July 8-10, 2017: The New York Times Breaks the Story of the Trump Tower Meeting with Russians

 

7/8/17: The New York Times reports that Donald Trump Jr. took part in a secret meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in June 2016. Also attending were Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort.  

__________ 

Secret meeting with Russians revealed.

__________ 

 

Suddenly, both Jr. and Jared remember – hey – we did have a meeting! 

When asked to comment, Jr. issues an official statement, assuring the Times the meeting was mostly about adoption policy. 

A meeting about adoption???

 

The lawyer in question, Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Times continues, “is best known for mounting a multipronged attack against the Magnitsky Act. This law was passed to blacklist human rights abusers. Vladimir Putin was so enraged he retaliated by halting American adoptions of Russian children.” Her “activities and associations have previously drawn the attention of the F.B.I., according to a former senior law enforcement official.” 

In his statement, Jr. tries to explain away the damage. “It was a short introductory meeting,” that’s all. 

I asked Jared and Paul [Manafort] to drop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children [emphasis added] 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. I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting beforehand.

 

You kind of had the idea he wanted to add: “I could have been talking with Taylor Swift, for all I remember.” 

That same evening, Mark Corallo, spokesman for the president’s lawyer, issues a statement, hinting Jr. was set up. Veselnitskaya and an interpreter who came “misrepresented who they were.”

 

(The Magnitsky Act, named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in police custody in 2009, sanctions 44 Russian nationals and allows the U.S. to deny visas and seize assets it locates. 

The U.S. government did freeze, for example, $14 million in the assets of Petr Katsyv. Eventually he forfeited $6 million after Magnitsky accused him of laundering $230 million, gobbling up Manhattan real estate, and hiding loot in various New York bank accounts.)

___

7/9/17: On Sunday, The New York Times reports that Don Jr. met with a lawyer the paper describes as “Kremlin-connected” after being promised damaging information [emphasis added] about Hillary Clinton.  

__________ 

“A big nothing burger.” 

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus

__________

 

Jr. issues a second statement regarding the meeting he originally forgot having. Suddenly, it’s all coming back! 

“After pleasantries were exchanged,” he claims, 

…the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russian were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Hillary Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous, and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear she had no meaningful information.

 

The conversation turned to adoption policies and the Magnitsky Act, which Jr. surmised was “the true agenda all along.” 

Reince Priebus calls the story a “big nothing burger.”

___ 

 

7/10/17: Jr.’s story changes dramatically (again) after the Times informs him it has in its possession emails that blow twenty holes in his cover story. Jr. tries scrambling for safety, like a rat leaving the S.S. Trump. What do you know! He has a string of emails he’d like to put out. 

Here are a few keys from the thread: 

From: Rob Goldstone To: Donald Trump Jr. June 3, 2016, 10:36 AM 

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 [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted].

 

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 

(Emin is Russian pop star Emin Agalarov. Aras is his father, a wealthy real estate billionaire sometimes called the “Donald Trump of Russia.” Wait. Is that an insult? “Rhona” is Rhona Graff, Don Sr.’s personal secretary.)

 

From: Donald Trump Jr. To: Rob Goldstone June 3, 2016, 10:53 

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.

 

From: Rob Goldstone To: Donald Trump, Jr. June 7, 2016, 4:20 PM 

Emin asked that I schedule a meeting with you and The Russian government attorney who is flying over from Moscow for this Thursday. 

(A good deal of discussion follows: time for the meeting, what day, plans get changed. Finally, it’s on.)

 

From: Donald Trump, Jr. To: Rob Goldstone June 7, 2016, 6:14 PM 

Great. It will likely be Paul Manafort (campaign boss) my brother in law and me. 725 Fifth Ave 25th floor. 

(At this point Donald Jr. forwards the entire thread to Kushner and Manafort.)

*

CHRISTOPHER WRAY, Trump’s nominee to head the FBI, sits down for an interview with a congressional panel. He is asked three times if the Russian investigation is a “witch hunt.” Like Peter, before the cock crowed, Wray thrice denies the president’s founding premise. 

Not a witch hunt.

May 11-12, 2019: A Congressional Subpoena Is Issued for Donald Trump Jr.

 

5/11/19: President Trump is furious to learn that a congressional subpoena has been issued for his son, Don Jr. That means he spends most of his morning tweeting and retweeting stories he sees on Fox News. 

