Donald Trump Jr.'s Russia email scandal shakes the presidency, v4: Cover of TIME

[Madmick]

Previous thread versions:

• v3: Donald Trump Jr.’s Russia email scandal shakes the presidency, v3: Trump fixated on leakers
• v2: Donald Trump Jr.’s Russia emails shake the presidency ***UPDATE: Gowdy Excoriates Trump***
• v1: Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort met with Kremlin lawyer in June: Don Jr. confirms meeting.

For those who aren't yet familiar with this week's top breaking story, Wikipedia offers a succinct summary if you follow this link:
Wikipedia: Trump campaign–Russian meeting

The story was broke by The New York Times which won more Pulitzers than any other journalistic body this year. You can check out the transcripts for yourself:
NYT: Read the Emails on Donald Trump Jr.’s Russia Meeting

Meanwhile, Robert Mueller, the special counsel leading the Department of Justice’s investigation into Russian interference in the election, is adding the emails to his evidence list.

Meanwhile, it looks like Donnie Jr. might have finally made Daddy proud. President can now add a 12th cover to that wall of his. This time #12 is actually real:
WaPo: A Time magazine with Trump on the cover hangs in his golf clubs. It’s fake.

Fake News #12. Sad!:

Real News #12:

Donald Trump Jr.’s Email Scandal Lands Cover of Time

The cover image features Donald Trump Jr., along with the contents of his bombshell emails revealing that in June 2016, he had met with a Kremlin-linked lawyer who offered incriminating information on Hillary Clinton. The New York Times first broke the story of the emails earlier this week.

The swirling controversy is being described as the first piece of “smoking gun” evidence the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the presidential election.

“The most pressing question of our time might be: How bad is it?” writer David Von Drehle asks for the new issue.

It appears to be working, but I can't tell:
Twitter Roasts Donald Trump Jr. For Tweeting Alleged Evidence Of Collusion With Russia

And Don Jr.’s dad, President Trump, says he has his oldest son’s back. “My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency," Trump said in a statement on Tuesday.

As journalist Yasher Ali pointed out, the president has also used the phrase “high-quality” to describe his clothing line at Macy’s and people from Mexico.

Meanwhile, I may have answered my own question from the previous thread because...

It really is getting interesting. Hmmm...wonder why? What is Jared hiding?
Kushner pushed for more aggressive defense of Trump Jr. meeting

...well well well. A possible explanation:
Russia scandal goes well beyond Trump: GOP leaders definitely knew about hacking — did they benefit too?

Leading Republicans knew about Russian hacking long before Trump's nomination. They said nothing and did nothing
Heather Digby Parton

Despite Europe’s clear disdain for President Trump it seems as though he’s over there every other week. In fact he’s arriving in France on Thursday at the invitation of President Emmanuel Macron to help celebrate Bastille Day and have dinner at the Eiffel Tower. Considering that Trump has implied repeatedly that Paris is nothing but a hellhole these days, it’s a testament to just how desperate he is to get out of Washington. The heat is on and he wants out of the kitchen.

You have certainly heard that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort met with a Russian lawyer to get some promised dirt on Hillary Clinton that was represented as being part of a Russian government program to help Trump get elected. Now we know their breathless protestations that they didn’t know nothin’ about no Russians were lies, and we also know that this particular tawdry scheme reached into the highest levels of the campaign. We’ll have to wait for the next shoe to drop. There is always another shoe.

There was one new story on Wednesday that added an interesting detail to the saga and points to a possible larger conspiracy. McClatchy reported that House and Senate investigators as well as the Justice Department are looking at the Trump campaign’s digital operation, one of Jared Kushner’s pet projects (financed by big-daddy benefactor Robert Mercer), to determine if it may have worked with Russia’s sophisticated micro-targeting and propaganda program during the 2016 campaign.

