Thursday, May 17, 2018

Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort All on Shakier Ground More Than Ever

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.

Note: This disputes that original Jr. Trump’s story updated here from USA TODAY.

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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