Friday, April 26, 2019

The True Story of the June 2016 Trump Tower Meeting with Russians


Those of us who loathe President Trump must face a harsh new reality. The Mueller Report will not mean an end to the reign of the most dangerous man ever to hold the Presidency of the United States. It runs to 488 pages. That means Trump loyalists will never even sniff it.

The president himself won’t pick it up unless to throw a copy at a White House aide in his orange irritation. We know he’s not going to read it, because he has the same coloring, body style and intellectual proficiencies one expects in a pumpkin, assuming a pumpkin was adept at lying and had been grown on Farmer Putin’s vine in the countryside just east of Moscow.

That means it is incumbent upon us who believe Trump is a grievous threat to the rule of law to familiarize ourselves with the contents of the Mueller Report. We must get the truth out to friends, neighbors and family who might have growing reservations about Trump, but still support him.

We must help them to face reality.

*

Today, we consider the Trump Tower meeting of June 9, 2106. And keep in mind: There are delusional Trump fans who believe this meeting was a setup by Hillary Clinton, done to trap Team Trump.

In fact, much of what we know about this meeting was revealed two years ago, when the free press—not the “enemies of the people” that inhabit President Trump’s fevered brain—first recounted the tale. Mueller’s report now proves beyond any reasonable doubt that the meeting was held for the exact purpose The New York Times said it was held, when they reported on it in a July 8, 2017 article, “Trump Team Met With Lawyer Linked to Kremlin During Campaign.”

A free press is the bulwark of all freedoms.

That means it is our duty as good Americans to remind persuadable Trump supporters and independents who might be unsure who they’ll vote for in 2020 of the truths and fictions that reveal or cloud this narrative. We need to remind those on the other side, who purport to love the U.S. Constitution that a free press is the bulwark of all freedoms. Not only ours.


Theirs, too.




So, what do we know about this meeting, as per the Mueller Report? Beginning on page 110, we watch investigators unravel a sordid tale:

On June 9, 2016, senior representatives of the Trump Campaign met in Trump Tower with a Russian attorney expecting to receive derogatory information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government. The meeting was proposed to Donald Trump Jr. in an email from Robert Goldstone, at the request of his then-client Emin Agalarov, the son of Russian real-estate developer Aras Agalarov. Goldstone relayed to Trump Jr. that the “Crown prosecutor of Russia...offered to provide the Trump Campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia” as part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump [emphasis added unless otherwise noted].

Don Jr.’s nearly instantaneous response: “[I]f it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

In other words, Don Jr. is ready to play ball even if it means adding Russians to the lineup of Team Trump.

*

You might imagine—if the blood to your brain had not been cut off by a too-tight red MAGA hat—that Candidate Trump would have been told of such a meeting. You might assume he would have inquired from whence this treasure trove of dirt on Hillary was coming. You might suppose that the son would tell the father. That Jared would whisper sweet Russian nothings to Ivanka as their heads hit their pillows some night and Ivanka would regale Daddy with details the following morning. Or perhaps Manafort, the campaign chairman, might have brought it up with the man campaigning for the nation’s highest office.

Sadly, we cannot know what Candidate Trump knew. As the Mueller Report explains, “According to written answers submitted by President Trump, he has no recollection of learning of the meeting at the time, and the [Special Counsel’s] Office found no documentary evidence showing that he was made aware of the meeting — or its Russian connection — before it occurred.”

Still, let’s not overlook the obvious.

Candidate, President-elect and President Donald J. Trump spent the next two years insisting his campaign had no contacts with Russians. He said several times that Vladimir Putin denied interfering in the campaign and he always said he believed the Russian leader.

Don Jr. could have told his father that the Russians had offered dirt on Clinton and Putin was lying.

Jared could have told his father-in-law.

Manafort could have told his boss.

All three, singly and in unison, could have gone to the F.B.I. or C.I.A. or appeared on Fox News to sound warning.

Instead, they (and several others who knew the truth) managed to “forget” the meeting ever occurred.

That is: until the free press jogged their memories.