McClatchy also reported that the Justice Department is looking into “whether Trump’s campaign pointed Russian cyber operatives to certain voting jurisdictions in key states – areas where Trump’s digital team and Republican operatives were spotting unexpected weakness in voter support for Hillary Clinton.” That’s an issue I’ve written about previously here on Salon, based on some post-election investigative reporting by the New York Times.

This raises once again the question of just what was going on in the Republican Party during this period. After all, it wasn’t just Donald Trump who benefited from Russian hacking. The GOP-dominated House majority was a major beneficiary as well.

Remember, the congressional leadership knew in 2015 that it was happening. Reuters has reported that the so-called Gang of Eight (Republican leaders in Congress) was told that Russian hackers were attacking the Democratic Party but that the information was so top secret they could not share it. As we know, hackers attacked the Democratic National Committee and the personal email of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. But they also hacked the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and information gleaned from that hack was put to use in some 2016 campaigns for Congress.

Also recall that one month before Donald Trump Jr. took that meeting with the Russian lawyer, House Majority Leader Kevin “loose lips” McCarthy was talking about Trump’s connections to Vladimir Putin in a room full of Republicans:

A month before Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination, one of his closest allies in Congress — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — made a politically explosive assertion in a private conversation on Capitol Hill with his fellow GOP leaders: that Trump could be the beneficiary of payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016 exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. […]

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation from further exploring McCarthy’s assertion, and swore the Republicans present to secrecy.

This was the day after news had broken that the Russians had hacked the DNC and Ryan and McCarthy had just come from a meeting with the Ukrainian prime minister, who “had described a Kremlin tactic of financing populist politicians to undercut Eastern European democratic institutions.”

Republican leaders kept this from the public for a year, then lied repeatedly about it when confronted until someone produced an audiotape, at which point McCarthy, Ryan, et al., said it was just a joke. Maybe it was. But we know for sure that this idea about Trump being under Putin’s thumb was in the ether in GOP circles even as the party was getting ready to nominate him as its presidential candidate.

Fast forward to late August when the intelligence community was becoming frantic over the evidence of Russian interference and Director of National Intelligence John Brennan held private classified briefings with eight top congressional leaders, telling then that there was evidence the Russians were helping Donald Trump and that unnamed advisers to the Republican nominee might be working with them. In September, intelligence officials convened a big meeting with the Gang of 12, meaning the House and Senate leadership along with chairmen and ranking members of committees on intelligence and homeland security. It was assumed this would result in a “show of solidarity and bipartisan unity” to protest this threat to the integrity of the American democratic process.

That was an erroneous assumption. The Republicans refused to sign anything that implicated the Russian government, only agreeing to tell state elections officials to beware of “malefactors” attempting to hack election software. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reportedly said he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly “an act of partisan politics.” That was that.

Since the election, when Republican officials aren’t actively helping the White House cover up and misdirect, as House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes did, with a few exceptions they still dismiss the scandal, even in the face of documentary evidence like the Donald Trump Jr. emails.

There’s a lot of punditry every day bemoaning the fact that President Trump refuses to admit that the Russian interference in the campaign happened, seeing it as a stubborn (and insulting) rejection of the U.S. intelligence community and a dangerous unwillingness to take needed action to prevent it happening again. But really, why is Trump the only one on the hook? The Republican leadership has turned a blind eye to what was happening since 2015. They knew. They may have even known more about it than Trump did, at least in the beginning. They did nothing about it then and have shown no signs that they plan to do anything in the future.

It’s not all on Donald Trump. He may been the principal beneficiary but the leaders of his party aided and abetted the crime. We may just learn that they benefited from it too.

Also...
Jared Kushner added more than 100 names to his list of foreign contacts in updated security clearance forms

Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and top White House adviser, added more than 100 names to a list of foreign contacts that he submitted to the FBI earlier this year in applying for a government security clearance, according to a new report in The New York Times.

