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At first glance it seemed that the reports of his misgivings that Jr could have unknowingly broken the law just through associating with his own father showed fatherly concern-like the fatherly concern of Michael Flynn who flipped after they went after his son.
FN: Though Flynn is now unflipping in a way that could leave both him and his son in prison.
But the more you look at Trump’s tweet from yesterday morning the more it seems that this is the wrong way to interpret it-turn the telescope up.
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 J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2018
See-he’s arguing that there was nothing wrong with the meeting but the last sentence says ‘But even if there was I didn’t know about it’-ie, maybe his son unknowingly did something wrong but he’s in the clear.
FN: Of course Mueller also ended up deciding for some reason that Jr’s alleged ignorance of the law was enough to save him. It’s not enough to save anyone else not related to ‘President Trump.’
He’s also, as has been noted by many, admitting the meeting was to get oppo on Hillary Clinton; though he doesn’t say it this oppo was from the Russian government as is clear from the email Rob Goldstone sent Don Jr on June 3, 2016. This contradicts what his son said about the meeting in July, 2017; while Trump continues not to acknowledge it, we now know that he dictated his son’s response to the original news of the June, 2016 meeting.
“President Trump on Sunday offered his most definitive and clear public acknowledgment that his oldest son met with a Kremlin-aligned lawyer at Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign to “get information on an opponent,” defending the meeting as “totally legal and done all the time in politics.”
“It is, however, against the law for U.S. campaigns to receive donations or items of value from foreigners, and that June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya is now a subject of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation.”
FN: Beyond the idea that ignorance is an excuse if you’re father’s the fake ‘President’ Mueller for some reason decided that it wasn’t a campaign violation because the offered oppo wasn’t worth $2000 dollars-itself a questionable claim. It seems Mueller’s whole basis for this valuation is that Donald Jr and Friends say the oppo wasn’t what they thought it would be.
“While “collusion” is not mentioned in U.S. criminal statutes, Mueller is investigating whether anyone associated with Trump coordinated with the Russians, which could result in criminal charges if they entered into a conspiracy to break the law, including through cyberhacking or interfering with the election.”
Trump’s tweet, however, conflicts with a statement that Trump Jr. released to the New York Times in July 2017, as the newspaper prepared to report about the meeting. In that statement, Trump Jr. indicated that the meeting had been “primarily” about the issue of the adoption of Russian children by Americans.”
I’ve long since wondered who Trump would choose if it came to it: prison for himself or his son? Or even-as presumably he can’t or at least won’t be indicted-prison for his son of his same name, prison for himself OR impeachment for himself? It’s not at all obvious he’d choose taking the bullet himself rather than his own son like Flynn did. Everything we know about Trump is that anyone is expendable to save his own skin-does this hold even for his own namesake son? Stay tuned.
He is right that Don Jr is in some serious trouble. Indeed, you wonder if it’s possible Mueller could lean on Jr to see if he could get to Donald Sr-again, not sure he could.
FN: But in the end Trump needn’t have worried-Mueller took it easy on his son, bending over backwards-and bending the law-to avoid the confrontation with Trump over charging Jr. In this context the idea that Mueller would have leaned on Jr for cooperation from Trump seems fanciful-it appears there was no way there would ever be charges not just against Trump himself but his family. The DOJ precedent that a ‘President’ can’t be indicted was extended to the ‘President’s family.
But the idea that Mueller would be so gauche as to lean on Trump’s son-as he would to any other witness-to get Trump to do an interview seems fanciful when you realize that Mueller dropped the idea of subpoenaing Trump after a few cross words from John Dowd back in March 2018.
End of FN.
“Trump Jr.’s testimony to Congress contained a similar defense as his father’s Sunday tweet, indicating that he saw no reason not to accept a meeting that could yield important information about Clinton, even though he was told that it was part of an effort by the government of a hostile power.”
Indeed. I was just browsing his Senate Intelligence Committee testimony yesterday for the first time and Jr is in some serious trouble-he perjured himself many times.
FN: Or would have been if Mueller didn’t believe that the sons of fake ‘Presidents’ also can’t be indicted.
Have you seen the 2,556 pages of testimony on the Trump Tower meeting the Senate IC put out? I just discovered it yesterday. Jr’s testimony was 224 pages.
And the two things that stand out about it is:
1. Even if you accept his testimony on its own terms without any skepticism-not a very tenable strategy considering how many times he’s publicly dissembled on this meeting-it’s pretty incriminating.
He basically claims not to be able to remember anything about anything and to at the time taking this meeting that he invited both his son in law Jared Kushner, and his father’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort-who’s been in the news and comes off looking very bad in this testimony too-without having a clue as to what it was about and not telling Kushner and Manafort a single thing about it.
