No One Investigating Trump-Russia Was Looking For Don Jr.

[DonViejo]

By SAM THIELMAN Published JULY 12, 2017 6:00 AM

With a cast of characters like Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and Carter Page, it seemed like only a matter of time before at least one of them had to explain a paper trail describing suspicious contact—whether through naïveté or malice—with Russian agents trying to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

It just didn’t seem very likely that the person in question would announce that he had taken a meeting because he had been promised damaging information on Hillary Clinton as part of an explicit Russian government effort to help Donald Trump’s campaign. Or that this person would post the paper trail on Twitter. Or that he would be the President’s eldest son.

On Tuesday at 11 a.m. ET on the nose, Donald Trump, Jr. posted to his public Twitter account a one-paragraph statement followed by four pages of emails between himself and Rob Goldstone, a British music publicist and acquaintance of the Trump family. The emails were whited-out in a few places and described in frank terms what a “Russian government attorney”—Goldstone’s words—had to offer: damaging information about Trump’s presumptive opponent in the general election, Hillary Clinton, that was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” That effort was “helped along” by Aras Agalarov, the 51st-richest man in Russia and a close ally of both the Russian government and Trump himself, as well as his son Emin Agalarov, a singer and Goldstone’s client.

Goldstone told Trump Jr. the offer came to the Agalarovs through “the Crown Prosecutor of Russia,” an apparent reference to Russia’s Prosecutor General, Putin appointee Yury Chaika, who is known to be close to Veselnitskaya. Goldstone told reporters the reference in the damning email was meant to refer to Veselnitskaya herself when asked to clarify. Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, and Manafort, the former campaign chairman, were forwarded that entire email chain, according to the New York Times.

Trump Jr. seemed to believe that releasing those emails on Twitter put the matter to rest, and spent a couple of hours subsequent to the revelations retweeting support from conservative media figures like Mike Huckabee and Bill O’Reilly.

Link to tweet

more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/no-one-expected-trump-jr-to-be-closest-to-russian-government-interference

[Goonch]

1. Jr. Butt-Head

[Tommy_Carcetti]

2. "Everybody thinks I'm this idiot, but nobody knows it was all just a big fakade."

[SweetieD]

3. The whole family is involved especially Ivanka.

[Shell_Seas]

4. Y'all are forgetting

Kushner and Manafort were also in that email and the meeting.

JR is the fall guy.

[underpants]

5. Well, if you think about Jr.'s move was a success

I mean no one is talking about the actual NY Times article. He "got out in front of it".

So....yeah.... there's that. If you think about it

[woodsprite]

6. I'd love to see those emails with full headers turned on

for tracking/validation purposes. I hope the NYTimes has seen the full headers and followed the tracking. It seems too easy, and I can't fathom anyone being that dumb that they tweet the whole shebang for the world to see.

Did someone cook these emails and throw Don Jr. under the bus? I'm totally leary that it doesn't pass the sniff test.

AND as everyone is talking about this now, I'm wondering what repulsive action is getting pushed through the House and Senate.

[GeorgeGist]

7. You're not suggesting the Trump's would pull a CON?