Does Lindsey Graham Think It's Somehow Exculpatory That Junior And Kushner-In-Law Are "New" To Treason And Couldn't Be Expected To Understand?

Vox tried to explain why people call Donald Trump, Jr. "Fredo Trump." It's a reference to the slow-witted, bungling middle son in The Godfather. Cute. What Jerry Nadler, a senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee had to say about Don, Jr. yesterday was... less cute: "This morning’s New York Times report provided new and deeply troubling details surrounding a meeting between Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort with a representative of the Russian government-- Natalia Veselnitskaya. Donald Trump, Jr.’s subsequent response, including the released excerpts from an email exchange, suggest incriminating evidence of collusion with Russia by the highest levels of the Trump campaign. Donald Trump, Jr. confirmed interest in, and expressed support for, working with Russian officials who offered allegedly incriminating evidence against Hillary Clinton for the purpose of assisting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. This revelation is significant, both for the ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, as well as new investigative territory that relate to President Trump and his associates. The repeated denials of meetings and contacts of this kind now lend new weight to possible charges of obstruction of justice given what appears to be clear evidence of an intent to collude between the campaign and the Russian government. The public interest to uncover answers raises new questions in this regard: Did President Trump know about the offer presented to his campaign, and/or the correspondence and eventual meeting between his son, Mr. Kushner, and Mr. Manafort and the Russian representative? Was the President and/or his administration trying to conceal efforts to engage in criminal activity-- namely, the conspiracy to commit election fraud-- by failing to disclose or obstructing the discovery and investigation of foreign contacts? The criminal investigation by Director Mueller and the House and Senate Intelligence Committee investigations must, of course, continue. However, when it comes to investigating the sweeping nature of the current allegations, the firing of FBI Director Comey, the potential criminal activity by the Trump campaign, and the attempt by a foreign power to undermine our elections-- it is clear that we must have open hearings with the jurisdiction and authority to fully conduct an investigation of this matter. The House Judiciary Committee should immediately conduct hearings to investigate, and I call on Chairman Goodlatte and the Republican leadership to allow the public interest to be served."



The first of the smoking gun e-mails is just over one year old-- sent by a slimy Trump associate, Rob Goldstone, on behalf of Emin Agalarov, son of Aras Agalarov, a real estate tycoon and Putin associate sometimes called the "Donald Trump of Russia"-- at the height of Putin's campaign to wreak havoc on the West by installing the clownish Donald, Sr. as the President of the United States. "Enjoy your democracy, Conrades!"

Yes, a Trump business partner in Russia contacted poor dumb Fredo with an explicit offer from the Russian government to help them destroy Clinton. And Fredo bit.

The documents “would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father,” read the email, written by a trusted intermediary, who added, “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

If the future president’s eldest son was surprised or disturbed by the provenance of the promised material-- or the notion that it was part of a continuing effort by the Russian government to aid his father’s campaign-- he gave no indication.

He replied within minutes: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

Four days later, after a flurry of emails, the intermediary wrote back, proposing a meeting in New York on Thursday with a “Russian government attorney.”

Donald Trump Jr. agreed, adding that he would most likely bring along “Paul Manafort (campaign boss)” and “my brother-in-law,” Jared Kushner, now one of the president’s closest White House advisers.

On June 9, the Russian lawyer was sitting in the younger Mr. Trump’s office on the 25th floor of Trump Tower, just one level below the office of the future president.

Over the last several days, the New York Times has disclosed the existence of the meeting, whom it involved and what it was about. The story has unfolded as The Times has been able to confirm details of the meetings.

But the email exchanges, which were reviewed by The Times, offer a detailed unspooling of how the meeting with the Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, came about-- and just how eager Donald Trump Jr. was to accept what he was explicitly told was the Russian government’s help.

The Justice Department, as well as the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, is 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 tried to sway the election in favor of Mr. Trump...

After being told that The Times was about to publish the content of the emails, instead of responding to a request for comment, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted out images of them himself on Tuesday.

...At a White House briefing on Tuesday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy press secretary, read a statement from President Trump in which he defended his son. “My son is a high-quality person, and I applaud his transparency,” the president said.

But Ms. Sanders said she was “going to have to refer everything on this matter to Don Jr.’s counsel.” She said she did not know when the president had last spoken with his son.