*

The free press has already done great work in outlining the connections between the president—before he was president—and the Agalarovs. On Page 111 of the Mueller Report we have this detail regarding the friendly links between Trump and the elder Agalarov:

For example, in April 2016, Trump responded to a letter from Aras Agalarov with a handwritten note. Aras Agalarov expressed interest in Trump’s campaign, passed on “congratulations” for winning in the primary and — according to one email drafted by Goldstone — an “offer” of his “support and that of many of his important Russian friends and colleagues[,] especially with reference to U.S./Russian relations.”

And you can easily understand why Mr. Agalarov and other superrich Russians would have wanted Trump to triumph. By the summer of 2016 he had made it abundantly clear that if he were elected he’d be open to ending crippling financial sanctions imposed on Russia for invading Crimea.

Indeed, if we were to stir ourselves no further than to read one story by CNN (what the president would call “Fake News”), the first individual listed as under those very sanctions would be Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska had strong ties to Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. Both have now been convicted of assorted crimes, all exposed thanks to the Mueller probe.

The Mueller Report provides background to the famous June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting:

“On June 3, 2016, Emin Agalarov called Goldstone, Emin’s then-publicist. Goldstone is a music and events promoter who represented Emin Agalarov from approximately late 2012 until late 2016. While representing Emin Agalarov, Goldstone facilitated the ongoing contact between the Trumps and the Agalarovs — including an invitation that Trump sent to Putin to attend the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow. ■■■ REDACTED ■■■ Goldstone understood ■■■ REDACTED ■■■ Russian political connection, and Emin Agalarov indicated that the attorney [coming to the meeting] was a Prosecutor. Goldstone recalled that the information that might interest the Trumps involved Hillary Clinton ■■■ REDACTED ■■.

(The black marks shown, greatly reduced for purposes of space, represent “GRAND JURY” testimony.)

According to Mueller and his team, the Russian lawyer who showed up at Trump Tower on June 9 was no garden variety attorney. “From approximately 1998 until 2001, [Natalia] Veselnitskaya worked as a prosecutor for the Central Administrative District of the Russian Prosecutor’s Office, and she continued to perform government-related work and maintain ties to the Russian government following her departure.” She had previously spent time in the United States, where she “performed legal work” for the son of a Russian oligarch and a Russian company caught up in “a civil-forfeiture action alleging the laundering of proceeds” from a massive fraud scheme.

*

At times, Mueller’s investigators take us in unexpected directions. On Pages 112-113, we find this ominous note: Veselnitskaya “also appears to have been involved in an April 2016 approach to a U.S. congressional delegation in Moscow offering ‘confidential information’ from ‘the Prosecutor General of Russia’ about ‘interactions between certain political forces in our two countries.’”

At this point, we would all be wise to take a brief detour to consider a May 2017 report in the Washington Post.

“There’s two people I think Putin pays.”

In a leaked recording of a June 15, 2016 meeting of top GOP lawmakers, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy can be heard joking, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: [Rep. Dana] Rohrabacher and Trump.”

The Post explained:

Some of the lawmakers laughed at McCarthy’s comment. Then McCarthy quickly added: “Swear to God.”

“This is an off the record,” [Speaker of the House Paul] Ryan said.

Some lawmakers laughed at that.

“No leaks, all right?” Ryan said, adding: “This is how we know we’re a real family here.”

“That’s how you know that we’re tight,” [Rep. Steve] Scalise said.

“What’s said in the family stays in the family,” Ryan added.

The remarks remained secret for nearly a year….

Evan McMullin, who in his role as policy director to the House Republican Conference participated in the June 15 conversation, said: “It’s true that Majority Leader McCarthy said that he thought candidate Trump was on the Kremlin’s payroll [emphasis added]. Speaker Ryan was concerned about that leaking.”

McMullin ran for president last year as an independent and has been a vocal critic of Trump.

When initially asked to comment on the exchange, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Ryan, said: “That never happened,” and Matt Sparks, a spokesman for McCarthy, said: “The idea that McCarthy would assert this is absurd and false.”

