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Trump priases his son’s transparency. “My son is a high quality person.”’
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Huckabee-Sanders stonewalls all questions about Trump jr. during an audio-only press conference, referring questions about him to his lawyer, but she still stands by the “no one colluded” claim she made the previous day.
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Reports surface that some WH aides are considering lawyering up.
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Rep. Marsha Blackburn says “Maybe Trump Jr. was duped.” Hm, ya think?
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Ted Cruz blames all this Russia stuff on “Barack Obama.”
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Fox News tries to spin Don Jr. email dump — then gives up on it when they get to the part where Jr. responds ‘If it’s what you say, I love it.’” when he reads that the Russian government wants to provide Trump information against Clinton in order to help their campaign.
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Fox and Friends retracts their claim that Comey shared Top Secret information with the Press. “We were mistaken.” [No shit, Sherlock.]
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Politico reports that Peter W. Smith’s attempts to gain access to Hillary’s emails involved a White Supremacist who had been banned from Twitter for his racism.
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Julian Assange admits that he tried to give Don jr. advise to publish his emails through Wikileaks.
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Some on the media argue that the leaks on Don Jr’s emails are coming from Steve Bannon in order to protect Kushner.
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Wapo reports that GOP operatives close to Trump are building a “discredit team” to smear reporters.
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Daily Beast reports that Bill Browder will testify before Senate Judiciary on how Veselnitskaya is linked to the GRU, FSB and efforts to lower the Magnitski Act sanctions.
William Browder, an American financier who has investigated Russian corruption for more than a decade, will brief the Senate Judiciary Committeeat a hearing next week on the lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya’s ties to the Russian government—including to former top members of the GRU and the FSB, two of the Kremlin’s main intelligence agencies. Those ties were spelled out in documents that Browder shared with the committee and provided to The Daily Beast this week.
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joe Scarborough announces on Colbert that he’s leaving the Republican party to become and Independent.
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CNN reports Special Counsel Bob Mueller was unaware of Juniors meeting with Veselniskaya, but will now be investigating. [Ruh Roh!]
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The intercept reports that Trump is still the principle on many of his businesses despite his claims to have handed over control to his family. [Liar, Liar, super long tie on fire.]
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Rep Brad Sherman (D-CA) and Al Green (D-TX) file articles of Impeachment against Trump over his handling of the firing of James Comey.
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Sen Franken rips defense of Donald Jr. to shreds during confirmation hearing for FBI director nominee Christopher Wray in response to a claim by Lindsey Graham that the Ukraine tried to give information to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. [Although this wasn’t the Ukrainian government sending an operative to reach out to Clinton, it was an effort to gather information on Paul Manafort by DNC consultant Alexandra Chalupa who is Ukrainian-American. That’s oppo research due diligence by an American, not a foreign government trying to interfere with a U.S. election.]
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Sen Graham ask Wray if Mueller is on a “Witch Hunt” — he say “Director Mueller is not on a Witch Hunt.” He also says “Any threat or promise to help a campaign by a foreign government, the FBI would want to know.”
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Senate Judiciary Chair Grassley prepares to call Manafort to testify.
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Rep. Steve King threatens to re-open investigation of 65k emails of Anthony Weiner, Comey’s “activities” and Hillary’s emails if Democrats don't stop talking about Trump and Russia. [Go for it, punk!]
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Emin Agalarov’s attorney Scott Balber gets smashed on live TV by Chris Cuomo over Emin's promoter Rob Goldstone “Do you know him to a a pathological liar?” and his attempt to give Don Jr. negative information on Hillary: Balber says it’s “Simply fiction that this was an attempt by the Russian government to reach Trump through having his son’s pop music publicist, the prosecutor never talked to his father.” Cuomo says about Goldstone’s claim: “That is some doozy of a lie.”
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Cuomo also takes on Sekulow over Don Jr. and tells him “You have no facts!”
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McClatchy reports that House, Senate and DOJ investigators are looking at whether the Russian cyberbot and Troll program to spread fake news about Hillary as reported by Time was coordinated using Jared Kushner voter micro-targeting system with Cambridge Analytics. Former Pentagon expert on Russia Mike Carpenter states ““There appears to have been significant cooperation between Russia’s online propaganda machine and individuals in the United States who were knowledgeable about where to target the disinformation,” he said, without naming any American suspects.
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Democratic party donors and some staff have sued the Trump campaign and Roger Stone for conspiring to publicly release their private information through the dumping of data stolen from the DNC by Russian hackers through DCLeaks and Wikileaks. The suit doesn’t contain any hard evidence of conspiracy but it does seek to depose witnesses and do discovery of Trump campaign emails.
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WSJ reports that US intel is reviewing intercepts they captured in 2015 of Russian intel personnel discussing contacts with Trump associates.
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DOJ misses a court ordered deadline to provide all of Jeff Sessions foreign contacts.
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Trump tells Pat Roberson that Putin “wanted Clinton to win because of the Military and Energy.” He doesn’t mention sanctions, human rights, Crimea, Ukraine, NATO or the EU.
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During a Reuters interview Trump says he didn’t know about Junior meeting Veselnitskaya and argues “most people would have taken that meeting.” [Uh, nope.]
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NyTimes reports that Kushner has updated his security forms for foreign contacts 3 times and added more than 100 new names to the list.
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Republican Rep. Bill Flores says that Trump should get his kids, including Kushner, out of the White House.
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DOJ delivers Sessions foreign contact list a day late and short of details. He continues to claim that Foreign contacts he made as a member of the Senate are not relevant and are therefore redacted, but that’s not an option available on the form.