In April, the Times reported that Kushner failed to inform the FBI of meetings he had with the head of a major Russian state-owned bank, Sergey Gorkov, who is a close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and with Russia's ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, during the presidential transition.

Since then, Kushner has reportedly updated the list of contacts three times, adding over 100 people, including Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer whom Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort met with in June 2016. Trump Jr. agreed to the meeting after being promised damaging information about then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, as part of "Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."

While Kushner briefed the president on the meeting with Veselnitskaya, he left out key details and minimized the importance of the encounter, according to sources close to Kushner who spoke with the Times. Trump Jr. has insisted that nothing came of the meeting with Veselnitskaya.

Both Democrats and Republicans are now questioning whether Kushner should have a security clearance at all.

As part of a wide-ranging inquiry into the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia, Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller is reportedly investigating Kushner's communications with Gorkov and Kislyak, as well as his role in the Trump campaign and relationship with former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

In May, The Washington Post reported that Kushner and Kislyak may have discussed establishing a secret communications backchannel between the Trump transition team and the Russian government.

Reuters also reported in May that the FBI is examining whether Gorkov suggested to Kushner that Russian banks could finance Trump associates' business ventures if US sanctions were eased.

***BREAKING***

...and, holy crap, this is outta control, Morning Joe strikes back, LOL!

Former Soviet Counter Intelligence Officer at Meeting With Donald Trump Jr. and Russian Lawyer

WASHINGTON — The Russian lawyer who met with the Trump team after a promise of compromising material on Hillary Clinton was accompanied by a Russian-American lobbyist — a former Soviet counter intelligence officer who is suspected by some U.S. officials of having ongoing ties to Russian intelligence, NBC News has learned.

NBC News is not naming the lobbyist, who denies any current ties to Russian spy agencies. He accompanied the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, to the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower attended by Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort.

The Russian-born American lobbyist served in the Soviet military and emigrated to the U.S., where he holds dual citizenship.

Donald Trump Jr. meeting with Russian attorney: Another person attended 2:49

Veselnitskaya acknowledged to NBC News that she was accompanied by at least one other man, though she declined to identify him.

The presence at the meeting of a Russian-American with suspected intelligence ties is likely to be of interest to special counsel Robert Mueller and the House and Senate panels investigating the Russian election interference campaign.

Related: What's Next in the Trump-Russia Saga? Here's What We Know Now

Contacted by NBC News, representatives for Kushner and Manafort declined to comment.

Alan Futerfas, the attorney retained by Donald Trump Jr., confirmed he has spoken to the individual.

"It’s very simple,” Futerfas said. "The person was described as a friend of Emin [Agalarov]’s and maybe as a friend of Natalia [Veselnitskaya]’s.”

Agalarov is a pop star and a client of Rob Goldstone, a music publicist who arranged the meeting with Trump Jr. Agalarov appeared in a music video with Trump when the Miss Universe pageant, which Trump owned at the time, was held in Moscow in 2013.

Futerfas said he has talked with that individual who came to the meeting with Veselnitskaya. "He is a U.S. citizen. He told me specifically he was not working for the Russian government, and in fact laughed when I asked him that question.”

Futerfas confirmed that, “for the purpose of security or otherwise, the names were reviewed” but said Trump Jr. knew nothing about the man's background at the time of the meeting.

When asked about whether he had concerns, knowing what he knows now, Futerfas responded: “I have absolutely no concerns about what was said in that meeting.”

Veselnitskaya, in an exclusive interview with NBC News, denied having any connection to the Kremlin and insisted the meeting was to discuss sanctions, not the presidential campaign.

Exclusive: Russian Lawyer Responds to Trump Jr. Emails 2:09
In an email exchange released by Trump Jr., the president's eldest son wrote "I love it" to Goldstone when told about possibly getting his hands on material potentially damaging to the Clinton campaign.

Goldstone told Trump Jr. that the meeting would be with a "Russian government attorney" and that the information was "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." Trump Jr. responded enthusiastically, "If it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer."

