Senate report shows oligarch gave Trump a 'sizable gift'
Michael Isikoff and Dylan Stableford,Yahoo News•May 16, 2018
WASHINGTON — The day after a fateful 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between a Russian-led delegation and top Trump campaign officials, the influential Russian oligarch who had requested the session sought to deliver a “fairly sizable” birthday gift to the Republican presidential candidate, according to previously secret testimony released by a Senate committee Wednesday.
The delivery of the birthday present — a large painting along with a personal note from the benefactor, billionaire businessman Aras Agalarov — is among a wealth of new details about the now notorious June 9, 2016, meeting contained in the 2,500 pages of transcripts released by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The transcripts show that the relationship between Trump and Agalarov was far cozier than previously known, helping to explain why top Trump campaign aides jumped at the chance to meet — at Agalarov’s request — with the visiting Russians after being told they would bring “sensitive” information about Hillary Clinton straight from internal Kremlin files.
The meeting itself appeared to have been a dud: The visiting Russians, led by Kremlin-connected lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, provided no “smoking gun” about Clinton, and she instead wanted to talk only about the repeal of the Magnitsky Act, a law passed by Congress to blacklist Russian human rights abusers. This visibly agitated Trump son-in-law and campaign adviser Jared Kushner, according to the closed-door testimony of one of the attendees, Rob Goldstone, the music publicist for Agalarov’s pop singer son, Emin Agalarov, and an intermediary between the Russians and the campaign.
But the fact that the meeting was unproductive apparently did little to diminish the appreciation of the Agalarovs for Trump.
“I have a delivery question,” Goldstone wrote in an email the next day to Rhona Graff, Trump’s secretary. “Emin and Aras have a fairly sizable birthday gift for Mr. Trump and I would like to know exactly how and where we should deliver it on Tuesday.”
Goldstone later in his testimony described the gift as a large painting. After being told by Trump’s security chief, Keith Schiller, that there was now “TSA-style scanning and security” at Trump Tower, Goldstone arranged to have a New Jersey-based friend of Emin Agalarov deliver the gift, along with a personal note from Aras Agalarov to Trump.
The Trump Tower meeting has been a key focus of congressional committees and special counsel Robert Mueller in the investigation of ties between the Trump campaign and Vladimir Putin’s government in Moscow. Democrats have said that even agreeing to the meeting was evidence that the GOP candidate’s campaign, and his son, Donald Trump Jr., were, at a minimum, willing to collude with the Russian government by accepting “dirt” on their political rival.
The release of the transcripts, of interviews conducted behind closed doors over many months, is unlikely to resolve the lingering questions about the meeting, chief among them why the Trump camp agreed to the meeting in the first place. A separate report released by the ranking Democrat on the committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., noted: “Top campaign officials Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump Jr. did not reject the offer of election assistance from a foreign government. Nor did they report this offer to law enforcement authorities. Instead, they attended the meeting…We still do not know the full story about the June 9 meeting at Trump Tower or, more broadly, the degree to which the campaign cooperated or communicated with Russia.”
But Trump Jr. in his testimony was adamant he and the other Trump campaign officials had done nothing wrong. After initially receiving the email from Goldstone telling him that the Russians were offering derogatory information as part of the Russian government’s “support” for his father, Trump Jr. replied: “If it’s what you say, I love it, especially later in the summer.”
“And what about the thing that says, ‘It is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,’ did you also love that?” Trump Jr. was asked by a committee lawyer.
“I don’t know. I don’t recall,” he replied.
“Did you understand that that would be problematic?”
“I didn’t think that listening to someone with information relevant to the fitness and character of a presidential candidate would be an issue, no.”
But Trump Jr. insisted during his testimony that he never told his father about the session, saying he did not want to bother him with the “unsubstantiated” claim that the Russians had compromising information about Clinton. “I did not,” he said definitively at one point.
But on a related matter, the misleading statement about the purpose of the meeting that Trump Jr. issued last year when it first became known to the public, he admitted that his father may have weighed in.
“He may have commented through Hope Hicks,” Trump Jr. said, referring to the president’s former spokeswoman and communications director.
