Key players in this spider web legal entanglement
the likes we have never seen
This comes from the Washington Post via MSN
vis-à-vis that infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting to “get dirt on Hillary
Clinton” from the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya and a few others.
This is related to the same subject in a new 1,800 page release at this
site.
This report by Tom Hamburger, Shane
Harris, Sari Horwitz, Spencer Hsu, Julie Tate, Greg Miller, Devlin Barrett,
Matt Zapotosky, Ellen Nakashima, Jack Gillum, Josh Dawsey, and Rachel Weiner
all contributed to this all new report.
The story: A music promoter who promised Donald
Trump Jr. over email that a Russian lawyer would provide dirt about Hillary
Clinton in June 2016 made the offer because he had been assured the Moscow
attorney was “well connected and had damaging material,” the promoter testified
to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Rob
Goldstone told the committee that his client, the Russian pop star and
developer Emin Agalarov, had insisted he help set up the meeting between
President Trump’s son and the lawyer during the campaign to pass along material
on Clinton, overriding Goldstone’s own warnings that the meeting would be a bad
idea as Goldstone, a British citizen testified saying: “He (Agalarov) said, it doesn’t matter. You
just have to get the meeting.”
The
intensity with which Agalarov and his father, the billionaire Aras Agalarov,
sought the Trump Tower meeting, which has become a key point of scrutiny for
congressional inquiries and special counsel Robert S. Mueller was revealed in
more than 2,500 pages of congressional testimony and exhibits released by the
Senate Judiciary Committee on May 16, 2018.
The
testimony shows that attendees at the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting largely
agreed with Trump Jr.’s long-standing contention that the lawyer, Natalia
Veselnitskaya, did not transmit dirt about Clinton. She has denied she was
acting on behalf of the Russian government
(Note: Later was proven to be a lie
when she
admits that she was “an informant”).
But the new information helps explain why Goldstone
had written the candidate’s son before the meeting that Veselnitskaya would
bring “very high level and sensitive information that was part of “Russia and
its government’s support for Mr. Trump” — and
why Trump Jr. responded, “If it is what you say, then I love it.”
Goldstone said
Kushner, then a top campaign adviser, was one of just three people who spoke
during the meeting, interrupting Veselnitskaya at one point to ask her to
refocus her presentation. Goldstone said he recalled that Kushner stayed for
the entire meeting — contradicting Veselnitskaya’s public assertion the
president’s son-in-law left early and never came back.
As for the
president’s son, he testified to the committee that he was disappointed that
the Russian lawyer did not provide more information that could be used in the
campaign, saying: “All else being equal, I wouldn’t have wanted to waste 20
minutes hearing about something that I wasn’t supposed to be meeting about.”
Trump Jr. told the committee he never told his father
about the meeting.
Months have
gone by since committee chairman Sen.
Charles E. Grassley (R-IA) (first promised that the committee would release
transcripts of the interviews the panel conducted with some of the participants
in the Trump Tower meeting.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has said she supported the
release of the interview transcripts, but panel Democrats contend Republicans
did not push witnesses to answer all key questions and are preparing to end
their inquiry prematurely.
In a
statement, committee Democrats said the Trump Tower meeting was “one piece of a
much larger puzzle and confirms that the Trump campaign was willing to accept
Russia’s assistance.” They said there are “more questions than answers given
the lack of cooperation by many of the individuals involved” and pressed for
their committee’s investigation to continue.
The Senate
Intelligence Committee, which continues to press ahead with its investigation,
is soon expected to release the second of four interim reports, with its final
report expected in the fall.
President
Trump has repeatedly insisted that his campaign did not collude with Russian
efforts to interfere in the election, including through the hacking and
distribution of Democratic emails.
Ultimately,
lawyers working for the Trump Organization crafted statements they asked other
participants in the meeting to distribute, a move that could draw scrutiny from
Mueller if it involved communicating with witnesses or otherwise hiding the
true purpose of the meeting from investigators.
Trump
himself contributed to an initial statement about the meeting released by his
son, Trump Jr. told the committee. It misleadingly stated said the meeting had
been “primarily” about the adoption of Russian children by Americans. The
Kremlin halted adoptions in retaliation for the Magnitsky Act, the policy issue
that appeared to be at the heart of Veselnitskaya’s presentation.
The
testimony shows that relations between Goldstone and his longtime music client,
Emin Agalarov, grew increasingly tense as public pressure about the meeting
grew. In one voice mail played aloud by the committee to Goldstone, Emin
Agalarov urged the music promoter to decline comment about the meeting. “Stay
cool,” Agalarov told him.
Goldstone
testified that Agalarov also told him he should be pleased he had become so
famous. “You know, Jeffrey Dahmer was famous. I don’t think he got a lot of
work out of it,”
Goldstone said he
replied, referring to the serial killer, before hanging up.
In writing to Emin Agalarov,
Goldstone was even blunter saying: “I hope this favor was worth it for your dad. It could blow
up.”
My 2 Cents: This story is yet untold and it surely is
complex and most-probably careful slick lawyer design and President Trump’s
personal touch – since he always has to win on terms and nothing else matters
Stay tuned.
Thanks for stopping by.
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