He’s like one of those pigeons in an experiment to see how often they will peck at a lever if they are intermittently rewarded with food. In just over an hour he tweets sixty times. He’s totally exonerated, he says. So are Don Jr., and Manafort and Flynn and Gates and Cohen (no, not him) and Papadopoulos, all now convicted felons, except Don Jr., who worked on his campaign. All  his critics hate America, and they are treasonous and ugly, and losers and lowlifes and skanks.

Updated version: pigeon pecks at different colored bars.

___

 

 

5/12/19: President Trump is feeling the heat as more and more information about the Mueller Report spills out, including details that point directly at a case for obstruction of justice. 

That means, a crazy man has got to tweet. “My campaign was being seriously spied upon by intel agencies and the Democrats,” Trump howls at one point. He’s praying his fan base will focus on the word “Democrats” and won’t wonder why U.S. intelligence agencies had determined he might be working in the interests of Russia, and not the United States. “This never happened before in American history, and it all turned out to be a total scam, a Witch Hunt, that yielded No Collusion, No Obstruction,” he continued to tap-tap. “This must never be allowed to happen again!” 

In a second tweet, Trump’s authoritarian instincts receive full play. This time he rages, “we have had a giant SCAM perpetrated upon our nation, a Witch Hunt, a Treasonous Hoax. That is the Constitutional Crisis & hopefully guilty people will pay [emphasis added]!” 

Once again, the president is accusing political opponents of treason, a crime punishable by death, and warning “guilty people will pay.”

October 30, 2022: Dimwit Dad and Dimwit Son Insist COVID Not so Bad

 

10/30/20: President Trump has been campaigning hard in recent days, which means plenty of lying, insults, and threats.

 

_______________________

 

A desperate president comes up with someone new to blame for the coronavirus crisis.

_______________________

 

 

He’s sounding more than a little desperate. On Friday, he came up with someone new to blame for the coronavirus crisis.

 

America’s doctors!

If doctors weren't all lying, the president would be doing great!

 

As he “explained” to a crowd attending a Michigan rally there was a reason Germany had a much lower death toll, adjusted for population, than the United States of America.

 

You know in Germany, if you have a bad heart and you’re ready to die or if you have cancer and you’re going to be dying soon, and you catch COVID, that happens we mark it down to COVID. You know our doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID, you know that, right? I mean our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say is, “I’m sorry, but you know, everybody dies of COVID.” But in Germany and other places, if you have a heart attack or you have cancer, you’re terminally ill, you catch COVID, they say you died of cancer, you died of a heart attack. With us, when in doubt, choose COVID. It’s true, no it’s true.

 

Now, they’ll say [he points at reporters in the back of the crowd], “Oh it’s terrible what he said,” but it’s true. It’s like $2,000 more. So you get more money. This could only happen to us.”

 

It is true.

 

That is, it is true that this could only happen to us. Only a fabulist like Trump could stand before a crowd and insult frontline medical workers. And that, without offering any proof.

 

*

 

REPULSED by the president’s baseless attacks, the American Medical Association releases the following statement:

 

Throughout this pandemic, physicians, nurses, and frontline health care workers have risked their health, their safety and their lives to treat their patients and defeat a deadly virus. They did it because duty called and because of the sacred oath they took. The suggestion that doctors – in the midst of a public health crisis – are overcounting COVID-19 patients or lying to line their pockets is a malicious, outrageous, and completely misguided charge. COVID-19 cases are at record highs today. Rather than attacking us and lobbing baseless charges at physicians, our leaders should be following the science and urging adherence to the public health steps we know work – wearing a mask, washing hands and practicing physical distancing.

 

As far as testing and the pandemic go, the Centers for Disease Control discounts the idea that we are turning the corner on COVID-19. The scientists and experts tally a growing cost. New cases:

 

10/27:            72,183.

10/28:            82,599

10/29:            90,155 (highest one day total recorded)

 

Latest seven-day average:  76,785 (highest since the pandemic began).

 

Death toll:

 

10/27:                 901.

10/28:              1,060. 

10/29:              1,055

 

Seven-day average deaths:  807.

 

Death rate, last seven days:  1 in every 95 patients.

 

Total deaths, so far: 228,100.

 

 

POSTSCRIPT: Friday, the president also clogged his Twitter feed with half-truths and frantic lying. Lowlights included:

 

“Watch the Great Red Wave!”