In his closed-door testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept 7, 2017, Trump Jr. said his father’s comments “may have” been incorporated into his initial statement, which falsely suggested that the meeting primarily concerned a Russian adoption program.
Trump Jr. was asked by Senate investigators if he had asked his father for assistance in crafting his response.
“No,” Trump Jr. replied. “[Hicks] asked if I wanted to actually speak to him, and I chose not to because I didn’t want to bring him into something that he had nothing to do with.”
Trump Jr. was also pressed about two phone calls he had with an unidentified individual with a “blocked number” on June 6, 2016, three days before the Trump Tower meeting, on an afternoon when he was reaching out to and trading calls with Emin Agalarov, seeking information about the agenda.
Trump Jr. was asked whether the elder Trump used a “blocked number.”
“I don’t know,” he replied.
At 4:31 p.m. that day, about 27 minutes after placing a call to Emin Agalarov, Trump Jr. called the person with the blocked number.
“So you don’t know whether or not this might have been your father?” a Senate judiciary committee investigator asked.
“I don’t,” he replied.
Overall, the younger Trump said “I don’t know” in his testimony at least 72 times, “I don’t [or can’t] remember” 25 times, and “I don’t [or can’t] recall” 67 times.
The origins of the meeting date back to June 2013 when Trump first met Aras Agalarov and his son in Las Vegas during the Miss USA Pageant. They made plans to hold that year’s Miss Universe pageant in Moscow with the assistance of Agalarov, a billionaire developer who owned the largest theater in Moscow, Crocus Hall, and had done so many construction projects for the Kremlin that he had earned the nickname “Putin’s Builder.”
But as soon as the deal to hold the pageant in Russia was made, it created tension over what Trump’s associates knew the developer really sought: face time with Putin. “Oh God, he’s going to want to meet Putin,” Paula Shugart, the president of Miss Universe, said to Goldstone, according to Goldstone’s testimony.
Trump’s insistence on meeting with Putin became what Goldstone described as “the gorilla in the room.” A formal request for a meeting was sent to the Kremlin, and Trump repeatedly pressed for the session. In the end, on the day of the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow on Nov. 9, Dmitri Peskov, Putin’s press spokesman, called Agalarov on his cellphone with a message for Trump — the Russian president was tied up in a meeting with the King of Holland, but invited Trump instead to come as his guest to the upcoming Sochi Olympics.
Russian social media giant offered pro-Trump effort during campaign
By TRISH TURNER May 16, 2018, 3:13 PM ET
A Russian tech executive began pitching the Trump campaign in early 2016 about using social media to help gain “massive exposure” for his presidential bid, according to Senate interview transcripts released Wednesday.
In an email to Donald Trump, Jr., that was copied to his father’s personal assistant, Rhona Graff, music publicist Rob Goldstone - who acted as an intermediary - shared the proposal to build candidate Trump a page on Russia’s popular Facebook equivalent VK. The plan was the brainchild of the Russian social media giant’s head of marketing, Konstantin Sidorkov, the Senate documents show, revealing exchanges between the executive and Goldstone with the former detailing to the later exactly what to pitch.
Goldstone described the plan in his email, saying the company “had an idea to create a campaign page on VK for Mr. Trump and market it to the almost 3 million influential Russian American voters living in the USA.”
“I can get massive exposure for Mr. Trump on the site for sure - and it will be covered in Russian media also - - where I noticed your campaign is covered positively almost daily - [with] extremely gracious comments from President Putin etc.,” he wrote.
Graff then forwarded the message to the campaign’s social media director, Dan Scavino, who replied, “This is great!”
The pitches, which began in January 2016, represent the first known instance of Russian nationals urging Trump to accept their help in promoting his White House bid through a more robust social media campaign – though in this case it is limited to Russian-based platforms.
Scavino told ABC News in an e-mailed statement, “I do not know Rob Goldstone – the ‘pitch’ came to me via an email on January 19, 2016 - that I was cc’d on, and the email chain regarding VK was below that. I kindly acknowledged the email on the same day, and did not pursue further. There are no other responses.”
Efforts by Russian-based companies to spread pro-Trump and anti-Hillary Clinton messages on American-based social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have become a focus of congressional and Special Counsel investigators. Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russians and three Russian companies in February for an alleged complex online scheme to sow discord in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and help elect Donald Trump, activity covertly set up and organized by a Putin-connected oligarch.
