President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign, according to three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it.
The meeting was also attended by the president’s campaign chairman at the time, Paul J. Manafort, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kushner recently disclosed the meeting, though not its content, in confidential government documents described to The New York Times.
The Times reported the existence of the meeting on Saturday. But in subsequent interviews, the advisers and others revealed the motivation behind it.
The meeting — at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, two weeks after Donald J. Trump clinched the Republican nomination — points to the central question in federal investigations of the Kremlin’s meddling in the presidential election: whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. The accounts of the meeting represent the first public indication that at least some in the campaign were willing to accept Russian help.
After the first Times story broke the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, who has ties to the Kremlin, responded with this statement:
“Nothing at all was discussed about the presidential campaign,” she said, adding, “I have never acted on behalf of the Russian government and have never discussed any of these matters with any representative of the Russian government.”
Uh huh.
However after this second story came out, Jr. issued the following statement:
So Donnie Jr. went to the Russians because he was looking for evidence of Hillary's financial ties with the Russians?JUST IN: Donald Trump Jr. responds to reports that he met with Kremlin-linked lawyer during campaign http://pic.twitter.com/5mqRX38Wio— NBC News (@NBCNews) July 9, 2017
Seriously?
This meeting took place in June of 2016, which was around the time that Guccifer 2.0 claimed to have hacked the DNC and started posting their information online.
Which makes me wonder just where did Trump Jr. think this woman came by this information?
Is it possible he thought it was from the DNC hack, or did he think perhaps they had penetrated Hillary's private server?
Which is father openly asked them to hack only a month later.
It should be noted that Don Jr. also made this statement to the Times back in March of 2015:
Donald Trump Jr. had denied participating in any campaign-related meetings with Russian nationals when he was interviewed by The Times in March. “Did I meet with people that were Russian? I’m sure, I’m sure I did,” he said. “But none that were set up. None that I can think of at the moment. And certainly none that I was representing the campaign in any way, shape or form.”
Well gee that was a lie.
It should be pointed out that though Donnie Jr. himself did not have any official role in his father's campaign that Paul Manafort, who was also on this wild goose chase, was Trump's campaign manager.
In my mind this is the clearest evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians that we have seen thus far.
Source http://ift.tt/2sWkD7P