Related: Trump's Lawyer Says President Was Unaware of Son's Russian Emails

Trump Jr. said after releasing the emails that, "in retrospect, I probably would have done things a little differently."

President Trump has defended his son's decision to meet with Veselnitskaya, saying "most people would have taken that meeting."

"My son is a wonderful young man. He took a meeting with a Russian lawyer, not a government lawyer but a Russian lawyer," Trump said Thursday in a joint press conference in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron. "From a practical standpoint most people would have taken that meeting. It's called opposition research or research into your opponent."

Ken Dilanian and Natasha Lebedeva reported from Washington. Hallie Jackson reported from Paris.

Probably just a nothingburger. After all, Trump's family members and seniormost advisers are deliberately and repeatedly covering up or lying about their involvement with Kremlin-attached Russians because that's what they're scared will get out: a big fat nothingburger. That narrative makes sense of their behavior.

It's not as if someone like Putin who has been known to assassinate journalists sees anything here worth killing anyone over. Nothing shady like that could possibly be going down...

Republican donor kills himself after talking about working with Russian hackers to get Hillary Clinton's emails
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/republican-donor-kills-himself-talking-021051687.html

A GOP donor and opposition researcher who reportedly tried to work with Russian hackers to retrieve deleted emails from a private server used by Hillary Clinton, has committed suicide, according to public records cited in a Chicago Tribune report.

Peter Smith killed himself days after he was interviewed by The Wall Street Journal where he claimed to be working with Russian hackers to retrieve some 33,000 deleted Clinton emails and pass them to Michael Flynn, a former campaign adviser to Donald Trump.

Death records from Minnesota show that Smith, 81, killed himself in a hotel through "asphyxiation due to displacement of oxygen in confined space with helium" on May 14. Smith was found with a bag over his head, a helium source, and a suicide note that read there was "NO FOUL PLAY WHATSOEVER" regarding his death.

Smith also apologized to the authorities and attributed his final decision to a "recent bad turn in health," according to the records cited by the Tribune, which also claimed his $5 million life insurance policy was close to expiring.

A Mayo Clinic located near the hotel denied to confirm whether Smith was a patient, the Tribune said. Smith's former associates said he was suffering from health issues and frequently complained of heart problems.


When reaching out to several hacking groups, Smith implied he was working with Flynn, then-candidate Donald Trump's senior adviser and eventual national security adviser. Details on whether Flynn was involved in Smith's mission are not known. Smith told The Journal that although he knew Flynn, he never said whether Flynn was involved.

Smith's account is consistent with the findings from US investigators examining Russia's involvement in the 2016 US presidential election, according to sources cited by The Journal. Reports compiled by intelligence agencies say that Russian hackers discussed ways to acquire emails from Clinton's server and give them to Flynn through an intermediary.

Clinton's emails were a major talking point for Trump and his surrogates during the 2016 presidential campaign, which only escalated after the FBI recommended no criminal charges against Clinton.

Spoiler: McDonald's Newest Item in Honor of President Trump

#Impeachburger

 

[hillelslovak87]

Red handed......in yellow print.......

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

Red handed......in yellow print.......

This and the lack of charges sorta kills the thread for me.

 

[Throttlehead]

White House staffers are 'pointing fingers at one another' in the fallout surrounding Trump Jr.'s emails

Citing two of its sources, CNN said it was Kushner's attorneys who discovered Trump Jr.'s emails about the meeting with Veselnitskata and they were going to turn that information over to the Senate Intelligence Committee, one of the congressional panels investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

 

[hillelslovak87]

This and the lack of charges sorta kills the thread for me.

I think Time magazine wants you to buy their magazine so you can stare at Donald Trump Jr's derpy fuckin face all the time.

I......dont trust their business model......

