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Like so much of Watergate 2.0 it all comes down to how much you believe in coincidences. To believe that there was no collusion with Russia-or in Comeygate-you have to have a very deep belief in the power of coincidences:
1. The fact that the DNC emails were leaked at the absolutely optimal moment to do the maximum damage to Democratic hopes to unify the party at the 2016 July convention was just a big and very luck coinkydink
2. Ditto that the Comey letter was released at the precise moment in the campaign it could do the maximum damage to Clinton’s election chances-if it had been released say September 28, 2016 rather than October 28 it would have caused nary a ripple. But this in no way suggests a conspiracy of the rogue anti Clinton pro Trump agents at the FBI-and possibly with the Trump campaign; remember Giuliani was part of the campaign. And Lara Trump seemed to have foreknowledge of the coming letter too. Nope just another coinkydink.
3. Similarly with Russia, if you’re listening. That too you have to believe was just Trump ‘joking’ about committing treason. Don’t you know to ‘take him seriously not literally?’ That the Russians actually started hacking the emails of top Democrats on that very day as noted in (Chapter A) is just another coinkydink.
UPDATE: Or that per the Mueller Report on the same day Trump directed Michael Flynn to get her emails-and Flynn did in fact work with the late Peter Smith to get her emails-is all a big coinkydink.
4. Another coincydink was Soon it will be Podesta’s time in the barrel. Turns out Roger Stone was just pretending to be speaking to Assange and it was just a lucky guess that he predicted Podesta of all people whose emails Wikileaks would drop in October of the campaign.
FN: Soon after I wrote this chapter we learned it was Jerome Corsi who gave Stone this information-Corsi himself claimed to have just had a lucky guess that it was Podesta. One very enigmatic piece of reporting is the WaPo piece that had Stone talking about Podesta’s emails way back in April of 2016. This story wasn’t looked at in at least the redacted Mueller Report we have seen.
As for Rob Goldstone his version of events also requires us to have a great deal of faith in the power of coincidence.
End of UPDATE
When Goldstone who sent initial email to Donald Jr about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with the Russians wrote about dirt on Clinton that was ‘part of the Russian government’s support of your father’s campaign’-he was just making it all up! Just like Stone made up Podesta’s time in the barrel and I have been in communications with Assange as well as when Trump said Russia, if you’re listening.
When he spoke about the ‘Crown Prosecutor of Russia’ that was again, just him making stuff up. So Goldstone would have us believe:
Rob Goldstone, the man who sent the email to Donald Trump Jr. that proclaimed “Russia and its government’s support” for the Trump campaign, now says he had no idea what he was talking about.
“In fact, not only did he not know the Russian government had launched a broader program of “active measures” against the 2016 election, Goldstone also says he made up some of the most important details in the message.”
“Yes, Goldstone says, his client, Russian pop singer Emin Agalarov, did ask him to reach out to Trump Jr. and communicate the offer of help that Emin’s father, Aras, said he’d received from someone influential.”
“But the email’s reference to “the crown prosecutor of Russia” — which led subsequent reports to identify the person as Yuri Chaika, Russia’s chief federal prosecutor — was all Goldstone, he now says.”
The message may be the “most famous email in history,” Goldstone says — or at the very least, the most famous email of the Russia investigation. It began a back and forth with Trump Jr. that culminated in the now-infamous meeting at Trump Tower.
His description in his interview and in a new book comport closely with what he has said in the past, including in testimony released by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
There were many questions raised by Goldstone’s questionable version of events. One question having read both his and the other Trump Tower meeting participants is to what extent their stories were coordinated-he does say that he spoke to Donald Jr’s lawyers before the NYTimes broke the story-Scott Balber seems to have kept a pretty tight ship.
“The email seemed to be black and white evidence of the Russian government’s support for Trump’s presidential aspirations, as well as confirmation that high level Trump campaign officials were aware of Russia’s efforts to affect the election outcome.”
“But Goldstone’s current explanation of the email now undercuts the many ways it seems to point toward those conclusions.”
“Reports after the emails surfaced pegged the “Crown prosecutor” as Chaika, the prosecutor general of Russia, and a Putin appointee. The reference seemed to indicate that an official of the Russian government was offering the incriminating documents.”
“But Goldstone now says he was actually referencing Veselnitskaya in the email. Goldstone said “crown prosecutors” in the United Kingdom, where he grew up, were akin to federal prosecutors in the U.S., so he used that term when Emin described Veselnitskaya as a “well-connected” lawyer.”
