DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Trump-Russia Pt.2

We know how it works.

Russia probe pile-on: No fewer than 9 teams investigating collusion, meddling

The expansive investigation into Russian meddling and possible collusion with Trump associates has grown so vast that no fewer than nine congressional committees and federal agencies are now examining some offshoot of the controversy.

And despite the inquiries to date having produced no indictments or hard evidence of collusion between the president's men and a foreign power, even more officials and entities are looking to bite off a piece of the probe.

“The main problem is that after months and months of multiple investigations, no one has found any evidence of collusion,” a congressional source told Fox News. “So the Democrats are trying to shift the focus from collusion to obstruction, and since it doesn’t look like that will pan out for them either, they surely have some new accusation ready to put out there. It’s in their political interest to drag out these investigations as long as possible.”

Proponents of the probes warn nothing less than democracy is at stake -- but the frustration in Trump World is palpable.

Anthony Scaramucci, the former Trump adviser who was the subject of a since-retracted CNN.com story on Russia, on Thursday called the narrative a "bunch of nonsense."

The investigation, though, shows no sign of abating, amid a steady drip-drip of news reports on questionable Russia contacts that only feed the curiosity in Washington.

The furthest-reaching of all the investigations would be the special counsel probe led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller, appointed in May to examine any connections between Trump associates and Russian officials in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election. Mueller’s crew, which immediately absorbed several high-powered lawyers, joined eight other investigative bodies examining aspects of the Russia controversy.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/06/...n-meddling.html

People who do things when guilty for 500, Alex.

Answer: He fired the man investigating possible connections.

Hint: The person has no affiliation to democrats or liberals.

Is that kind of like wiping your computer clean of the e-mails "YOU" deemed not important? Is that kind of like refusing to turn over the server?

Or, is that different? Or do you hold different standards for different people?

See, firing someone doesn't mean the info they had is gone. It doesn't end any investigation. To think otherwise is foolish.

Purposefully evading the law and eliminating evidence or possible evidence, IS against the law.


If Trump did something, nail him for it.

Sadly, I've never heard a hillary supporter say the same.

That there "Hint" of yours, is that the guy who everyone hated until Trump fired him? Then the Dems cried and cried for this wonderful man and all he did for Hillary?

Some Hint.

There it is!!! Lmfao

What's hilarious is how you bring hillary up anytime it suits your pov, yet if, when others do, (me) you make some snarky comment.

2 faced much?

You wanna fact check how often I mention her compared to you?

Trust me, you're the one looking like a borderline stalker.

I've been consistent with that topic, seeing as how I mostly don't bring her up unless someone else does in response to whatever I said.

Like how you constantly respond to me with "what about Hillary" comments.

But im not the one with this obsession with her. You are. And I find it quite hilarious.

What he snarky comments to end? Stop bringing her up like some stalker ex boyfriend. That crap is weird, bro. Straight up.

Find the receipts where I supported a corporate handpicked neoliberal candidate. Also, find the receipts where I excused Hillary's poor behavior. You've got me confused with someone else.

I'll be waiting.

It's the old, "the other candidate was bad too!" excuse.

They both sucked and neither deserved to be president.

I still maintain my position that conservatives should've chose either kasich or bush.

At least those guys had high moral character.

And Hillary would be President, just like you wanted.

No, she wouldn't. Kasich or bush would be president. I've said that multiple times throughout these threads.

Well why don't you say it again and see if it comes anywhere near the truth this time.

What is your reason for liking those two? Is it because they were the two Republicans that didn't support Trump after the nomination?

I like what kasich has done with running his state.

Now I know GM disagrees and has laid out his reasons why, but I base my opinion on off the fact that under his leadership, Medicaid has expanded, our economy is doing well, and the overall health and welfare of this state has improved.

He doesn't have any character concerns, only policy concerns.

Bush i don't like as much, but that's purely based on policy. However, he also has a high moral character, a better understanding of minorities (I think him speaking Spanish and married to a Latino is a huge plus) and isn't as bought off as the other politicians that were running.