They all just showed up and then concluded it was as Seinfeld would put it ‘a #CollusionMeeting about nothing.’ What he can’t deny is what the initial invite to the meeting from Goldstone says: that Aras Agalarov had met with ‘Russia’s Crown prosecutor’ and they arranged what would become the Trump Tower #CollusionMeeting as ‘as part of the Russian government’s support for your campaign.’
Under questioning in his testimony, Jr claims he was skeptical that Goldstone could really deliver the goods-that he didn’t know him well, he was a colorful figure, etc. For that reason he claims he was hedging his bets till he spoke to Emin Agalarov-who’s father, Aras, set up the meeting. Yet he claims that he never did speak to Emin before they went to this meeting with someone whose credibility he wasn’t sure of.
I say claims as Jr who claims to remember nothing beyond his own name, he got the emails, he invited Manafort and Kushner, and showed up at the meeting, and won’t even admit to speaking to Agalarov on the phone between the June 3 email and the June 10 meeting, though Agalarov has admitted to speaking to him during that time.
He claims to be skeptical if he can trust Goldstone and states that he’d never heard of the idea that the Russian government wanted to help his father before, yet he wasn’t in any way alarmed, nor did he ask any questions.
But even if we buy this it looks bad for him as it’s clear he wanted the oppo on Clinton even though it was per Goldstone’s email to him, from the Russian government. But as noted above in the Washington Post piece:
“It is, however, against the law for U.S. campaigns to receive donations or items of value from foreigners, and that June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya is now a subject of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation.”
So even if-as he claims-Veselnitskaya failed to actually come up with the goods-useful oppo on Clinton-we have clear intent on his part, and intent is always a big part of assessing guilt. The most charitable explanation you could come up with is what his father said-maybe Jr, new to politics, was so clueless he didn’t even realize that getting oppo from a foreign power is against the law. Of course, ignorance is not an excuse…
2. But when you actually go through the testimony, Jr’s many ‘I don’t recalls’, and ‘I don’t knows’ are not credible. Here is the transcript.
For instance he admits-as he has no choice-that he emailed Manafort on June 9 that the time of the coming June 10 meeting had been moved to 4 P.M. Yet he refuses to even concede that this couldn’t have been his only communication with Manafort: if it were then Manafort’s response obviously would have been ‘what meeting and with who about what?’
But Jr continued to insist on this fiction until they were able to show that he himself made a few phone calls on Sunday, June 5 to Virginia and there was another call on Tuesday, June 7–and a Google search shows it was Manafort’s number. Jr just continued to insist he didn’t remember-though, he wasn’t surprised. (Pg. 89).
He wouldn’t even admit to also making a call on June 5 to Kushner. When they showed him the number he feigned total ignorance until they told him a Google search shows it was Kushner’s number.
Jr who had no concern or curiosity in speaking to agents of the Russian government-according to Goldstone’s email-claims to have made no attempt to confirm who Vesselnitskaya, Instead he insists that it ‘became obvious’ as the meeting unfolded that she had no connection to the Russian government. When asked what made it so obvious his answer is because they had a legal case here in the United States(!) Sure the Magnisky Act that is vehemently opposed by Putin’s Russia. (Pg. 98-99).
Who said Don Jr doesn’t do deductive logic? In fact, her claim to being an ‘independent agent’ is not at all credible. At the meeting-and in her own Senate testimony she continually uses Putin’s own talking points that Bill Browder’s friends donated $400 million dollars to Hillary Clinton and donated many millions to the DNC-see Chapter A.
https://lastmenandovermen.com/2018/08/05/at-trump-tower-meeting-kremlin-lawyer-used-putins-lie-about-bill-browders-donations-to-clinton/
Jr points out that Goldstone apologized about the meeting-for supposedly not giving him the oppo on Clinton Don Jr clearly wanted-even if it came from agents of the Russian government. He then says that this was the last he spoke to Goldstone about any of this. This is, like so much of what he said in his testimony, false.
The interviewers then present Jr with an email chain that contained himself, Goldstone, and Rhona Graff-Trump’s long time secretary/executive assistant. While I like to say that Hope Hicks is Rose Woods 2.0, in may ways Rhona’s the real Rose Woods 2.0-as Rhona like Woods was with Trump for many years, while Hicks only came to Trump during the campaign.
This email was from Goldstone to Dan Scavino-aka ‘the man behind Trump’s tweets’-talked about the idea of setting up a Vote for Trump promotion on Facebook targeting Russian American voters. This FB promotion would be setup by the Russian FB company VK ‘as I had mentioned to you guys through Emin and my contact at the VK.’
So clearly this was not the end of Goldstone’s attempts at facilitating collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Recall, in Mueller’s indictments from a few weeks ago, one of the charges was for such social media work by the Russians on Trump’s behalf. Note too, that Scanvino was/is no ‘coffee boy’-, not that the real coffee boy-George Papadopoulos-was really a coffee boy either-he’s just the guy who’s conversations with Australia’s top diplomat begun the entire Russia probe.
