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.
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.
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 ■■■
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
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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