After being told that The Post would cite a recording of the exchange, Buck, speaking for the GOP House leadership, said: “This entire year-old exchange was clearly an attempt at humor. No one believed the majority leader was seriously asserting that Donald Trump or any of our members were being paid by the Russians. What’s more, the speaker and leadership team have repeatedly spoken out against Russia’s interference in our election, and the House continues to investigate that activity.”

“This was a failed attempt at humor,” Sparks said.

So, there you have it! As has often been true where Russians and investigations are involved, first you get lies from Republicans.

Then the free press confronts the liars with evidence.

Then the liars back-pedal furiously.

In addition, by the fall of 2017, The New York Times had broken the story of Rohrabacher traveling to Moscow. Mueller’s team confirms what the Times reported:

In April 2016, [Rep. Dana Rohrabacker (R-CA)] was in Moscow, accepting a copy of a “confidential” memo containing accusations against prominent Democratic donors that would, months later, reappear in Trump Tower when a Russian lawyer who had reported those allegations to the Russian government, Natalia V. Veselnitskaya, sat down with Donald Trump Jr. to deliver a similar document.

Nor was this cozy relationship between Rohrabacher and the Russian lady unusual. In 2012,  the F.B.I. had to sit the California lawmaker down and warn him that the Russians were trying to recruit him as an “agent of influence” to serve their interests in shaping Washington policy.

The free press also tracked down details of Rohrabacher’s travels. He had breakfast in Moscow in 2015 with Alexander Torshin, reputedly tied to a Russian crime syndicate, and an attractive young Russian redhead named Maria Butina. There was the April 2016 trip to Moscow. There was also a trip in August 2016 to meet with Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks. At the time, Assange was holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and not many friends were visiting.

What has transpired since?

Ms. Butina was charged with acting as an unregistered agent of the Russian Federation while attending graduate school in the United States. Rohrabacher called her indictment “bogus.” Then Butina copped a plea and began cooperating with investigators.

Assange has been arrested and awaits extradition to this country.

Veselnitskaya has been indicted on charges of obstruction of justice, in other Russia-themed criminal matters, but decided she’d rather return to Russia than test the legal waters in the United States.

And in a snippet of good news, Rohrabacher was voted out of office in the 2018 midterm election.

*

Yet, to hear Don J. Trump Jr. tell the story of the June 9, 2016 meeting—admitting to it only after the meeting was revealed by the free press—discussion at Trump Tower that day centered on adoption policy. Once again, The New York Times had emails that proved Don Jr.’s lie. The free press promptly blew his alibi to bits—although not promptly enough to stop President Trump from drafting a misleading letter, backing up his son’s false “it was all about the adoptions” claim.

On Page 113 of the Mueller Report, we have what might seem to fair-minded observers to be a smoking gun. This is the email that led to the meeting. You can judge for yourself what was the purpose.

On June 3, 2016, shortly after making a call to Emin Agalarov, Goldstone emailed Trump Jr.:

Good morning

Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting. The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin.

What do you think is the best way to handle this information and would you be able to speak to Emin about it directly? I can also send this info to your father via Rhona, but it is ultra sensitive so wanted to send to you first.

Best
Rob Goldstone

(This means Rhona Graff, Candidate Trump’s personal secretary, must have known what the meeting was about.)

Within minutes of this email—as mentioned previously—Trump Jr. responded: “Thanks Rob I appreciate that. I am on the road at the moment but perhaps I just speak to Emin first. Seems we have some time and if it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

In plain English (not Russian), this was never a “witch hunt” no matter how many times the president Trump has insisted it was. Mueller was leading a crack investigative team, aided by 40 F.B.I. agents, in an effort to uncover what the Russians were doing during the 2016 campaign. On June 6, 2016, we learn (via Mueller) that Goldstone emailed Don Jr. again. This time he wondered when Don Jr. would be “free to talk with Emin about this Hillary info.”

Not “adoption info.”

That same day, Aras Agalarov called Ike Kaveladze and asked him to attend a meeting in New York with the Trump Organization.” As Mueller notes, “Kaveladze is a [Democratic Republic of] Georgia-born, naturalized U.S. citizen.”