“Veselnitskaya originally said she had no connection to the Russian government, although she and Chaika are now known to have been in coordination.”
“Goldstone says he didn’t know that.”
Again, just another coinydink like when Stone said it would soon be Podesta’s time in the barrel this was just a lucky guess-it wasn’t that he know Wikileaks had Podesta’s emails but that Stone thought Podesta was in big trouble because his brother Tony Podesta also worked for Stone and Manafort’s very sleazy consulting firm. But again, per Nance’s Law: coincidences take a lot of planning.
“I get it why it’s so intriguing to people,” Goldstone said. “It is bizarre that she would have a connection to somebody who would hold maybe that title. I just didn’t know that.”
Yet another amazing coinydink that he made up a title that suggests someone who really does exist and who in any case coordinated with Vesselnitskaya. .
Here’s a key quote from NY Times on said coordination:
But interviews and records show that in the months before the meeting, Ms. Veselnitskaya had discussed the allegations with one of Russia’s most powerful officials, the prosecutor general, Yuri Y. Chaika. And the memo she brought with her closely followed a document that Mr. Chaika’s office had given to an American congressman two months earlier, incorporating some paragraphs verbatim.”
So in the etymology of the Trump Tower Russia Collusion Meeting of June, 2016 we now see that both Aras Agalarov and Vessenitskaya spoke to the Russian prosecutor general prio
Here’s another:
“Goldstone’s email also corroborated what U.S. intelligence agencies have said for over a year: that Russia favored President Trump in the 2016 election.”
But Goldstone says he had no insight into how the Russian government felt about the race; instead he says that his reference to Russia’s support of Trump was more general: “I had no idea what I was talking about.”
Amazing how someone can totally make up stuff and on a purely random basis guess what was actually happening exactly. What are the odds of this? Maybe Nate Silver can provide us guidance.
He now says he was just bloviating — attempting to flatter Trump Jr. in an effort to get a meeting.
In other words his defense is just like Stone’s defense: he’s full of crap and makes up wild stories that then somehow actually turn out to be true. But as an admitted liar how can we be sure he was lying then rather than lying now?
Abramson has more on Goldstone:
“…one week after Papadopoulos took secret meetings with Putin allies (and possibly Kremlin agents) in Athens, guess who emails Donald Trump Jr. saying that he can get Clinton’s emails to the Trump campaign? Yes—Rob Goldstone.”
“Goldstone had previously been a successful advocate for Kremlin agents Aras and Emin Agalarov—who, per the HPSCI Majority Report, wanted Goldstone to help them get the 2013 Miss Universe pageant to Moscow by raising the issue with Trump’s pageant team. So Goldstone did just that.”
“We don’t know why the Kremlin decided not to use Papadopoulos to get Clinton’s emails to Trump, but we can guess: Papadopoulos had compromised himself to an Australian diplomat by late April; he’d been too clumsy in his trips to Greece; the Russians wanted a more direct pipeline.”
“The Emin-Goldstone-Jr.-Trump pipeline was perfect because—contrary to U.S. media reports—Emin (and his dad) and Trump were under a “letter-of-intent” for a Trump Tower Moscow deal *hugely* lucrative for both of them in late May/early June 2016. And the middlemen were trustworthy.
“Goldstone was Emin’s agent, paid well, and had proven himself loyal. Jr. and Emin had stayed in contact since the 2013 letter-of-intent was signed in Moscow—which letter Emin admitted to Forbes. Emin’s dad told a website in February ’17 the letter had just expired in January.” ’17.”
In any case, Adam Schiff and the Democrats intend to bring back many of the Trump co-conspirator witnesses in for more testimony next year-Nunes’ GOP simply took the denials at face value and proclaimed ‘You see, Democrats? No evidence of collusion.’
Am certainly looking forward to Goldstone’s public testimony next year.
UPDATE: 7 months into Dem leadership of the House we’re still waiting-so far only Michael Cohen has testified publicly-before being sent to prison for crimes that Trump directed him to commit but is paying zero price for either from either legally or politically-Pelosi’s leadership has mostly been asleep these first 7 months. She’s gone through the motions to an extent but there’s clearly no sense of urgency. Wether Mueller’s testimony on July 24 will be a new start time will tell.
The House Judiciary Dems did vote for a slew of subpoenas last week for Trump co-conspirators.
Wether this is the start of something-what happens when Jared Kusher, Jeff Sessions, Rod Rosenstein, Michael Fynn, etc ignore the subpoena -will the Dems be quick to enforce the subpoenas? Time will tell