By June 2016, a day before the infamous Trump Tower meeting - which Goldstone also set up - the publicist sent a fresh email pushing the idea of a social media campaign. This time he included a mock-up web page featuring Donald Trump’s picture, his campaign slogan, pictures from the trail, and a previous Trump tweet sure to be popular with the candidate, “The media is really on a witch-hunt against me.”
Sidorkov, through Goldstone, touted the site as the most popular in Russia, a statistic confirmed by Amazon’s Alexa analysis site, and extended this invitation, “Also we can set up the official meeting with our CEO and fly to USA anytime,” he wrote. It is unclear if the meeting ever occurred.
In late June, Goldstone tried again, emailing Scavino that he had mentioned the idea to then-Trump campaign head Paul Manafort, adding, “At the time, Paul had said he would welcome it and so I had the VK folks mock up a basic sample page - which I am re-sending for your approval now. It would merely require Mr. Trump to drop in a short message to Russian American voters - or a generic message depending on your choice - and the page can be up and running very quickly.”
Scavino told ABC News that he never pursued the project.
Jared Kushner Was ‘Agitated, Infuriated’ At Meeting With Russians Focused On Adoptions
By Sebastian Murdock
Jared Kushner was apparently not pleased when he attended a 2016 Trump Tower meeting that he expected would provide dirt on then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, according to recently released interviews with the man who arranged the meeting.
Members of Donald Trump Sr.’s presidential campaign at the June 2016 meeting in New York City ― including Donald Trump Jr. and Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband and now a senior White House official ― expected damning evidence from Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya against Clinton, according to thousands of pages of interview transcripts released by the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday.
Rob Goldstone, a British music publicist who arranged the meeting, told the committee he was expecting a “smoking gun” from Veselnitskaya on Clinton. When he emailed Trump Jr. about the possibility, he replied, “if it’s what you say I love it.”
But when that did not materialize, it left the members of the Trump team upset, particularly Kushner. Veselnitskaya ― who has said she is a Kremlin “informant” ― started instead talking about U.S. sanctions against her country and a retaliatory ban on U.S. adoptions of Russian children.
“Jared Kushner, who is sitting next to me, appeared somewhat agitated by this and said, ‘I really have no idea what you’re talking about, could you please focus a bit more and maybe just start again?’” Goldstone told the committee members.
“And I recall that she began the presentation exactly where she had begun it last time, almost word for word, which seemed, by his body language, to infuriate him even more,” Goldstone said of Kushner’s reaction.
Kushner previously said the meeting was a waste of his time.
“I had no idea why that topic was being raised and quickly determined that my time was not well-spent at this meeting,” Kushner said in a July 2017 statement to congressional committees.
As The Washington Post points out, it has become increasingly difficult to believe that Kushner ― or anyone else in Trump Sr.’s inner circle ― would have attended the meeting without the assumption that negative information about Clinton would be provided.
Further complicating Kushner’s narrative is his assertion that he did not stay for the entire meeting. While Trump Jr. and three other attendees have stuck by Kushner’s claim, Goldstone and Veselnitskaya told committee members that Kushner stayed for all of the meeting.
“To be the best of my knowledge, he was [there the entire time],” Goldstone said in an interview. “He may have entered a minute or so after we all entered, but I believe he was. And the reason for that is because of the seating. They worked out who should sit where, and I sat next to Mr. Kushner. There was only he and I sat at this side of the table.”
Trump Discloses Cohen Payment, Raising Questions About Previous Omission
By Steve Eder, Eric Lipton and Ben Protess
May 16, 2018
President Trump’s financial disclosure, released on Wednesday, included for the first time repayment of more than $100,000 to his personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, in 2017, raising questions about whether Mr. Trump’s sworn filing from a year ago improperly omitted the debt.
In a highly unusual letter, the Office of Government Ethics alerted the Justice Department on Wednesday to the omission, telling Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, that the ethics office had determined “the payment made by Mr. Cohen is required to be reported as a liability.”
