U.S. election, according to the paper’s sources.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the attorney followed through with the damaging information during the reported meeting at Trump Tower in New York on June 9, 2016.

President Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul J. Manafort and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also attended the meeting.

The Times first report on the topic appeared Saturday without any references to Veselnitskaya’s apparent information on Clinton. Afterward, Trump Jr. released a statement saying that they discussed a program on the adoption of Russian children.

“It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up.

  I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand.”

The Times followed up the next day with a report on how the meeting was arranged under the pretext of providing compromising information on Clinton. This compelled Trump Jr. to release yet another statement explaining his reason for going to the meeting.

“I was asked to have a meeting by an acquaintance I knew from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant with an individual who I was told might have information helpful to the campaign. I was not told her name prior to the meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to attend, but told them nothing of the substance.”

He continued: “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. 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.”

Critics pounced on what they considered inconsistency in his statements. But Trump Jr. struck back, saying that his first statement still stands but that he was merely filling in the details as more information became available.

“No inconsistency in statements, meeting ended up being primarily about adoptions. In response to further Q’s I simply provided more details,” he said.

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[olivierknox]

Pence distances self from Trump Jr. revelations

President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence listen as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (C) offers remarks before dinner at the White House last month. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Vice President Mike Pence’s office on Tuesday fervently distanced the former Indiana governor from the revelation that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer in June 2016 in order to receive damaging information about his father’s rival, Hillary Clinton.

“The Vice President was not aware of the meeting.  He is not focused on stories about the campaign, particularly stories about the time before he joined the ticket,” Pence spokesman Marc Lotter said in a statement emailed to reporters. “The Vice President is working every day to advance the President’s agenda, which is what the American people sent us here to do.”

At the time of the meeting, President Trump had not yet picked Pence to be his running mate, and the former congressman was campaigning for reelection as governor of Indiana.

In January, Pence flatly denied any contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians looking to interfere in the 2016 election.

John Dickerson, anchor of CBS’s Face the Nation, asked Pence on Jan. 15: “Did any adviser or anybody in the Trump campaign have any contact with the Russians who were trying to meddle in the elections?”

“Well, of course not,” Pence replied. “And I think to suggest that is to give credence to some of these bizarre rumors that have swirled around the candidacy.”

But Donald Trump Jr. on Tuesday tweeted an email chain about setting up a meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and including campaign chief Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, Trump Jr.’s brother-in-law and current top White House adviser.

“This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” noted one of the emails, from music publicist Rob Goldstone.

Goldstone had sent an initial email to Trump Jr. with the subject line “Russia – Clinton – private and confidential” saying that a Russian pop star, Emin Agalarov, had reached out to Goldstone on behalf of his father, Aras Agalarov, a Russian real estate developer who helped bring the elder Trump’s 2013 Miss Universe pageant to Moscow.

“Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting,” wrote Goldstone on June 3, 2016. “The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump — helped along by Aras and Emin.”

Trump Jr. responded 17 minutes later, asking to set up a meeting and suggesting that the information would be useful to drop later in the summer.

“Thanks Rob I appreciate that,” wrote the president’s eldest son. “I am on the road at the moment but perhaps I just speak to Emin first. Seems we have some time and if it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

Additional contributions from Gabby Kaufman and Christopher Wilson.