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| George Papadopoulos has one degree of separation from Jeff Seasons and three from Trump. |
Drilling down on Papadopoulos’s plea, we see a Trump campaign operative engaged in a prolonged effort to obtain Clinton dirt from the Russians. Moreover, we know he kept a “senior policy advisor,” a “supervisory campaign official” and a “high-ranking official of the campaign” in the loop. That’s no less than three other Trump associates who were aware of and/or countenancing the effort to work with Russian officials to find “dirt” on Clinton.
The Lawfare Blog notes that Papadopoulos directly interacted with Trump about Russian contacts:
"The stipulation also contains some rather damaging information about President Trump himself. Papadopoulos says he attended a “national security” meeting on March 31, 2016, at which Trump himself was present, along with his other foreign policy advisers. In that meeting, Papadopoulos told the group that he had connections to arrange a meeting between Trump and Russian President Putin. This means that Trump either knew or should have known about his campaign’s effort to interface with Russia, even as news of various criminal hacking and attempts to interfere with the U.S. election were becoming public."
It’s not clear yet whether Trump also knew that Papadopoulos was on the hunt for information from the Russians about Clinton. However, Trump, if he was paying attention, knew there were contacts with the Russians, something he continually denied publicly. Did Trump forget he heard about contacts between his campaign and the Russians? He says he has an excellent memory, so that’s a problematic defense.
Papadopoulos also has stipulated that “other foreign policy” types were at the March 31 meeting. In the photo from the Trump campaign Web Site we see one of those who was in attendance was now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was named on March 3 chairman of Trump’s National Security Advisory Committee. You will recall he testified under oath he knew of no such contacts between the campaign and Russian officials. That will require explanation.
Yesterday White House spokesliar Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed that Papadopoulos was a nobody and the only meeting he attended was the one of which there is photograph evidence. (Funny how that works out.)
She also claimed to have no idea what the names of the other folks mentioned in the Papadopoulos plea were.
And yet we know this.Sarah Sanders: “I’m not aware of the specific individuals” mentioned in the Papadopoulos plea https://t.co/t9AxPlXpRN— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) October 31, 2017
Okay so that is at the very least all of those people in that meeting (Including Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump.) who should have known that the Russians were shopping around "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, Michael Flynn who was also having multiple contacts with the Russians, Paul Manafort who Papadopoulos emailed directly, Carter Page who the campaign apparently sent to Moscow to see this so called dirt, and Corey Lewandowski who okayed the trip.Manafort in May: Campaign needs someone low-level to travel to Moscow so as not to send a signal.— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) October 31, 2017
Carter Page traveled there in early July. http://pic.twitter.com/jmCCvjR4c0
And this goes as far back as March of last year when Papadopoulos was trying to arrange a meeting with members of the campaign staff and Russian operatives.
Which was at least two months before Trump Jr. had his infamous meeting in Trump Tower with the Kremlin connected lawyer on June 3rd.
So how long has Trump known that the Russians were shopping around "dirt" on Hilary Clinton?
A better question is "When did he NOT know?"
Source http://ift.tt/2xJpyau