And no, I made those stances clear DURING the election season, so I dunno why you assumed it was because they didn't support trump.

Fair enough. I thought it was a reasonable question.

Trump got by far the most votes during the Republican primaries. He was the people's choice. Cruz was #2, and nobody else was close to him, so he gets an honorable mention.

That's fine. I disagree with conservatives on who they chose.

And that's becoming more clear each passing day.

I voted Cruz in the primary.

yes i know. i paid attention to who said they voted for who.

Who did I vote for in the primary?

don't know. you didn't tell anybody who you voted for. only in the general election.

40 made it very clear he was on the cruz train.

Cruz was a good candidate. The lyin' Ted thing got out of hand and it really wasn't fair to him. To his credit, he did the right thing and supported Trump after the nomination. It takes a big man to set aside something like that for the overall cause.

how was that the right thing? did you see what Trump said about Cruz's wife?

when people talk about politicians having zero backbone, i'm looking directly at people like Cruz. i'm not supporting anybody who trashes my wife. period.

straight up disloyalty. my wife told me she'd bounce if i ever did some crap like that.

and we definitely disagree, he wasn't a good candidate at all. not even by conservative standards.

I don't even remember the details on that. This transcends personal feelings and insults. Start with the idea that a Hillary Presidency would have been a disaster for the country, and who knows what kind of goofball Supreme Court Justice she would have nominated.

When you put it in that context, all of a sudden somebody dissing your wife doesn't sound all that bad (not that I condone that kind of thing.)

again, i completely disagree.

Cruz sacrificed his character and morals in order to endorse a man with none of it.

and i can't start with the idea that hillary would've been a disaster for the country, cause i don't agree with that one bit.

you and i have a complete disconnect. always have.

Yup, nothing new here.

jc...

Trump Collusion Smoking Gun: Russian Hackers Discussed How To Get Clinton Emails To Flynn

By Jason Easley on Thu, Jun 29th, 2017 at 7:22 pm
link

It is being reported that Russian hackers were caught discussing how to get hacked Clinton emails to Mike Flynn of the Trump campaign, which would be proof that Trump colluded with Russia during the 2016 election.

It is being reported that Russian hackers were caught discussing how to get hacked Clinton emails to Mike Flynn of the Trump campaign, which would be proof that Trump colluded with Russia during the 2016 election.

Buried in the middle of a story about how a Republican operative tried to obtain Hillary Clinton’s hacked emails, The Wall Street Journal reported, “Those investigators have examined reports from intelligence agencies that describe Russian hackers discussing how to obtain emails from Mrs. Clinton’s server and then transmit them to Mr. Flynn via an intermediary, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the intelligence.”

This little nugget explains why Donald Trump is so invested in getting rid of the investigation into Mike Flynn. It seems that Flynn is the Russia connection to the Trump campaign, and since he was personally close to Trump, the plausible deniability of the President plummets if Mike Flynn was the person who was coordinating with Russia for the Trump campaign.

If Russia was providing the Trump campaign with information, and Trump was using it, that means that the President Of The United States colluded with a hostile foreign power to win a presidential election. It is no wonder why Republicans are working so diligently to cover this scandal up. If the American people ever find out the truth about how Donald Trump may have won the White House, it won’t only mean the end of Trump, but it could also be the end of the Republican Party as we know it.

The smoke surrounding Trump collusion with Russia is too thick to ignore, and if you look closely, you can see small embers of fire beginning to spark as the possibility that Trump colluded with Russia to win the election is moving closer to taking a spot in the center stage of American politics.

CBS NEWS June 29, 2017, 7:39 PM

Report: GOP operative looked to get Clinton emails from hacker, said he worked with Flynn

link

A Republican opposition researcher, who implied he worked with Michael Flynn, launched an effort to obtain Hillary Clinton's emails that he believed were hacked by Russia, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Peter W. Smith, a GOP operative and private equity executive, launched the project over Labor Day weekend in 2016 according to the Journal. Smith told people he recruited to the effort that he was working with Flynn, who would later briefly serve as President Trump's National Security Adviser. Smith also said he was working with Flynn's son.