Mr. Trump’s financial disclosure, released by the Office of Government Ethics, did not specify the purpose of the payment. However, Mr. Cohen has paid $130,000 to a pornographic film actress, Stephanie Clifford, who has said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen has said he made the payment shortly before the 2016 election as hush money for Ms. Clifford, who goes by the stage name Stormy Daniels.
Mr. Trump repaid Mr. Cohen $100,001 to $250,000 in 2017, according to a footnote in the filing.
David J. Apol, the acting director of the Office of Government Ethics, sent Mr. Rosenstein a copy of Mr. Trump’s current and previous financial form, noting in his letter that “you may find the disclosure relevant to any inquiry you may be pursuing regarding the president’s prior report that was signed on June 14, 2017.”
The letter is not an official referral and does not constitute a finding of wrongdoing, according to lawyers.
The hush payment has been a source of controversy for Mr. Trump, who initially said on Air Force One that he was unaware of the payment to Ms. Clifford before acknowledging its existence in a series of Twitter posts this month. Mr. Trump said that he repaid a $130,000 payment that Mr. Cohen made to Ms. Clifford just days before the presidential election in 2016 and suggested that the payment by Mr. Cohen to the actress could not be considered a campaign contribution.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers, who prepared the document that was released on Wednesday, said that Mr. Trump was reporting the repaid debt “in the interest of transparency” but declared in the footnote that the transaction was “not required to be disclosed as reportable liabilities.”
Critics of Mr. Trump seized on the repaid debt as proof that the president should have included it in last year’s statement, which was filed voluntarily in June and signed by Mr. Trump under a line that said, “I certify that the statements I have made in this report are true, complete and correct to the best of my knowledge.”
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Flow of Refugees to U.S. Has Slowed to Nearly a Halt Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in a statement that the inclusion of the payment on this year’s form “raises serious questions as to why it was not disclosed in last year’s filing.” The group, known as CREW, had filed a complaint with the Justice Department and the ethics office asking for an investigation into whether the payment constituted a loan.
Under federal law, an official who “knowingly and willfully falsifies information” on a financial disclosure could face criminal charges.
Marilyn L. Glynn, who served as the general counsel at the Office of Government Ethics from 1997 to 2008, said that the letter to the Justice Department was significant and unusual and that if Mr. Trump intentionally filed an inaccurate disclosure last year, he may have violated the law.
But she added that the matter was now unclear — as the letter from the ethics office did not explicitly state that the agency itself had concluded there was a violation and it was hard to know exactly when Mr. Trump learned about the debt.
“What did he know and when did he know it,” she said. “At time he filed it last year, he may not have known this payment was made or that a payment was made at all.”
Mr. Trump’s disclosure of the repaid debt to Mr. Cohen did little to clear up confusion about the total size of the reimbursements. Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, said this month that Mr. Cohen was paid $460,000 or $470,000 from Mr. Trump, which also included money for “incidental expenses” that he had incurred on Mr. Trump’s behalf.
Mr. Giuliani said that Mr. Trump started paying Mr. Cohen back through a series of monthly installments of about $35,000 and that those payments began last year and may have carried into this year. The filing released on Wednesday capped the amount Mr. Trump paid back to Mr. Cohen in 2017 at $250,000, leaving more than $200,000 of the amount Mr. Giuliani mentioned unaccounted for.
The disclosure did not preclude the possibility that federal investigators could determine the payment to Ms. Clifford violated campaign finance laws. If they conclude it was made with the intention of influencing the presidential campaign — making it an effective political contribution — it would violate election law, which caps individual donations to federal candidates at $5,400 an election cycle.
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Candidates are allowed to spend as much as they want on their own campaigns. And, according to the filing, Mr. Trump paid Mr. Cohen back, making Mr. Cohen’s initial payment a loan. But campaign finance law treats personal loans as contributions and the $5,400 limit would have applied. Public campaign filings are also supposed to account for all loans, contributions and payments; Mr. Trump’s made no mention of the Cohen arrangement.
Mr. Giuliani has argued that Mr. Cohen made the payment to Ms. Clifford on Mr. Trump’s behalf for personal reasons unrelated to the campaign and should not, therefore, be counted as a campaign expense subject to election law restrictions. This new disclosure could help bolster that argument by Mr. Trump.
