Pictured Above: Donald J. Trump; Aras Agalarov; Rob Goldstone
Donald J. Trump, Jr. on FOX
with Sean Hannity
(Telling his story: Called "Deer Jr. in the Headlights Moment")
Fast moving story as I note below and now this from Trump Jr., to
FOX’s Sean Hannity: His
appearance is kind of like Al Capone telling the tax auditor to look the other
way while he makes a pen change to his financials to “set the record straight.”
Full
story from Fox here follows these highlights:Donald Trump Jr. acknowledged in an
exclusive interview with Fox News' Hannity Tuesday night's show (July 11)
that he “Probably
would have done things a little differently when he met with a Russian attorney
during his father’s presidential campaign in June 2016.”However,
Don Jr. also described the meeting to Hannity as “A nothing. I wouldn’t
have even remembered it until you started scouring through this stuff. It was
literally just a wasted 20 minutes, which was a shame.”
The
interview constitutes the first public statement by Donald J. Trump Jr. since
he posted what he called “the entire email chain of his conversations with
music publicist Rod Goldstone setting up the June 2016 meeting with Natalia
Veselnitskaya via Twitter.”
(I
note: This appearance came shortly after the NY Times told him they would be posting his emails as part of their story series).
Recall
that Trump Jr. response to the email invite from Goldstone (see more below) was to say: “If it’s (the dirt on Hillary Clinton stuff) what you say. I love it.”
Ding –
smoking gun w/o question.
Now the
rest of the story follows below … it’s keeps growing it seems now almost by the
hour.
More to
follow later I am sure.
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UPDATE WITH THE ACTUAL ARTICLE HEADLINES:
New details emerge on
Moscow real estate deal that led to the
Trump-Kremlin alliance
Full story is here – Very, very
complex but it certainly underscores the need to get to the bottom of all this
and as they say post haste.
Highlights (my emphasis
added):
While in Moscow for the
Miss Universe pageant in November 2013,
Donald J. Trump entered into a formal business deal with Aras Agalarov, a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, to
construct a Trump Tower in the Russian capital. He later assigned his son,
Donald Trump Jr., to oversee the
project, according to Rob Goldstone,
the British
publicist who arranged the controversial 2016 meeting between the younger Trump
and a Kremlin-linked lawyer.
Mr. Trump has dismissed the idea he had any business
deals in Russia, saying at one point last October, “I have nothing to do with
Russia.” But Goldstone’s account, provided in an extensive interview
in March in New York, offers new details of the proposed Trump
project that appears to have been further along than most previous
reports have suggested, and even included a trip by Ivanka Trump to Moscow to
identify potential sites.
According to Goldstone
the project — structured as a licensing deal in which Agalarov would build the tower with Trump’s name on it — was only
abandoned after the Russian economy floundered. The
economic downturn resulted in part from
sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the European Union following
Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.
Goldstone’s
version of events implies a
possible explanation for Trump’s interest in lifting sanctions on Russia
— a policy move his administration quietly pursued in its first few weeks until
it ran into strong opposition from members of Congress and officials within the
State Department.
Goldstone placed
Donald Jr. at the center of the Trump Tower deal, saying that his father assigned his eldest son the
job of moving the project to fruition after the signing of a “letter of intent”
between the Trump Organization and Agalarov’s company, the Crocus Group.
Important Notes:
1. It is not clear if the
future president personally signed the “letter of intent,” but Michael Cohen, a longtime lawyer for Trump,
told Yahoo News Tuesday that it would have been standard practice for
Trump, as president of the Trump Organization, to do so.
2. Goldstone
also said that Ivanka Trump flew to Moscow in 2014 and met with Emin Agalarov, the oligarch’s son,
a pop singer and a vice president of the Crocus Group, to identify sites for the project.
3. Trump “put
Donald Jr. in charge and then Ivanka went to Moscow to look around for what the
location would be,” Goldstone said. But
the plans for a Trump Tower fell apart because “the economy tanked in
Russia’’ after the imposition of Western sanctions, he said.
Trump Jr. released his email exchange
with Goldstone on Tuesday, confirming the key role of the publicist
and, more significantly, the Agalarovs,
in offering negative information about Clinton on behalf of the Kremlin. “Emin just called and asked me to contact you
with something very interesting,” Goldstone
wrote Trump Jr. on June 3, 2016.
A chief prosecutor in Russia “offered to provide the
Trump campaign some official documents and information that would incriminate
Hillary and would be very useful to your father.
This is very high-level and sensitive information but is part of Russia
and its government’s support of Mr. Trump — helped along by Aras and Emin.”
Alan Garten, the chief lawyer for the Trump Organization, did not
respond to requests for comment. In a telephone interview, Cohen, who is
Trump’s personal lawyer, did not dispute any specific details of
Goldstone’s account but offered to check them. He did not later respond.
But Cohen adamantly rejected the idea there was anything improper about
meeting with the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, given that Trump Jr.
was told she might have information helpful to Trump’s campaign. “The purpose
of the election is to win. “Why is this any different?” than the unverified dossier
on Trump’s ties to Russia prepared by a former British spy working for a
Washington research firm hired by his political opponents (re: the “Golden Pee” tapes).
B/L: It’s all
falling into place – a place the whole Trump clan surely hates to fall. I
wonder if there’s a bottom or we’re in the middle of a “never ending story?”
But, I also note the heat is gathering near the top as it were.
Stay tuned for updates.
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