537
Regarding those who say ‘there’s no proof of collusion’ you sometimes wonder what would connotate a smoking gun? For a long time it seemed to require the Trump campaign actually meeting in a room somewhere plotting out collusion. Then news of the Trump Tower meeting between Donald Jr-as well as Kushner and Manafort-with Kremlin connected Russians and the goalposts were again moved-that didn’t prove anything because Donald Jr claims the oppo they got on Hillary Clinton wasn’t any good-which misses the fact that even if this is true-and we don’t know that-it established intent.
Then we learned that Trump personally dictated his son’s response when the story of this meeting came out. The response had been that the meeting was all about adoptions, but, of course, it was a quid pro quo: adoptions was the quo-what the Russians wanted: the end of the Magnitsky Act-the quid was what the Trump team wanted: oppo on Clinton. Now it emerges that the night before Trump personally dictated this false statement he spoke to Putin about: adoptions.
President Donald Trump personally “dictated” a misleading statement about his son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer last year that said they primarily “discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children,” The Washington Postreported Monday.
The initial statement Donald Trump Jr. provided to the press, which was reportedly dictated by his father, read:
“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 statement did not mention that Donald Trump Jr. had been offered compromising information about Hillary Clinton in exchange for taking the meeting. And it was crafted by the president one day after he discussed “adoptions” with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a dinner at the G20 summit.
Asked about that dinner later, Trump told the New York Times that he and Putin “just talked about things. Actually, it was very interesting; we talked about adoptions.”
The fact that Trump and Putin spoke about the adoption issue — which is intimately connected to the US’ sanctions policy— the night before Trump reportedly crafted his son’s statement about the Trump Tower meeting raises questions about whether Putin played a role, directly or indirectly, in influencing the version of events Trump’s team relayed to the press.
UPDATE: Yet another question for Mueller.