Well... at least Trump hasn't claimed that he hardly knows who Donald, Jr. is... at least not yet. He could get Howard Stern to release the tapes of him calling baby Barron Trump "a retard" and subsequently-- after Melania refused to have sex with him anymore for the affront to her child-- said he didn't mean Barron was the retard and that "everybody" knows it's Don, Jr. who's the retard (Trump's word; Democrats don't refer to slow-witted people as "retards"). Anyway, this is a photo on Eric and Junior before Trump made them... get some work done.

Growing up Eric and Fredo

Kushner recently disclosed the fact of the meeting, though not the content, in a revised form on which all those seeking top secret security clearances are required to list contacts with foreign government officials and their representatives. The Times reported in April that he had failed to list a number of Russian contacts, which his lawyer called an error.

Mr. Manafort also disclosed that a meeting had occurred, and that Donald Trump Jr. had organized it, in response to one of the Russia-related congressional investigations.

Representatives for both men did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Ms. Veselnitskaya arrived the next day and was ushered into Donald Trump Jr.’s office for a meeting with what amounted to the Trump campaign’s brain trust.

Besides having politically connected clients, one of whom was under investigation by federal prosecutors at the time of the meeting, Ms. Veselnitskaya is well known for her lobbying efforts against the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 law that punishes designated Russian human rights abusers by allowing the United States to seize their assets and keep them from entering the country. The law so angered Mr. Putin that he retaliated by barring American families from adopting Russian children. Her activities and associations have brought her to the attention of the F.B.I., according to a former senior law enforcement official.

When first contacted by The Times on Saturday, Donald Trump Jr. portrayed the meeting this way: “It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up.”

The next day, after The Times informed him that it was preparing an article that would say that the meeting also involved a discussion about potentially compromising material on Mrs. Clinton, he issued another statement: “I was asked to have a meeting by an acquaintance I knew from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant with an individual who I was told might have information helpful to the campaign. I was not told her name prior to the meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to attend, but told them nothing of the substance,” he said. “After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. 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. She then changed subjects and began discussing the adoption of Russian children and mentioned the Magnitsky Act. 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.”

How to draw a pig-- by Kyle Smith

Mr. Goldstone recalled the meeting in much the same way.

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, he said. “It was the most inane nonsense I’ve ever heard.”

Ms. Veselnitskaya, for her part, said in an statement to The Times sent this past weekend that “nothing at all about the presidential campaign” had been discussed at the Trump Tower meeting, adding that she had “never acted on behalf of the Russian government” and that she had “never discussed any of these matters with any representative of the Russian government.” She has not responded to requests for comment since.

A spokesman for Mr. Putin said on Monday that he did not know Ms. Veselnitskaya and that he had no knowledge of the June 2016 meeting.

Back in Washington, both the White House and a spokesman for President Trump’s lawyer have taken pains to distance the president from the meeting, saying that he did he not attend it and that he learned about it only recently.

Given that everyone in the sage-- every single one-- is a known and confirmed congenital liar, I suspect only Robert Mueller is going to able to sort this all out and confirm what many of us feel we're looking at is a smoking gun of treason. Or will Trumpanzee fire him too? Politico reported that former Justice Department prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg termed the e-mails "Extremely damaging... Certainly shows an intent to collude with Russian government." Or, as Charles Pierce put it in Esquire yesterday, "The government of the United States is a shambles. An incompetent administration headed by an unqualified buffoon is now descending into criminal comedy and maladroit backstabbing. It is an administration that not only self-destructs, but glories in the process. There seems to be no end to it, and no desire to end it by the people who actually have the power to do so. That, in itself, seems curious, and it probably should remind us all that Paul Ryan's Super PAC was hip-deep in the borscht itself. Ryan, who really is the person best situated to close the circus down, seems to be afflicted with one of his periodic bouts of invisibility, poor lad. There's a great unfolding treason now-- not just the precise constitutionally defined treason, but a general betrayal of reason, of self-government, of honesty and of high office. They are now committing treason against themselves, grim betrayal winding around itself in coils ever tightening until there is nothing but the foul exhaling of the final breath of things that once belonged to better people than them."

Fredo immediately ran out and hired himself a criminal defense attorney, Alan Futerfas, to represent him in all things regarding treason and Putin-Gate. And, yes, everyone who went on TV yesterday for Trump and Putin and used the coordinated phrase "nothing-burger," is a traitor to America and should be treated as such. This tweet from a very conservative Suffolk County congressman and Trump ally shows the degree of discomfiture congressional Republicans are going through right now: