Donald Trump is having a very, very bad week. As reports emerge that several of his key advisers, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions, met with the Russians the week of the RNC convention, one former adviser has now publicly changed his story to contradict his former boss. Members of the Trump campaign interfered with an RNC delegate proposal to attach language to the official Republican Party platform that would back Ukraine, militarily and otherwise, if Russia tried to invade. You can read the backstory here. It was the only issue the Trump campaign intervened on while delegates were voting on the party’s platform. In a July 31, 2016, interview with George Stephanopoulos, less than two weeks after the push to remove the Ukraine language, Trump said he had absolutely nothing to do with the Ukraine change.
Fast forward to today and the news that Jeff Sessions, Carter Page, Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner and J.D. Gordon all met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on several occasions. Both before and after the election, including the week that the Ukraine language was changed in the RNC platform (which was curiously only days before the hacked DNC emails were released). It seems there were few members of Trump’s close circle who didn’t meet with Sergey Kislyak.
Here’s where it is getting prickly for Donald Trump. J.D. Gordon did an interview with CNN reporter Jim Acosta and Gordon’s comments directly contradict Donald Trump’s statement in that Stephanopoulos interview:
Gordon's remarks represent a dramatic shift from previous comments, and they come as Attorney General Jeff Sessions faces intense scrutiny over two previously undisclosed meetings with Russia's ambassador to the US — one of which was timed to the convention.
In January, Gordon told Business Insider that he "never left" his "assigned side table" nor spoke publicly at the GOP national security subcommittee meeting, where the amendment — which originally called for "providing lethal defense weapons" to the Ukrainian army to fend off Russian-backed separatists — was read aloud, debated, and ultimately watered down to "providing appropriate assistance" to Ukraine.
According to CNN's Jim Acosta, however, Gordon said that at the RNC he and others "advocated for the GOP platform to include language against arming Ukrainians against pro-Russian rebels" because "this was in line with Trump's views, expressed at a March national security meeting at the unfinished Trump hotel" in Washington, DC.
"Gordon says Trump said at the meeting ... that he didn't want to go to 'World War Three' over Ukraine," Acosta said.
Emphasis added. They were directed to do so at a meeting with Donald Trump himself. And who presided over that meeting? Attorney General Jeff Sessions:
Well, well, well. And while Gordon denied the Russians did anything in return, it cannot go unnoticed that the very same week all this went down, Wikileaks released the Russian hacked DNC emails.
See Jim Acosta’s excellent report below:
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