Smith would not tell the paper if Flynn was working with the group. However, the paper also reports that intelligence officials have obtained communications between Russian hackers in which they discuss how to obtain Clinton's emails and pass them along to Flynn through a third party.

Those intercepts of the hackers' conversations occurred while Smith's group was operating, intelligence officials told the paper, although they could not conclude that Smith or any members of his team were the supposed third party the Russians' discussed.

Smith's team included lawyers, technology experts, and an investigator in Europe who spoke Russian. He died ten days after he talked to the Journal, at age 81.

The team focused on obtaining the roughly 33,000 emails that had been deleted from Clinton's server – the same emails Mr. Trump had publicly encouraged Russia to find and leak last year, a comment the White House now insists was made in jest. Last year, then-FBI director James Comey said there was no evidence the server had ever been hacked, although he didn't rule out the possibility.

Clinton's private email server, which State Department watchdog ruled in 2016 violated email policy, was an issue that dogged her through the 2016 election campaign. In July 2016, Comey announced that he would not recommend charges be brought against Clinton in the matter. The State Department's inspector general said in May 2016 that hackers had tried to breach Clinton's email server

In May 2017, former FBI director Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel by the Justice Department to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mr. Trump has repeatedly denied allegations that the Russian government interfered in the election to bolster his chances of winning, calling Mueller's investigation a "witch hunt."

Smith told the Journal that his team found five hacker groups that said they had possession of Clinton's emails, including two Russian ones. "We knew the people who had these were probably around the Russian government," Smith told the paper.

In one email sent entice experts to join his team, Smith said that he could introduce them to Flynn's son, and said that the son was helping with the effort. Flynn's son was at that time his father's chief of staff. Smith told other potential recruits that Flynn was working with the team.

Emails obtained by the Journal indicate that Smith and his team believed that Flynn and Flynn's consulting company were assisting their effort. Flynn was fired as National Security Adviser earlier this year for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about conversations he had had with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian Ambassador to the U.S.

Smith said that he never intended to pay for any emails, and that while he believed the Russians had attempted to hack Clinton's email server, he said he did not think they were trying to help Mr. Trump win the election.

party over people bro.. just like Bernie who kissed up to Hillary even after the nasty things she said and it was PROVEN that she had the whole democratic machine working for her and against him even though they should have been unbiased..

It's a sad state of affairs.. I don't know how you can have a primary where you just bash somebody for 8 months, then as soon as the victor is crowned everybody kisses and makes up to show a unified front against the REAL enemy, the other party.. it's like everybody in politics is Kevin Durant..

Word.

Back to the topic..... I guess the 17 agencies that you libs so proudly claimed that concluded RUSSIA,S involvement and hinted that TRUMP was involved in some way is now down to 4 .....fake news and collusion with the lying liberals strikes again.LMAFO

Facts:

Manafort got axed due to questionable ties.

Flynn got fired due to questionable ties.

The transition team, lead by Pence, knew about Flynns ties.

Trump fired Comey over Russia investigation. This was told in the Lester Holt interview.

-Manafort got axed due to questionable ties.

Fake News!
Paul Manafort resigns from Trump campaign
The departure of Trump's embattled campaign chairman comes two days after the nominee shook up his leadership team.

-Flynn got fired due to questionable ties.

Fake News!
Michael Flynn, fired by President Obama, now gives resignation to President Trump
Former acting attorney general Sally Yates testified that Gen. Michael Flynn lied to Vice President Pence when he said he hadn't discussed sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, on May 8 at the Capitol. (Reuters)


-The transition team, lead by Pence, knew about Flynns ties.

Fake News!
Flynn lied to Pence, Pence found that out, complained to Trump and Flynn resigned.


-Trump fired Comey over Russia investigation. This was told in the Lester Holt interview.

Fake News!
The president reiterated his claim that he had been planning to fire Comey even before he received Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's recommendation to do so.

"He's a showboat, he's grandstander, the FBI has been in turmoil," Trump said of Comey in his wide-ranging interview with Holt. "You know that, I know that. Everybody knows that. You take a look at the FBI a year ago, it was in virtual turmoil, less than a year ago. It hasn't recovered from that."