 

(Biden has an average lead in the national polls of 7.8 points.)

 

“More Testing equals more Cases. We have best testing. Deaths WAY DOWN. Hospitals have great additional capacity!” 

 

(Hospitalization rates are increasing.)

 

“The Election should END on November 3rd.”

 

(So, if he’s losing, he’s not going to go to court?)

 

“Joe Biden has vowed to abolish the entire U.S. Energy Industry.”

 

(Does this include the use of fire?)

 

“President Obama used to say that ‘if you wanted to see something really screwed up, give it to Joe Biden to do.’”

 

(When I try to find the source of this quote, I end up at Australia Online News, and when I checked the “story” it had one “like.” You figure that was Trump.)

 

 

FUN FACT- DIMWIT SON: “Like dimwit father, like dimwit son,” as the saying goes. Donald Trump Jr. shows up on Laura Ingraham’s show and claims that deaths from the coronavirus have dropped to “almost nothing.” So we should all be sure to vote for Dimwit Dad.

 

(Dimwit Laura immediately agrees.)

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: On this same day, CDC reports that 980 Americans die from COVID-19. On 10/31 another 896 succumb. On 11/1 691 additional deaths are recorded, followed by 845 on 11/2 and 1,161 on Election Day, 11/3.

 

After a slight drop, on 11/9, the U.S. hits 1,079 deaths again, and on no other day, during Don Jr.’s dad’s time in office do we slip below a thousand deaths again.

 

On 11/24, we pass the 2,000-mark.

 

On 12/11, we blow past 3,000 dead in a day.

 

And on 1/6/21 we top 4,000 in a single day.

 

Or, as Don Jr. might say to the grieving families: “almost nothing.”

February 14, 2021: GOP Senators Explain Impeachment Vote

 

2/14/21: Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump spend Valentine’s Day tweet-celebrating their dad’s “great win” in his second impeachment trial. 

A few of the senators who voted to acquit make clear. They did so while pinching their nostrils, or on the lame pretense that Trump could no longer be impeached once he was out of office.

 

____________________ 

“The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.” 

Sen. Mitch McConnell

____________________

  

Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is strongest in condemnation, weakest in performance: 

There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking. No question about it. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president. And having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting [emphasis added unless otherwise noted] into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.”

 

This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories orchestrated by the outgoing president, who seemed determined to either overturn the voters’ decision or else torch our institutions on the way out.

 

Sen. Shelly Moore Capito emphasized that her vote was “solely” on the constitutional question, while adding: “The actions and reactions of President Trump were disgraceful, and history will judge him harshly.” 

My own Ohio senator, Rob Portman, explained: “I have said that what President Trump did that day was inexcusable because in his speech he encouraged the mob, and that he bears some responsibility for the tragic violence that occurred.” 

Sen. Dan Sullivan: “I condemn former president Trump’s poor judgment in calling a rally on that day, and his actions and inactions when it turned into a riot. His blatant disregard for his own Vice President, Mike Pence, who was fulfilling his constitutional duty at the Capitol, infuriates me.” 

John Thune: “My vote to acquit should not be viewed as exoneration for his conduct on January 6, 2021, or in the days and weeks leading up to it. What former president Trump did to undermine faith in our election system and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power is inexcusable.” 

You could argue that those five Republican senators could easily have, and should have voted to convict.

 

A second group of Republicans also found fault with Trump’s behavior in the wake of the November 3 election: 

Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota admitted, “The Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol were appalling, and President Trump’s remarks were reckless, but based on the evidence presented in the trial, he did not commit an impeachable offense.” 

He voted to acquit. 

Sen. Charles E. Grassley said House managers failed to prove Trump incited the riot. Still, “This does not excuse President Trump’s conduct on and around January 6 of this year.” 

(So, Trump did incite the riot? Or he didn’t?) 

 

Sen. Tom Cotton is a wimp. 

Sen. Tom Cotton, who dreams nightly about running for president in 2024, offered a notably wimpy response: “It was ill-advised to have a large rally on the day that Congress was meeting to certify electors after so much contentious litigation and controversy about the election results.” 

Yes, I think the family of Officer Sicknick who was killed will agree that it was “ill-advised” to stir up thousands to storm the Capitol Building.