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Asked about Trump Jr’s meeting and his FBI director nominee’s claim that anyone in that situation “should contact the FBI” while in France for Bastille Day Trump says again repeating the false statement he himself helped craft on AF1 that “most people would have taken that meeting”, “nothing happened, they talked about adoptions which wasn’t part of the campaign” and claims she wasn’t a “Government Lawyer” even though Junior was specifically told that she was and this was part of the Russian government’s effort to help his campaign, he ignores FEC rules over foreign “gifts and contributions” then he blames Veselnitskaya even being in the country on Loretta Lynch (ignoring that her Visa was approved by the State Dept, not DOJ, because she was a Denys Katsyv’s defense attorney while he was being sued under the Magnitski Act)
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Chuck Grassley sends Junior a letter requesting he testify before Senate Judiciary.
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After first saying he’d only just heard of the Veselnitskaya meeting 2 days ago Trump changes his tune later in the day, telling reporters on Air Force One: “In fact maybe it was mentioned at some point,” This statement was supposed to be off the record, but Trump changed and put it on the record.
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Chicago Tribune reports that GOP Donor and operative Peter W. Smith who had tried to acquire Hillary’s emails for Michael Flynn committed suicide 10 days after talking to WSJ.
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Yahoo News reports that Trump’s attorneys were informed about the meeting 3 weeks ago after the emails referring to it were discovered by Kushner’s lawyers who then updated his SF-86 form.
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Senate Intel member James Lankford (R-OK) reveals that Kushners attendance at the Veselnitskaya meetings was known as far back as April, when he updated his background check forms.
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Kushner explodes with WH Press staff saying that instead of letting Trump and Juniors lawyers respond to these issues they need to aggressively defend Don Jr. and have two staffers ready to “attack the Chyrons” on Cable News shows and have op-eds written for the NYtimes and WSJ. Some reports are that Spicey has begun complaining about Kush and still others say these conversations just didn’t happen. [Yeah, alrighty.]
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Kasowitz blows his stack at an email critic: “I’m on you now. You are fucking with me now. Let’s see who you are. Watch your back, bitch.” Charming.
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TPM reports that Trump Deputy Sebastian Gorka is a Nazi Worshipper, cuz of course he is.
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Many reporters note that there are references to a phone call between Don Jr. and Emin in the emails chain, and also that Goldstone’s mention of the Russian governments efforts to help Trump seem nonchalant as if that was an already known fact to Don Jr.
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Michael Isakoff reveals that he had interviewed Rob Goldstone and learned that the Trump’s and Agalarov’s had a deal for a new Trump Tower in 2013 that went sideways in 2014 when Obama placed sanctions on Russia for their invasion of Crimea.
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Daily Beast reports that in addition to the “translator” who came with Veselnitskaya to the meeting with Don Jr. there was Rinat Akhmetshin a former Russian Intelligence officer and lobbyist who had previously been accused of being involved in an international hacking scheme.
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On Fox both Lou Hobbs while appearing on Hannity and Jesse Waters accuse the “deep state” and “left wing” media of attempting a “coup d’etat” against Trump to undermine American values and “break the will of the people” even though the actual majority of the people voted against Trump.
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Loretta Lynch denies she had any personal involvement or knowledge of Veselnitskaya’s Visa status, and she shouldn’t because that wasn’t. her. job. the State Dept. under John Kerry handled Visas at that time and her’s was approved at least as far back as 2013 when Bharara first issued his Magnitski suit against the Prevezon Holdings.
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GOP strategist Rick Wllson says “Only Trump’s hypnotized base believes his Bullshit Tornado about Russia.” [Yep, pretty much.’]
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Trump digital media expert Brad Pascale issues a statement in response to House and Senate intel requests to speak to him that he has ‘no knowledge of Russian involvement” in the online campaign he put together with Cambridge-Analytica.
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Rep.Adam Schiff calls for everyone from the Veselnitskaya meeting to testify to the House Intel. [Which is now at 8 people and counting...]
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The New Republic publishes an extensive story on TrumpCos long history of being involved in money laundering with Russian mobsters going all the way back to 1987.
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Former Trump communications aid Michael Caputo agrees with CNN that the Trump Campaign was too much of a ‘Shit Show” to have been able to effectively coordinate with the Russians. [Do Tell.]
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Caputo testifies behind closed doors to House Intel, claims he saw no links to discussions of Russia, that little old ladies used to bring them “dog-eared papers” on Clinton, and condemns Rep. Jackie Spieres for linking him to Russia saying that it caused his wife and family to receive death threats, and that someone threatened to burn his house down. “The Rhetoric is going to get someone killed and I don’t want to be the next one shot” which is pretty ironic since Jackie Spiere’s was shot 5 times while she was a staffer for Rep. Leo Ryan when he was killed near the Jim Jones compound in Guyana.
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Akhmetshin claims he has never worked for Russian intelligence or the GRU, his simply served 2 years in the Russian army before immigrating to the U.S. and becoming a citizen and working as a lobbyist, but says that Veselnitskaya brought a plastic folder with documents showing the DNC accepting funds from Russia to the meeting. All this despite a letter written from Sen. Grassley to SecDEf Kelly about Akhmetshin being and “unregistered” lobbyist who had previously experience as an “active measures expert” with the GRU.
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Veselnitskaya admits that she is a former prosecutor and is in regular contact with the Prosecutor General of Russia Yuri Chaika, who is controversial for trumping up bogus charges against Putin’s enemies and having them tortured and killed in prisonthe same way the Sergei Magnitski was killed.
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Kushner Lawyer Jamie Gorelick is reported by Politico to be backing out of Kushner’s issues with Mueller and leaving everything to Abbie Lowell