Forget Pee-Pee Tapes: the Kremlin Just Dropped a Bigger Bomb on the White House

[fleur-de-lisa]

http://observer.com/2018/04/lawyer-from-trump-tower-meeting-natalya-veselnitskaya-is-an-informant/

John Schindler's latest . . .

It’s Trump’s shady business dealings and how they connect to powerful Russians that constitute the real scandal here. While it’s likely that the president has had some sort of less-than-above-board relationship with Moscow’s intelligence agencies for many years, as I recently elaborated, a Bondian secret agent he certainly is not. KremlinGate is fundamentally a long-term financial-cum-influence scandal with an element of espionage thrown in—not the other way around.

That said, during the presidential campaign, Team Trump made multiple hush-hush outreaches to the Kremlin, most of them inept and bumbling, which raise glaring questions for anyone versed in counterintelligence. None of these clandestine parleys has gotten more attention than the June 9, 2016 meeting held in Trump Tower in Manhattan between a top Team Trump delegation (including Donald Trump, Jr. and Paul Manafort, Trump’s then-campaign manager who has an inordinate degree of dubious Kremlin links) and several Russians, led by Natalya Veselnitskaya, a lawyer known in Moscow for her links to Kremlin power circles.

This meeting was ostensibly about adoptions, a ridiculous line the White House stuck with when word of the Trump Tower rendezvous reached the media many months after the event. Eventually, Don Jr. conceded that the meeting’s real purpose was obtaining kompromat on Hillary Clinton, specifically allegations that the Democratic presidential nominee had her own unsavory ties to Russia. In exchange, Veselnitskaya wanted help getting sanctions off Moscow, in particular, some relief regarding the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 U.S. law that punishes Russians suspected of human rights abuses.

Indeed, one of the attendees at the Trump Tower meeting, Rinat Akhmetshin, who admits to being a former officer in Kremlin military intelligence or GRU—with all the caveats that implies in Putin’s Russia—is a dodgy character who has been engaged in aggressive lobbying against the Magnitsky Act. However, Akhmetshin is a naturalized American and well known in Washington, D.C.; while he has ties to Moscow officials, Veselnitskaya was the delegation boss, the one who was speaking for the Kremlin at Trump Tower.

[triron]

1. I really doubt Schindler has the story quite right. Bet Mueller has a better picture.

[tmaynardr]

2. Observer.com

Isn't the Observer owned by Jared Kushner? Why do we post to this site? I enjoy reading Schindler's analysis, but how trustworthy can he be if his bills are paid by Jared?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

3. Crazy to see Jared's old paper publishing pieces....

....about stories that directly involve Jared.

[BobTheSubgenius]

4. But...but...

...I don't want to forget the pee-pee tape.

Despite all the other things that are vastly more important, that one is salacious to the point of hilarity. It has its own mythology now, and is readily identifiable to almost any conscious person in the world, even if referenced obliquely.

Definitive proof of its existence and contents isn't going to change the trajectory of this entire scandal more than an iota, but it will be a delicious little bonbon at the end of the main course...a treason indictment, or something equally meaty and stick-to-your-ribs.

[NBachers]

5. I don't get what the big bomb is here, that the Kremlin dropped on the White House.

[Ccarmona]

6. The bomb is Natalya Veselnitskaya

She’s A Full blown, admitted Russian agent. She wouldn’t have agreed to be interviewed by Richard Engle and offered up such an admission without the direct consent of Putin.
This was a shot across the bow to show Trump, Putin’s not happy and could very easily release the worst Kompromat he has to help accelerate Trump’s demise.

[Honeycombe8]

10. Old news, as far as I can tell. She recently had an interview...

where she admitted ties to the Kremlin, being an agent or whatever, whereas before she said she was just a lawyer w/no link to the Kremlin (which everyone knew was a lie...EVERYONE in Russia is controlled by the Kremlin).

One new thing is that the mtg was about discovering if Hillary had links with the Kremlin, whereas before, that email that Donald Jr. responded to stated the mtg was to see about Hillary emails. So that's new, although not much of a difference, I think. Collusion is collusion, regardless of the type of info Don Jr was looking to get.

[kentuck]

7. But you notice in this paragraph, he did not mention Jared ??

<snip>
That said, during the presidential campaign, Team Trump made multiple hush-hush outreaches to the Kremlin, most of them inept and bumbling, which raise glaring questions for anyone versed in counterintelligence. None of these clandestine parleys has gotten more attention than the June 9, 2016 meeting held in Trump Tower in Manhattan between a top Team Trump delegation (including Donald Trump, Jr. and Paul Manafort, Trump’s then-campaign manager who has an inordinate degree of dubious Kremlin links) and several Russians, led by Natalya Veselnitskaya, a lawyer known in Moscow for her links to Kremlin power circles.

[czarjak]

8. " Nation of laws", "Rule of law",...

Very important, believe me.

[FakeNoose]

9. Articles by John Schindler

... seem to have a lot of good stuff. He must have good access in the intelligence communities.