Beyond the repaid debt to Mr. Cohen, the 92-page form provides the most detailed window into how Mr. Trump’s finances have fared during his presidency.
The document, which covers the 2017 calendar year, showed total income from Mr. Trump’s business operations and investments of at least $453 million and assets valued at a minimum of $1.4 billion. The disclosure from the previous year showed total income of at least $597 million and a similar level of assets, but that report spanned nearly 16 months so is not directly comparable.
It provides the first extended look at the performance of Mr. Trump’s Washington hotel, which opened in September 2016 and has become a magnet for lobbyists and Republican aides. The hotel is one of his best performing properties, and the disclosure listed revenue of $40.4 million.
Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, which the president frequents in the winter months, had revenue of $25.1 million. Last year’s filing listed revenue of $37.3 million at Mar-a-Lago over a 16-month period.
Other properties have not fared as well, including Trump National Doral, a golf resort near Miami, which is Mr. Trump’s biggest cash flow generator. It reported revenue of $74.8 million. Revenue there had tumbled in the filing a year ago, even after a major renovation.
The filing also offers a lens into the Trump Organization’s debts, beyond the money he owed, and then repaid, to Mr. Cohen. A large share of that debt stems from Deutsche Bank loans to Trump National Doral.
Mr. Trump earned at least $1.1 million from his operations in India, the most active location overseas for the Trump Organization, with at least four current real estate projects, in Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and Gurgaon, which is outside New Delhi.
At least an additional $1.1 million came from operations in the Philippines and Istanbul and at least $558,000 from Panama, where the Trump family had a branded condominiums and hotel complex, which was renamed this year after a dispute with condo owners.
The form also shows that Melania Trump earned $100,001 to $1,000,000 from Getty Images, the photo licensing company.
Individual performance aside, there are broader signs that the business is retreating somewhat during the first part of Mr. Trump’s presidency.
Since he took office, Mr. Trump’s name has been erased from three of his family company’s prized properties. His company has watched its pipeline of deals ebb and flow. And one new line of business it has pursued is limited to quietly managing other companies’ hotels that are unattached to its once-flashy brand.
The owners of struggling hotels in Toronto and New York have paid the Trumps millions of dollars to remove their name from the properties after the election. In Panama, a nasty feud engulfed the Trump hotel there when the majority owner wanted the Trumps out — leading to the Trump name being pried off with a crowbar.
The president’s company has also been stymied by some of the new ethics restrictions it voluntarily adopted after the election.
As part of a voluntary ethics plan, the Trump Organization has not pursued new deals in foreign countries, cutting off an important stream of business that was projected to provide much of its future revenue. The Trump Organization is also subjecting all new domestic projects to vetting from an outside ethics adviser, which appears to have had a chilling effect on certain potential deals: The company has yet to open a new hotel in the United States since Mr. Trump took office.
The Trumps also had a wave of cancellations at the Mar-a-Lago club amid a backlash over the president’s comments about the violence over the summer in Charlottesville, Va.
Faced with these challenges, the company has decided to focus primarily on its existing properties, which consist of 16 golf courses, a winery, seven stand-alone hotels, Mar-a-Lago and a portfolio of commercial and residential real estate properties. While the Trump Organization owns many of those properties, it shifted in recent years to branding and managing properties, rather than owning them outright.
In at least one case, the Trumps began quietly managing a hotel property in Livingston, N.J., which is owned by the family of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and adviser. Mr. Trump reported $20,000 in fees on that deal.
And despite rolling out two new and more affordable hotel lines — Scion, a four-star-chain, and American Idea, a budget-friendly brand — the Trump Organization has only announced one such endeavor, a deal in the Mississippi Delta
The filing showed that Mr. Trump has received $26,667 in management fees related to the project.
The head of the company’s hotel division, Eric Danziger, said in March that the pipeline of current deals was “still very active,” and that he was continuing to line up new Scion and American Idea hotels.
Jim Rutenberg and Agustin Armendariz contributed reporting.
Alleged Cohen documents leaker says they were motivated by missing files
BY JULIA MANCHESTER - 05/16/18 07:21 PM EDT
A law enforcement official who claims to be the source of a leak about Michael Cohen claims that two documents related to suspicious transactions by President Trump's personal attorney appear to have gone missing from a government database.