 

(Disgusted by the comments of people like Rep. Greene, that the rioters on January 6 were really not Trump supporters, I began looking up the records of the people who have faced arrest. As of March 2022, I have examined information on 615 cases. As anyone with a brain might have guessed, these people were Trump supporters and proud to say.)

December 13, 2021: Right-Wing Types Knew Who Attacked Capitol Hill

12/13/21: We learned today what many right-wing types thought was really going on as the January 6 riot unfolded. They watched the mob storm the halls of Congress with their very own peepers, and they understood who the attackers were and who stirred them to fury and violence.

 

____________________ 

“He’s got to condemn this shit Asap.” 

Donald J. Trump Jr.

____________________

  

Thanks to the Democratic-led committee – on which only two principled Republicans have had the nerve to serve – we know that even as the riot exploded, Donald Trump Jr. sent a text to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. He wasn’t blaming Joe Biden for what was transpiring. He wasn’t claiming left-wing plants were leading the mob on. He was begging Meadows to talk to his dad. “He’s got to condemn this shit Asap. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough,” Don Jr. insisted. 

Meadows didn’t respond with outrage and try to say that Black Lives Matter types were stirring the mob. 

He replied: “I’m pushing it hard. I agree.” 

So Don Jr. knew. 

And Meadows knew.

 

Even the Trump enablers at Fox News – who play dumb now and claim the attack wasn’t so bad, or if it was, it was because left-wing types tricked “patriots” into rioting – knew as events unspooled on television. They weren’t blind to reality. They saw what we all saw. Laura Ingraham texted Meadows, pleading with him to get the man in the Oval Office to call off the attack. “Hey Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home … this is hurting all of us … he is destroying his legacy.” (For an entirely different take from the people at Fox News, see my post for 5/19/21.) 

And he was. 

And she was destroying her legacy as a journalist. She was collapsing the boundary between reporting and kissing ass. She was conflating herself and Fox and the attackers and the president into a grotesque “us.” 

Brian Kilmeade, another Fox News host, wasn’t blind. “Please get him on tv,” he said of Mr. Trump, in yet another call to Meadows. The mob is, “Destroying everything you have accomplished.” 

Sean Hannity urged Meadows to get Trump to do something, too. “Can he make a statement? … Ask people to leave the Capitol,” Hannity implored.

 

The answer, of course, was “yes.” Trump could have quelled the riot. Instead, he dallied and diddled and enjoyed watching democracy eat itself. 

The president’s goal was simple and entirely self-serving. He wanted to overturn the results of an election that he fairly lost. (See: 12/4/21; 12/28/21; 12/29/2 and 1/1/22.) 

The mob the president helped stir was just one of several deadly weapons he was ready to employ.

 

* 

OF COURSE, when you are revealed to have known the truth about who you believed stirred the mob on January 6, and you work for Fox News, you must wrestle the messenger to the ground and trample that person into the TV turf. 

At Fox, every day is a day for democracy to eat itself. 

After other networks dared to air Rep. Liz Cheney, heretofore all her life a Republican, reading the Fox hosts’ texts aloud, Ingraham used her show to blast the “regime media.” Those commie rats, you know she wanted to say, were “somehow trying to twist this message to try to tar me as a liar, a hypocrite who privately sounded the alarm on Jan. 6, but publicly downplayed it.” 

Well, yeah.

 

You did, Laura, sweetcakes. You knew Trump had to regain control of the mob – which mob you and your peers knew full well he stirred to attack. Then you told your viewers that  the rioters were “people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement.” 

You added helpfully that there “are some reports that Antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd.” 

And you said this: 

“I have never seen Trump rally attendees wearing helmets. Black helmets. Brown helmets. Black backpacks. The uniforms that you saw in some of these crowd shots … Those knee pads and all the pads on their elbows,” you hinted. “I have been to dozens of Trump events and the criminal actions we saw today do not represent this movement.”

 

(We know, if we simply bother to read the indictments prepared by the Department of Justice since that day, that those folks in tactical gear were indeed right-wing types from the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, and groups of that nature.)

 

You made it as clear as you could. You hinted at others committing the violence. You had never seen Trump fans act like this. You even grabbed the mantel of patriotism and tried to drape it over the rioters that day. “We’re trying to save this country,” you said, “not to tear it down.” 

Then there was Hannity. He knew, too. He had called Meadows to have the president call off the dogs. Now, it was time for Hannity to describe those dogs on his show. The Trump people, “They were there to peacefully protest. Then we had the reports that groups like antifa, other radical groups — I don’t know the names of all of them — that they were there to cause trouble.” 