 

[Striker Fox]

 

[Madmick]

White House staffers are 'pointing fingers at one another' in the fallout surrounding Trump Jr.'s emails

Citing two of its sources, CNN said it was Kushner's attorneys who discovered Trump Jr.'s emails about the meeting with Veselnitskata and they were going to turn that information over to the Senate Intelligence Committee, one of the congressional panels investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Oh, shit. I was wondering if someone would crack. Nothing like that Dostoyevsky effect. Bring on the infighting!

 

[Throttlehead]

Trump's lawyers knew about Trump Jr. emails weeks ago: report
Trump said in an interview Wednesday with Reuters that he only found out recently about his son’s meeting with the Russian lawyer last summer who was presented as having compromising information on campaign rival Hillary Clinton.

“No, that I didn’t know until a couple of days ago when I heard about this,” Trump said when asked if he knew his eldest son was meeting with attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya.

 

[M3t4tr0n]

Bu bu but Hillary!

 

[Madmick]

Trump's lawyers knew about Trump Jr. emails weeks ago: report
Trump said in an interview Wednesday with Reuters that he only found out recently about his son’s meeting with the Russian lawyer last summer who was presented as having compromising information on campaign rival Hillary Clinton.

“No, that I didn’t know until a couple of days ago when I heard about this,” Trump said when asked if he knew his eldest son was meeting with attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Bu bu but Hillary!

I love how they had to fill spaces, so it says "Murder".

 

[A_bomb47]

Is that Time Magazine cover one of those fake covers hanging in Trump's office or something?
If so, truly pathetic.

 

[Madmick]

Is that Time Magazine cover one of those fake covers hanging in Trump's office or something?
If so, truly pathetic.

You can see the real cover from that week to the left of it with Kate Winslet.

 

[M3t4tr0n]

I love how they had to fill spaces, so it says "Murder".

They forgot a slice of bacon and a couple onion rings for pizzagate and demon assassins.

 

[KaNesDeath]

To @Letssnuggle @ocfightfan

https://transition.fec.gov/pages/brochures/fed_state_law_brochure.pdf

Foreign Nationals
Prohibition.
The Act prohibits foreign nationals from making contributions or expenditures in connection with any United States election (federal, state or local), either directly or through another person. 2 U.S.C. §441e; 11 CFR 110.4(a)(1). The following groups and individuals are considered "foreign nationals" and are therefore subject to the prohibition:

Foreign governments
Foreign political parties
Foreign corporations
Foreign associations
Foreign partnerships

 

[Throttlehead]

Oh, shit. I was wondering if someone would crack. Nothing like that Dostoyevsky effect. Bring on the infighting!

When white collar criminals get a whisper of jail time, they will crack bigly each and every time.

 

[WiolentOne]

I have a feeling this thread will go the way of all the other nothingburgers before it.

 

[Madmick]

I have a feeling this thread will go the way of all the other nothingburgers before it.

Yeah, that's why all of the top officials-- including Trump himself-- are lying their asses off. He just got caught in a lie about his knowledge of the emails.

Because that makes sense of their behavior. You've put the pieces together. They're afraid of one giant #nothingburger! coming out.

 

[Cake4Breakfast]

Yeah, that's why all of the top officials-- including Trump himself-- are lying their asses off. He just got caught in a lie about his knowledge of the emails.

Because that makes sense of their behavior. You've put the pieces together. They're afraid of one giant #nothingburger! coming out.

And you know people are just repeating shit they heard from conservative talking heads when they bleat the word "nothingburger."

Where I come from, people get slapped for saying something like that.

 

[Fedorable]

some russian lawyer who was let in the country by Loretta Lynch?

If someone came to me and said, "hey Fedorable" I would say, "how the heck did you find me?" but after that they continued, "I know of someone who did something illegal!" I would reply, "What?" and then find out what the illegal thing was that they did and if the proper authorities should be notified or anything of obligation I might feel necessary.

 

[Metusalemi]

When white colour criminals get a whisper of jail time, they will crack bigly each and every time.

*collar

Was that a freudian slip?