The official told The New Yorker's Ronan Farrow that they had become worried after they were unable to find suspicious activity reports (SARs) pertaining to Cohen's financial actions in a government database. The official said they released the remaining SAR because they were afraid the documents were being kept from law enforcement officials.
The New Yorker was the first outlet to speak with the law enforcement official, who says the files were missing from the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
“I have never seen something pulled off the system,” the official said. “That system is a safeguard for the bank. It’s a stockpile of information. When something’s not there that should be, I immediately became concerned.”
“That’s why I came forward,” the official added.
Michael Avenatti, the attorney for Stormy Daniels, who is suing Cohen over a nondisclosure agreement she and he signed weeks before the 2016 election, first published the banking records from the released SAR last week.
The documents showed that Cohen was paid large amounts of money from companies such as Novartis and AT&T, as well as an investment firm with connections to Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.
Novartis and AT&T have since said their payments to Essential Consultants LLC, Cohen's shell company, came after Cohen, who is reportedly under criminal investigation for possible bank fraud and campaign finance violations, offered them access to and insight on the Trump administration.
Avenatti refused to reveal his source for the information, saying investigators should detail the SARs filed on Cohen’s account.
“Why just those two missing?” the unnamed official asked The New Yorker. “That’s what alarms me the most.”
The Treasury Department established an investigation to determine the identity of the source last week.
The department's inspector general’s counsel, Rich Delmar, told The Hill that the office is probing allegations that federally mandated reports filed about Cohen’s banking transactions were “improperly disseminated.”
“To say that I am terrified right now would be an understatement,” the official told The New Yorker regarding potential legal consequences.
Essential Consultants is the same company that paid $130,000 to Daniels, who claims she had an affair with Trump more than a decade ago.
Financial Disclosure Showing Trump Payment to Cohen Is 'Tantamount to a Criminal Referral,' Former White House Ethics Chief Says
"OGE has effectively reported the president to DOJ for potentially committing a crime."
byJulia Conley, staff writer
Following Wednesdays's revelations regarding President Donald Trump's payment to his lawyer, Michael Cohen, in 2016, former White House ethics chief Walter Shaub called on the Department of Justice to investigate whether Trump had deliberately hid the payment previously, saying the news out of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) was essentially a report of criminal activity by the president.
"If DOJ investigates and determines that President Trump knew of his debt to Cohen when he filed last year's report, there will be reason to suspect that his omission of the debt from last year’s report was 'knowing and willful,' which would be a crime," Shaub said in a statement.
The OGE, which Shaub led under President Barack Obama and for the first several months of Trump's presidency, released Trump's financial disclosure forms on Wednesday, showing the president had paid Cohen more than $100,000 in 2016 for expenses he incurred.
The office sent the disclosure to the DOJ on Wednesday, saying officials "may find the disclosure relevant to any inquiry you may be pursuing" regarding Trump's earlier, incomplete financial disclosure from last year.
Cohen has admitted that he personally paid $130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in October 2016, just before Trump was elected president, to keep her from speaking about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006.
While Trump has stated publicly he knew nothing about the payment to Daniels, Shaub maintained that the financial disclosure indicates that Trump did know about his debt to Cohen when he filed disclosure last year.
Glad to see you having a good time grilling nothingBurgers again.
You obviously can not read or comprehend what's being said here by both the left and right! LMAO We'll see how much nothing burger all this is. Avenatti has Trump's number, and is proving him a crook.
Obviously you don't care about high crimes and misdemeanors being committed by Trump and admin. As long as you protect your vote, you are good with the traitor in the white house... the liar in the white house... the crook in the white house... Yep, your boy Mr. Nothing Burger. lol, you make me sick.
As the plot thickens, President Trump is running out of excuses
By Jennifer Rubin May 16 at 3:15 PM Email the author
President Trump received three doses of bad news on Wednesday.
First, the Senate Judiciary Committee released documents showing how interested Donald Trump Jr. was in finding dirt on Hillary Clinton from foreign sources. The Post reports: “Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet soldier and Russian-American lobbyist who attended the [June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower], told the committee that Trump Jr. had opened the session by getting straight to the point:  ‘I believe you have some information for us,’ Akhmetshin recalled the president’s son telling [Russian lawyer Natalia] Veselnitskaya.”