Kaveladze would serve as translator.

On June 7, Goldstone emailed Trump Jr. a third time and said that “Emin asked that I schedule a meeting with you and [t]he Russian government attorney who is flying over from Moscow. Trump Jr. replied that Manafort (identified as the “campaign boss”), Jared Kushner, and Trump Jr. would likely attend.

Apparently, Kaveladze was “puzzled” by the list of expected attendees (another set of redactions make it hard to understand what remains).

He “checked with one of Emin Agalarov’s assistants, Roman Beniaminov, who said that the purpose of the meeting was for Veselnitskaya to convey ‘negative information on Hillary Clinton.’”

Still no adoption.

Rick Gates, who was the deputy campaign chairman, stated during interviews with the [Special Counsel’s] Office that in the days before June 9, 2016 Trump Jr. announced at a regular morning meeting of senior campaign staff and Trump family members that he had a lead on negative information about the Clinton Foundation. Gates believed that Trump Jr. said the information was coming from a group in Kyrgyzstan and that he was introduced to the group by a friend. Gates recalled that the meeting was attended by Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Paul Manafort, Hope Hicks, and, joining late, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. According to Gates, Manafort warned the group that the meeting likely would not yield vital information and they should be careful. Hicks denied any knowledge of the June 9 meeting before 2017, and Kushner did not recall if the planned June 9 meeting came up at all earlier that week.

Michael Cohen recalled being in Donald J. Trump’s office on June 6 or 7 when Trump Jr. told his father that a meeting to obtain adverse information about Clinton was going forward. Cohen did not recall Trump Jr. stating that the meeting was connected to Russia. From the tenor of the conversation, Cohen believed that Trump Jr. had previously discussed the meeting with his father, although Cohen was not involved in any such conversation. In an interview with the Senate Judiciary Committee, however, Trump Jr. stated that he did not inform his father about the emails or the upcoming meeting. Similarly, neither Manafort nor Kushner recalled anyone informing candidate Trump of the meeting, including Trump Jr. President Trump has stated to this Office, in written answers to questions, that he has “no recollection of learning at the time” that his son, Manafort, or “Kushner was considering participating in a meeting in June 2016 concerning potentially negative information about Hillary Clinton.”

In other words, virtually everyone at the top of the campaign and three of the candidate’s children knew about this meeting.

Yet we are expected to believe that Donald J. Trump, future President of the United States, was never informed that Russians were coming and that they were coming with gifts to help him defeat Secretary Clinton.

We soon learn that Goldstone attended the June 9 meeting. So did Kaveladze, Veselnitskaya and two other Russians.

“The Office spoke to every participant except Veselnitskaya and Trump Jr., the latter of whom declined to be voluntarily interviewed by the Office ■■■ REDACTED ■■■
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The Mueller Report continues: “At some point in the meeting, Kushner sent an iMessage to Manafort stating ‘waste of time,’ followed immediately by two separate emails to assistants at Kushner Companies with requests that they call him to give him an excuse to leave.”

Amazingly, Kushner seems to have told the truth when he said he left the meeting early, a rarity in this sorry saga.

Investigators note that in the case of Veselnitskaya, her statements “differ materially from other accounts.”

That’s a nice way of saying she was lying.

In a July 2017 press interview, Veselnitskaya claimed that she has no connection to the Russian government and had not referred to any derogatory information concerning the Clinton Campaign when she met with Trump Campaign officials. Veselnitskaya’s November 2017 written submission to the Senate Judiciary Committee stated that the purpose of the June 9 meeting was not to connect with “the Trump Campaign” but rather to have “a private meeting with Donald Trump Jr.—a friend of my good acquaintance’s son on the matter of assisting me or my colleagues in informing the Congress members as to the criminal nature of manipulation and interference with the legislative activities of the US Congress.” In other words, Veselnitskaya claimed her focus was on Congress and not the Campaign. No witness, however, recalled any reference to Congress during the meeting.

Again, keep in mind this meeting is in the summer of 2016. When news breaks about the meeting—and then about the emails—Trump Jr. appears on Sean Hannity’s show for an interview.