He didn’t “know the names.” Probably because he was making it all up. 

“There were reports that some of these groups were telling their members to dress up in, quote, ‘MAGA gear,’” Hannity added, in case his audience members still hadn’t sniffed the clues he was feeding.

 

Then there was Kilmeade texting Meadows – but on the air offering this delusional take for his poor uninformed viewers to swallow. “I do not know Trump supporters that have ever demonstrated violence that I know of in a big situation,” he said in the wake of the violent attack. 

More recently, Kilmeade, who knew on January 6 that the mob was destroying everything Trump had achieved (biggest federal deficit ever – loss of three million jobs during his time in office – not one, but two impeachments) offered up a brand new take. Now in November 2021, he invited Tucker Carlson onto his show, and posed this softball question: “Do you think maybe, perhaps, and maybe you don’t want to give away your series, [but do] you find indications that the FBI was actually pushing for this invasion?” Kilmeade wondered. 

Sure. The F.B.I. stirred up the mob – even though no one at the F.B.I. ever spoke on that fateful day. 

The plain fact is this. It was Trump who said his followers had to “fight like hell” that day, or they “wouldn’t have a country anymore.”

 

* 

A riot that “targeted the heart of American democracy” 

SO IT WAS. Fox News hosts knew on January 6 what was going on and then they got dumber as the weeks passed. Tucker Carlson, the top-rated host on the network, showed footage from the day of the riot during one evening show and said of the people inside the Capitol, “They don’t look like terrorists. They look like tourists.” 

That’s true if you looked at only the carefully selected clips Tuck decided to show. It’s not true if you select others, even if both sets of clips show part of what happened that day. I’ve looked into the arrests, so far, of 564 rioters from January 6. I would agree that a hundred or more were relatively harmless, caught up in the emotion of that day, and who went inside the Capitol just to experience the spirit of that day. But who stirred them up? Who plotted to overthrow a fair vote in several states? And if you mention the fact that dozens of police were inured that day, the idea that these were just “tourists” can only be called absurd. 

Sadly, absurdity sells at Fox News. So they sell all they can.

 

In one recent confrontation, Geraldo Rivera was a guest on Sean Hannity’s show. He had this to say of events of that awful January day: “This was a riot that was unleashed, incited and inspired by the president of the United States, which targeted the heart of American democracy.” 

Hannity told Rivera to stop talking. He told viewers that his guest’s words represented only his opinion. Then Hannity started spouting opinion like the Fontana di Trevi in Rome. What about that diabolical House committee in Congress, Hannity demanded to know! (None of the nine members of the committee attacked any police officers on January 6 and none have been charged with any crimes, as a result.) 

“The question is, this corrupt committee. The question is,” Hannity shouted, “why this riot and not 574 other riots?”

 

Me. Me. I taught history. I can answer that question. I know why the January 6 riot is far more important. The destruction that resulted during any number of Black Lives Riots was regrettable and counter-productive. That much is true. We have also had far deadlier riots in American history. (That was the argument Ingraham soon tried to make, as if to show what happened with all those Trump supporters running amok, wasn’t so bad.) I can list a few. The Watts Riot. The Tulsa Riot. The Hamburg Riot. The Zoot Suit Riot. The New York City Draft Riot in 1863. Even the Courthouse Riot in Cincinnati, which ended in cannon fire and dozens killed. 

But we have never had a riot, by people encouraged by the President of the United States, to attack one branch of the federal government, to serve the selfish needs of the other. In fact, it was a riot meant to overturn the results of an election – and served only the selfish interests of the head of the executive branch. 

After Rivera asked Hannity to try to “remember the frame of mind you were in when you wrote that text on January 6,” the host decided it was time to turn to a second guest, Dan Bongino.

 

This is Fox News, remember, where Laura Ingraham could speak of Team Trump and Team Fox as “us.” 

Bongino knew his job. He’s a bulldog, snarling and making biting verbal attacks on anyone with whom he disagrees. “The back-stabbing of the president you’re engaging in is really disgusting,” he tells Rivera. 

“We’re all Team Trump at Fox New,” is what Bongino meant, and if you forget that, you’re not just stating opinion. You’re “back-stabbing” the president, the man that Sean, Laura, Brian and Dan all love. 

Love more than democracy, itself, really.