Holt asked Trump if he was "angry with Mr. Comey because of his Russia investigation."

"I just want somebody that's competent," Trump responded. "I am a big fan of the FBI, I love the FBI."

Trump said he never tried to pressure Comey into dropping the FBI probe of the Trump campaign and insisted, "I want to find out if there was a problem in the election having to do with Russia."

Resigned is the polite way of saying "hey, I got fired." It happens to teachers all the time.

Sorry, your brainwashing has no effect on me.

Just ignore Muellers investigation that involves collusion and obstruction of justice. His prosecutors include people who broke up mobs.

Sorry I don't let your Fake News stories fly without challenge.

But do carry on with the old Liberal twist.

Trump’s Son Met With Russian Lawyer After Being Promised Damaging Information on Clinton

By JO BECKER, MATT APUZZO and ADAM GOLDMAN
JULY 9, 2017

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, as well as by the president’s 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.

While President Trump has been dogged by revelations of undisclosed meetings between his associates and the Russians, the episode at Trump Tower is the first such confirmed private meeting involving his inner circle during the campaign — as well as the first one known to have included his eldest son. It came at an inflection point in the campaign, when Donald Trump Jr., who served as an adviser and a surrogate, was ascendant and Mr. Manafort was consolidating power.

It is unclear whether the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, actually produced the promised compromising information about Mrs. Clinton. But the people interviewed by The Times about the meeting said the expectation was that she would do so.

When he was first asked about the meeting on Saturday, Donald Trump Jr. said that it was primarily about adoptions and mentioned nothing about Mrs. Clinton.

But on Sunday, presented with The Times’s findings, he offered a new account. In a statement, he said he had met with the Russian lawyer at the request of an acquaintance from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which his father took to Moscow. “After pleasantries were exchanged,” he said, “the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Mrs. Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”

He said she then turned the conversation to adoption of Russian children and the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers. The 2012 law so enraged President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that he halted American adoptions of Russian children.

“It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting,” Mr. Trump said.

Two people briefed on the meeting said the intermediary was Rob Goldstone, a former British tabloid journalist and the president of a company called Oui 2 Entertainment who has worked with the Miss Universe pageant. He did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the president’s lawyer, said on Sunday that “the president was not aware of and did not attend the meeting.”

Lawyers for Mr. Kushner referred to their statement a day earlier, confirming that he voluntarily disclosed the meeting but referring questions about it to Donald Trump Jr. Mr. Manafort declined to comment. In his statement, Donald Trump Jr. said he asked Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kushner to attend, but did not tell them what the meeting was about.

Political campaigns collect opposition research from many quarters but rarely from sources linked to foreign governments.

American intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian hackers and propagandists worked to tip the election toward Donald J. Trump, in part by stealing and then providing to WikiLeaks internal Democratic Party and Clinton campaign emails that were embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton. WikiLeaks began releasing the material on July 22.

A special prosecutor and congressional committees are now investigating the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with the Russians. Mr. Trump has disputed that, but the investigation has cast a shadow over his administration.

Mr. Trump has also equivocated on whether the Russians were solely responsible for the hacking. On Sunday, two days after his first meeting as president with Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump said in a Twitter post: “I strongly pressed President Putin twice about Russian meddling in our election. He vehemently denied it. I’ve already given my opinion......”

On Sunday morning on Fox News, the White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, described the Trump Tower meeting as a “big nothing burger.”

“Talking about issues of foreign policy, issues related to our place in the world, issues important to the American people is not unusual,” he said.

But Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the leading Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, one of the panels investigating Russian election interference, said he wanted to question “everyone that was at that meeting.”

“There’s no reason for this Russian government advocate to be meeting with Paul Manafort or with Mr. Kushner or the president’s son if it wasn’t about the campaign and Russia policy,” Mr. Schiff said after the initial Times report.

Ms. Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer invited to the Trump Tower meeting, is best known for mounting a multipronged attack against the Magnitsky Act.

The adoption impasse is a frequently used talking point for opponents of the act. Ms. Veselnitskaya’s campaign against the law has also included attempts to discredit the man after whom it was named, Sergei L. Magnitsky, a lawyer and auditor who died in 2009 in mysterious circumstances in a Russian prison after exposing one of the biggest corruption scandals during Mr. Putin’s rule.

Ms. Veselnitskaya’s clients include state-owned businesses and a senior government official’s son, whose company was under investigation in the United States at the time of the meeting. Her activities and associations had previously drawn the attention of the F.B.I., according to a former senior law enforcement official.

Ms. Veselnitskaya said in a statement on Saturday that “nothing at all about the presidential campaign” was discussed at the Trump Tower meeting. She recalled that after about 10 minutes, either Mr. Kushner or Mr. Manafort left the room.

She said she had “never acted on behalf of the Russian government” and “never discussed any of these matters with any representative of the Russian government.”

The Trump Tower meeting was disclosed to government officials in recent weeks, when Mr. Kushner, who is also a senior White House aide, filed a revised version of a confidential form required to obtain a security clearance.

The Times reported in April that he had not disclosed any foreign contacts, including meetings with the Russian ambassador to the United States and the head of a Russian state bank. Failure to report such contacts can result in a loss of access to classified information and even, if information is knowingly falsified or concealed, in imprisonment.

Mr. Kushner’s advisers said at the time that the omissions were an error, and that he had immediately notified the F.B.I. that he would be revising the filing.

Mr. Manafort, the former campaign chairman, also recently disclosed the meeting, and Donald Trump Jr.’s role in organizing it, to congressional investigators who had questions about his foreign contacts, according to people familiar with the events. Neither Mr. Manafort nor Mr. Kushner was required to disclose the content of the meeting.

Since the president took office, Donald Trump Jr. and his brother Eric have assumed day-to-day control of their father’s real estate empire. Because he does not serve in the administration and does not have a security clearance, Donald Trump Jr. was not required to disclose his foreign contacts. Federal and congressional investigators have not publicly asked for any records that would require his disclosure of Russian contacts.

But in an interview with The Times in March, he denied participating in any campaign-related meetings with Russian nationals. “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.”

In addition to her campaign against the Magnitsky Act, Ms. Veselnitskaya represents powerful players in Russia. Among her clients is Denis Katsyv, the Russian owner of Prevezon Holdings, an investment company based in Cyprus. He is the son of Petr Katsyv, the vice president of the state-owned Russian Railways and a former deputy governor of the Moscow region. In a civil forfeiture case in New York, the Justice Department alleged that Prevezon had helped launder money linked to the $230 million corruption scheme exposed by Mr. Magnitsky by putting it in real estate and bank accounts. Prevezon recently settled the case for $6 million without admitting wrongdoing.

Ms. Veselnitskaya and her client also hired a team of political and legal operatives in the United States. The team included Rinat Akhmetshin, an émigré to the United States who once served as a Soviet military officer and who has been called a Russian political gun for hire. Fusion GPS, a consulting firm that produced an intelligence dossier that contained unverified allegations about Mr. Trump, was also hired to do research for Prevezon.

The F.B.I. began a counterintelligence investigation last year into Russian contacts with any Trump associates. Agents focused on Mr. Manafort and a pair of advisers, Carter Page and Roger J. Stone Jr.

Among those now under investigation is Michael T. Flynn, who was forced to resign as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser after it became known that he had falsely denied speaking to the Russian ambassador about sanctions imposed by the Obama administration over the election hacking.

Congress later learned that Mr. Flynn had been paid more than $65,000 by companies linked to Russia, and that he had failed to disclose those payments when he renewed his security clearance and underwent an additional background check to join the White House staff.

In May, the president fired the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, who days later provided information about a meeting with Mr. Trump at the White House. According to Mr. Comey, the president asked him to end the bureau’s investigation into Mr. Flynn; Mr. Trump has repeatedly denied making such a request. Robert S. Mueller III, a former F.B.I. director, was then appointed as special counsel.

The status of Mr. Mueller’s investigation is not clear, but he has assembled a veteran team of prosecutors and agents to dig into any possible collusion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/09/us/politics/trump-russia-kushner-manafort.html

Well, looks like Jr. needs a very expensive attorney. Now I might be wrong, but meeting with a Russian national with ties to the Kremlin to get damaging information on HRC seems a tad bit like COLLUSION! Queue the 40ish spins...

AND BOOM! Here is the bombshell.

Trump Jr. Was Told in Email of Russian Effort to Aid Campaign

By MATT APUZZO, JO BECKER, ADAM GOLDMAN and MAGGIE HABERMAN
JULY 10, 2017

WASHINGTON — Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.

The email to the younger Mr. Trump was sent by Rob Goldstone, a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped broker the June 2016 meeting. In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he was interested in receiving damaging information about Mrs. Clinton, but gave no indication that he thought the lawyer might have been a Kremlin proxy.

Mr. Goldstone’s message, as described to The New York Times by the three people, indicates that the Russian government was the source of the potentially damaging information. It does not elaborate on the wider effort by Moscow to help the Trump campaign. There is no evidence to suggest that the promised damaging information was related to Russian government computer hacking that led to the release of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails.

But the email is likely to be of keen interest to the Justice Department and congressional investigators, who are examining whether any of President Trump’s associates colluded with the Russian government to disrupt last year’s election. American intelligence agencies have determined that the Russian government attempted to sway the election in favor of Mr. Trump.

Alan Futerfas, the lawyer for the younger Mr. Trump, said his client had done nothing wrong but pledged to work with investigators if contacted.

”In my view, this is much ado about nothing. During this busy period, Robert Goldstone contacted Don Jr. in an email and suggested that people had information concerning alleged wrongdoing by Democratic Party front-runner, Hillary Clinton, in her dealings with Russia,” he said to The Times in an email on Monday. “Don Jr.’s takeaway from this communication was that someone had information potentially helpful to the campaign and it was coming from someone he knew. Don Jr. had no knowledge as to what specific information, if any, would be discussed.”

It is unclear whether Mr. Goldstone had direct knowledge of the origin of the damaging material. One person who was briefed on the emails said it appeared that he was passing along information that had been given to him by others.

Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, and Paul J. Manafort, the campaign chairman at the time, also attended the June 2016 meeting in New York. Representatives for Mr. Kushner referred requests for comments back to an earlier statement, which said he voluntarily disclosed the meeting to the federal government. He has deferred questions on the content of the meeting to Donald Trump Jr.

A spokesman for Mr. Manafort declined to comment.

But at the White House, deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was adamant from the briefing room lectern that “the president’s campaign did not collude in any way. Don Jr. did not collude with anybody to influence the election. No one within the Trump campaign colluded in order to influence the election.”

The president, a prolific Twitter user, did not address his son’s controversy on Monday, and instead sought to highlight other issues throughout the morning.

In a series of tweets, the president’s son insisted he did what anyone connected to a political campaign would have done — to hear out potentially damaging information about an opponent. He maintained that his various statements about the meeting weren’t in conflict.

“Obviously I’m the first person on a campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent... went nowhere but had to listen,” he wrote in one tweet. In another, he added, “No inconsistency in statements, meeting ended up being primarily about adoptions. In response to further Q’s I simply provided more details.”

The younger Mr. Trump, who had a reputation during the campaign for having meetings with a wide range of people eager to speak to him, did not join his father’s administration. He runs the family business, the Trump Organization, with his brother, Eric.

On Monday, after news reports that he had hired a lawyer, he indicated in a tweet that he would be open to speaking to the Senate Intelligence Committee, one of the congressional panels investigating Russian meddling in the election. “Happy to work with the committee to pass on what I know,” the younger Mr. Trump wrote.

Mr. Goldstone represents the Russian pop star Emin Agalarov, whose father was President Trump’s business partner in bringing the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow in 2013. In an interview Monday, Mr. Goldstone said he was asked by Mr. Agalarov to set up the meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya.