In that July 2017 interview, the president’s son “stated that while he had no way to gauge the reliability, credibility, or accuracy of what Goldstone had stated was the purpose of the meeting, if ‘someone has information on our opponent ... maybe this is something. I should hear them out.’”

That is: Don Jr. is clearly admitting that the purpose of the meeting was to get information on Clinton.

Trump Jr. further stated in September 2017 congressional testimony that he thought he should “listen to what Rob and his colleagues had to say.” Depending on what, if any, information was provided, Trump Jr. stated he could then “consult with counsel to make an informed decision as to whether to give it any further consideration.”

More redactions follow; but as the Mueller Report notes, the principals tried to convince investigators that the meeting was mainly about “adoptions.” As mentioned, that was the cover story Trump Jr. and Trump Sr. put out once the free press blew open the story of the meeting.

So, any Trump supporter who tries to claim this was all a Clinton setup must be:

A)    An idiot.
B)     An opioid addict.
C)    A delusional human being, deserving of our sympathy, but probably not someone who should vote.

A teenager knew the purpose of the meeting just five days later.

Indeed, this line of adoption hooey is undercut, in all kinds of ways, not least by a footnote found on Page 120: “On June 14, 2016 Kaveladze’s teenage daughter emailed asking how the June 9 meeting had gone, and Kaveladze responded, ‘meeting was boring. The Russians did not have any bad info on Hilary.’”

In other words, Trump Sr. might claim not to have known about the meeting or to have known its purpose afterwards.

Yet the teenage daughter of one participant knew the purpose of the meeting just five days later.

*

On Page 121, we learn that in June 2017, a year later, various “[p]articipants in the June 9, 2016 meeting began receiving inquiries from attorneys representing the Trump Organization.”

And if this doesn’t sound to you like a coverup in progress you should probably consult an audiologist.

Mueller’s investigators explain:

“On June 27, 2017, Goldstone emailed Emin Agalarov with the subject ‘Trump attorneys’ and stated that he was ‘interviewed by attorneys’ about the June 9 meeting who were ‘concerned because it links Don Jr. to officials from Russia — which he has always denied meeting.’”

Further, “In a July 9, 2017 text message to Emin Agalarov, Goldstone wrote ‘I made sure I kept you and your father out of [t]his story,’ and ‘[i]f contacted I can do a dance and keep you out of it.’”

F.B.I. agents and investigators also discovered that on July 10, 2017, a lawyer for the Trump Organization “sent Goldstone an email with a proposed statement for Goldstone to issue, which read:

As the person who arranged the meeting, I can definitively state that the statements I have read by Donald Trump Jr. are 100% accurate. The meeting was a complete waste of time and Don was never told Ms. Veselnitskaya’s name prior to the meeting. Ms. Veselnitskaya mostly talked about the Magnitsky Act and Russian adoption laws and the meeting lasted 20 to 30 minutes at most. There was never any follow up and nothing ever came of the meeting. 

That would indicate intent to cover up one set of glaring lies with a layer of purest fabrication.

“On the Russian end,” the Mueller team continues, “there were also communications about what participants should say about the June 9 meeting.”

A transcript of an interview Veselnitskaya gave to the press was forwarded to Anatoli Samochornov, another interpreter who had attended the Trump Tower meeting. He was promised that $90,000 in legal fees would be paid by an organization controlled by Veselnitskaya and a group of Russian oligarchs, but “Samochornov understood that the organization would pay his legal fees only if he made statements consistent with Veselnitskaya’s. Samochornov declined, telling the Office that he did not want to perjure himself.”

And there the Mueller Report ends its description of the meeting and the subsequent coverup.

Team Trump is shot through with skilled and ready liars.

Until we dive deeper into the report, we must also end our explication. If you come away with deep suspicions forming—and you should—please remember. Here we outline only a dozen pages in a 448-page report—with a lengthy aside provided to flesh out the legend of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher.

Does what we know after reading this section prove that President Donald J. Trump obstructed justice?

Not yet.

Surely, however, the evidence is clear: Team Trump was and still is shot through with skilled and ready liars.


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