It could not be more obvious that Trump Jr. was asking a foreign source for information to help his father win an election. Moreover, the denial of any Russian contacts during the campaign is in tatters. (“The testimony also discloses additional contacts between [Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov, and son Emin], [Rob] Goldstone and Trump aides during the campaign, confirming previous reports in The Washington Post.”)
Second, the Senate Intelligence Committee showed it is no patsy for the president. Contradicting the House Intelligence report, the Senate committee found — just as our intelligence community said — that Russia intervened in the election to facilitate Trump’s victory. “The Russian effort was extensive, sophisticated, and ordered by President [Vladimir] Putin himself for the purpose of helping Donald Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton,” ranking Democrat Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) announced, as the Post reported.
Even more damning: “Everyone that we’ve ever had testify still stands by the full findings of the ICA,” Warner said. “We’ve had all the Obama officials, we’ve had all the Trump officials. Every person.” Its conclusion would seem to be self-evident given, among other things, the hacking and releasing of emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, and offers of assistance to only the Trump camp. Nevertheless, the Senate’s bipartisan conclusion helps put the House kangaroo court in proper perspective and underscores the rank irresponsibility of Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) in allowing a farcical process to play out, putting partisanship above national security.
Finally, Trump’s financial disclosure form reveals that, lo and behold, the president did reimburse Michael Cohen for that $130,000 payoff to Stormy Daniels. Not only did the Office of Government Ethics confirm this item had to be reported (hence it was a campaign expense), but it reported the payment to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein. The letter states it should have been reported as a campaign payment last year. None of this would have come to light had it not been for the complaint filed with the Justice Department and Office of Government Ethics regarding the hush money paid to Daniels. Walter Shaub, the former director of the OGE, tweeted that “this is tantamount to a criminal referral. OGE has effectively reported the president to DOJ for potentially committing a crime. [Current OGE director] Dave Apol comes through in the end!!”
So where does this leave us? In short, there were multiple efforts to obtain dirt on Clinton in the context of a well-orchestrated campaign to defeat her — actually two campaigns, one run from Moscow and one from Trump Tower. The efforts to deny, hide and misstate key events (e.g., the purpose of the June 2016 meeting, the payment to Daniels) are not those of people confident the facts will exonerate them. I have zero doubt that, had the roles been reversed, Republicans would be drafting articles of impeachment. As things stand, however, both sides will wait for the full report from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
One more thing — what we see in public is a fraction of what Mueller has. That report promises to be a doozy.
If it's wrong for the Clinton's to take donations it's wrong for Trump (if true). In no way is Trump on the same stratosphere as the Clinton corruption but it's about principles.
On a side note: this Russia stuff is trash, if they had anything real it would be out by now. They can't prove it, so they write opinion pieces on how they think it went down.
If it's wrong for the Clinton's to take donations it's wrong for Trump (if true). In no way is Trump on the same stratosphere as the Clinton corruption but it's about principles.
On a side note: this Russia stuff is trash, if they had anything real it would be out by now. They can't prove it, so they write opinion pieces on how they think it went down.
Thousands and thousands of articles, millions upon millions of words written, all amounting to Trump being president and the dem party base becoming more and more disenfranchised and violent.
On a side note: this Russia stuff is trash, if they had anything real it would be out by now. They can't prove it, so they write opinion pieces on how they think it went down.
His dunce kid literally posted e-mails to Twitter where he basically said "hey, guys, excited to do some crimes".
The pretending that there's nothing going on is downright bizarre.
On a side note: this Russia stuff is trash, if they had anything real it would be out by now. They can't prove it, so they write opinion pieces on how they think it went down.
His dunce kid literally posted e-mails to Twitter where he basically said "hey, guys, excited to do some crimes".
The pretending that there's nothing going on is downright bizarre.
Baffles me how they are all just okay with Trump being in bed with Russia during the election. There are mounds of evidence and indictments yet it's all just a big nothing burger.
On a side note: this Russia stuff is trash, if they had anything real it would be out by now. They can't prove it, so they write opinion pieces on how they think it went down.