“He said, ‘I’m told she has information about illegal campaign contributions to the D.N.C.,’” Mr. Goldstone recalled, referring to the Democratic National Committee. He said he then emailed Donald Jr., outlining what the lawyer purported to have.

But Mr. Goldstone, who wrote the email over a year ago, denied any knowledge of involvement by the Russian government in the matter, saying that never dawned on him. “Never, never ever,” he said. Later, after the email was described to The Times, efforts to reach him for further comment were unsuccessful.

In the interview, he said it was his understanding that Ms. Veselnitskaya was simply a “private citizen” for whom Mr. Agalarov wanted to do a favor. He also said he did not know whether Mr. Agalarov’s father, Aras Agalarov, a Moscow real estate tycoon known to be close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, was involved. The elder Mr. Agalarov and the younger Mr. Trump worked together to bring a Trump Tower to Moscow, but the project never got off the ground.

Mr. Goldstone also said his recollection of the meeting largely tracked with the account given by the president’s son, as outlined in the Sunday statement Mr. Trump released in response to a Times story on the June 2016 meeting. Mr. Goldstone said that the last time he had communicated with the younger Mr. Trump was to send him a congratulatory text after the November election, but added that he did speak to the Trump Organization over the past weekend, before giving his account to the media.

Donald Trump Jr., who initially told The Times that Ms. Veselnitskaya wanted to talk about the resumption of adoption of Russian children by American families, acknowledged in the Sunday statement that one subject of the meeting was possibly compromising information about Mrs. Clinton.

But he said that the Russian lawyer produced nothing of consequence, and that the meeting ended after she began talking about the Magnitsky Act — an American law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers. The 2012 law so enraged Mr. Putin that he halted American adoptions of Russian children.

Mr. Goldstone said Ms. Veselnitskaya offered “just a vague, generic statement about the campaign’s funding and how people, including Russian people, living all over the world donate when they shouldn’t donate” before turning to her anti-Magnitsky Act arguments.

“It was the most inane nonsense I’ve ever heard,” he said. “And I was actually feeling agitated by it. Had I, you know, actually taken up what is a huge amount of their busy time with this nonsense?”

Ms. Veselnitskaya, for her part, denied that the campaign or compromising material about Mrs. Clinton ever came up at all. She said she never acted on behalf of the Russian government. A spokesperson for Mr. Putin said on Monday that the Russian president did not know Ms. Veselnitskaya, and had no knowledge of the June 2016 meeting.

Ms. Sanders said at a press briefing that the American president had learned of the meeting recently but declined to discuss details.

The White House press office, however, accused Mrs. Clinton’s team of hypocrisy. The office circulated a January 2017 article published in Politico, detailing how officials from the Ukranian government tried to help the Democratic candidate conduct opposition research on Mr. Trump and some of his aides.

News of the meeting involving the younger Mr. Trump, Mr. Kushner and Mr. Manafort blunted whatever good feeling the president’s team had after his trip to Europe for the Group of 20 economic summit.

The president learned from his aides about the 2016 meeting at the tail end of the trip, according to one White House official. But some people in the White House had known for several days that it had occurred, because Mr. Kushner had revised his foreign contact disclosure document to include it.

The president was aggravated by the news of the meeting, according to one person close to him — less over the fact that it had happened, and more because it was yet another story about Russia that had swamped the media cycle.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/us/politics/donald-trump-jr-russia-email-candidacy.html

WOW, just WOW!

WOW my arse!

Did you read your post?

It basically defends everyone's innocents!

I don't know that it's the bomb shell you obviously want it to be, but, with that said, 2 things.

1. From your posted article:


Please, keep that in mind.


And on a better note, now we know that a British tabloid reporter apparently sent the first e-mail about all of this. He, Goldstone, needs to be questioned. Get him here and demand that he name the 3 un named sources. Or, put him in prison. Right?

Let's follow this up. Goldstone knows something, apparently. The names of 3 currently unknown people that knew something.

Let's find out who those unknowns are, and question them.

This could very easily lead to: a real problem, OR a "much ado about nothing" situation.

I'm good with either one of them.