Scavino is actually Trump’s social media director. So Goldstone-while dismissed as a ‘flake’-emailed Trump’s social media director-who’s in charge of keeping Trump’s tweets ‘unpresidential’ about setting up a Vote Trump promotion with a Russian FB company.
FN: For more on Scavino who was tweeting Fake News stories about the Russians having Clinton’s emails in May, 2016 see Chapter A. h
And again-Goldstone is who setup the Trump Tower meeting to begin with. But then, Goldstone is a very curious figure. When the story first broke, Trump defenders focused on him-his eccentric appearance-as proof that this was nothing to do with the Russian government-would Russia use such a flake for such an operation? The answer is yes-Goldstone is a textbook cutout. For this sort of operation you want someone who doesn’t look the part. That’s espionage 101.
But what’s interesting is how many email chains with the Trump campaign Goldstone actually comes up in. The interviewers presented Jr with a few doozies-again, these are likely the tip of the iceberg for communications between Goldstone and the Trump campaign.
By the way, the prosecution’s star witness against Paul Manafort testifies today-his former aide Rich Gates.
It’s important to remember-while Trump and friends harp on the point that this current case has little to do with Russian collusion-that Manafort was at the Trump Tower meeting. In the email, Goldstone states that he mentioned the idea of a Vote Trump promotion to Manafort at the meeting-Jr claims not to recall-and Manafort’s response was ‘I’d welcome it.’
Again, Manafort was Trump’s campaign manager at the time.
FN: Of course, since I wrote this chapter back on August of 2018 a much larger fact pattern connecting Manafort to collusion has emerged-see Chapters A and B for more-both the polling data to Kilimnik and the Wikileaks email dumps, etc.
End of FN.
Now Jr had testified that other than Trump and Goldstone meeting at the Miss Universe Pageant in 2013 he was ‘not aware of any relationship between Candidate Trump and Mr. Goldstone.’ (Pg. 32).
His use of ‘not as far as I’m aware’ gives him some deniability-Jr. was careful to never answer anything categorically. Which is a good thing because for someone with ‘no relationship’ to Trump, Goldstone sure comes up in a lot of email chains with the campaign.
A. In July, 2015 there was an lengthy email chain between Goldstone and Rhona Graff where he stated that Emin Agalarov had gotten Trump an invite to his father’s birthday on November 8, 2015. When Graff replies that Trump will likely be too busy with the campaign for that, Goldstone replies that Emin could arrange a meeting for Trump with Putin-and we know how much Trump values a meeting with Putin.
B. Jr insists that while he was somewhat skeptical and didn’t know what to make of Goldstone’s June 3, 2016 proposal for what would become the Trump Tower meeting he was not alarmed nor was he terribly curious if you believe his own account of his actions-he didn’t ask Emin any questions about what it was all about, he made no effort to figure out what this talk of the ‘Russian government’s support for your father’ was about, he just showed up and told Manafort and Kushner but wouldn’t even admit to any conversations with them beyond what was public knowledge at the time.
Yet he claims that was the first time he’d seen Goldstone or anyone else speak of the ‘Russian government’s support for your father.’
Yet Goldstone sent a letter to Jr and Rhona on February 29, 2016 again using this same phrasing. Specifically, Goldstone was passing on a letter in the email from Aras Agalarov-again, Aras is the one who met with Russia’s prosecutor general of the Russian federation-congratulating Trump for his fine showing on Super Tuesday and that ‘many of his important Russian friends and colleagues’ supported his campaign; they especially liked his talk of better U.S.-Russia relations. (Pgs. 34-35)
C. In the first email on June 3, 2016 to set up the meeting, Goldstone actually said that ‘I can also send this to your father via Rhona but it is ultrasensitive so wanted to send it to you first.’ (Pgs. 23-24).
Ultrasensitive. So Goldstone can’t claim not to know what he was doing and Jr can’t claim not to have known. But this further raises the likelihood that Trump knew about it before hand.
Consider the timeline:
1. Goldstone emails Jr on June 3 and raises sending it straight to Trump but first wants to run it by Jr.
2. Exactly-first and then Jr himself can tell his Dad it’s fair to presume.
3. Per Michael Cohen Jr did in fact tell his Dad on June 7-8.
4. Giuliani himself seemed to reference a pre Trump Tower meeting-at Trump Tower naturally.
That contrary to what Cohen is now saying and logic dictates 2 never happened is quite dubious.
D. After the election Goldstone emailed Rhona stating that the biggest barrier to improved U.S.-Russia relations is the Magnitsky Act. (Pg. 52-53).
So yes, as is clear from these examples-not exhaustive and I’m only a third of the way through(!) Jr committed perjury multiple times and there is a good deal of evidence for collusion. Clearly Goldstone was a regular conduit.
FN: But he clearly had nothing to worry about as Mueller believes the DOJ regulation against indcitment applies to just to the President-or ‘President’-but the ‘President’s’ son.