His dunce kid literally posted e-mails to Twitter where he basically said "hey, guys, excited to do some crimes".
The pretending that there's nothing going on is downright bizarre.
Baffles me how they are all just okay with Trump being in bed with Russia during the election. There are mounds of evidence and indictments yet it's all just a big nothing burger.
Until something sticks, what am I supposed to do, just blindly believe whichever side I'm partisan to? Nah, they have done nothing for a year but throw out theories.
On a side note: this Russia stuff is trash, if they had anything real it would be out by now. They can't prove it, so they write opinion pieces on how they think it went down.
His dunce kid literally posted e-mails to Twitter where he basically said "hey, guys, excited to do some crimes".
The pretending that there's nothing going on is downright bizarre.
Baffles me how they are all just okay with Trump being in bed with Russia during the election. There are mounds of evidence and indictments yet it's all just a big nothing burger.
Until something sticks, what am I supposed to do, just blindly believe whichever side I'm partisan to? Nah, they have done nothing for a year but throw out theories.
How long did watergate take? How long was President Clinton investigate?... If we can investigate those Presidents for years, Trump can go past a year. Just because Trump doesn't like being investigated doesn't mean the investigation is yielding nothing.
Fox News and Trump can claim all they want, Mueller is the only one who can end this investigation. If Trump fires Mueller or Rosenstein to end it, you will have a constitutional crisis.
On a side note: this Russia stuff is trash, if they had anything real it would be out by now. They can't prove it, so they write opinion pieces on how they think it went down.
His dunce kid literally posted e-mails to Twitter where he basically said "hey, guys, excited to do some crimes".
The pretending that there's nothing going on is downright bizarre.
Baffles me how they are all just okay with Trump being in bed with Russia during the election. There are mounds of evidence and indictments yet it's all just a big nothing burger.
Until something sticks, what am I supposed to do, just blindly believe whichever side I'm partisan to? Nah, they have done nothing for a year but throw out theories.
Wht do you mean by "until something sticks". His idiot kid literally tweeted evidence of his collusion because he didn't realize it was collusion. Last week we found out an oligarch re-paid Cohen for Trump's prostitute because he was too broke to.
This entire investigation is to determine whether Trump - a deeply in debt and easily led simpleton- is potentially compromised by his debt and pushover nature. Thus far, every sign points to "yes". That's why he keeps trying to re-frame it as a "I won the election fair and square" issue - because his ego won't allow the truth about his finances to surface. He knows he's not going to jail or getting impeached - it's all about the embarrassment of his "I'm a fabulously wealthy and successful businessman" facade melting publicly.
I think it's a double standard that is political in nature and not bound strictly to either party. I will give you this, it's hypocritical when one party claims to be about family values and Christian values while it's actually no better than the other side.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
Way too many Russian ties... Way too many changed stories... Way too many odd financial transactions... Way too many appearances of corruption...
Pay to play controversy... Cambridge Analytica controversy... Russian meeting controversy... Russian money laundering controversy... Qatar Officials secret meeting controversy... Eric Prince Seychelles meeting controversy... Unenforced Russian sanctions controversy... Won't speak ill of Putin controversy... Eric Trump "money from Russians" controversy... Don Jr. "Dirt on Hillary" controversy... Flynn, Manafort, Gates, Papadopoulos indictment and guilty pleas controversies... Comey firing, Russians in the Oval Office, Lester Holt interview controversies... So many proven lies controversy...
When it smells this much like a sewer, you're going to find some crap.
I find it hilarious that almost every major news outlet except Fox is reporting all these allegations, investigations, and "anti-Trumpian" stories... yet they are the fake news and I'm attacked for posting them.
OCD is a bad guy, he no like great leader, uhg!
OCD just likes it because it says what he wants... really? lol
OCD is Mueller... I wish.
OCD hates Trump... well that one is fair.
But here are some that y'all haven't thought of:
OCD is a patriot that thinks America deserves an honest legitimate President regardless of Party affiliation.
OCD doesn't like the thoughts of having a man in the oval office that may be under the influence of Russia or China.
OCD didn't like Hillary or Trump.
OCD thinks lots of smoke means there might be fire.
I remember when the one thing we as Americans could agree upon was that this is our country and we will defend it.
