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On Monday evening, the New York Times revealed that Donald Trump Jr didn’t just agree to a meeting with a Russian lawyer promising damaging information about Hillary Clinton. He agreed to such a meeting even though he was told in advance that the information to be presented was provided by the Russian government as part of an effort to help his father secure the presidency.
The email to the younger Mr. Trump was sent by Rob Goldstone, a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped broker the June 2016 meeting. In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he was interested in receiving damaging information about Mrs. Clinton, but gave no indication that he thought the lawyer might have been a Kremlin proxy.
Previously, Trump Jr had maintained that he didn’t know the nature of the meeting, but had only agreed to meet with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya because he was asked by a friend.
In two clumsy statements over the weekend, the younger Mr. Trump on Saturday said the meeting was related to Russia’s freezing of an adoption program popular with Americans. When confronted a day later with a Times story citing authoritative sources that Ms. Veselnitskaya had promised damaging material on Mrs. Clinton, he said that the information she supplied was essentially meaningless and merely a “pretext” for discussing the adoption issue.
But Trump Jr knew even more. He knew the information had come from the Russian government. He knew the intent of the information was to assist the campaign. And he not only agreed to open a slot in “a busy schedule” to meet with Veselnitskaya, he brought in Jared Kushner and campaign chair Paul Manafort.
The June 9, 2016, meeting is of obvious interest to Robert Mueller III, the Justice Department special counsel investigating the Trump team’s potential involvement in Russia’s effort to influence the presidential election.
The meeting occurred on June 9, shortly after Trump had secured enough primary votes to lock up the Republican nomination. It represents everything that a lawyer looking for proof of collusion could ever hope to find.
There’s the motivation. Donald Trump Jr. has openly admitted that he agreed to the meeting for the express purpose of obtaining information sourced from the Russian government about Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. …
There’s opportunity. These were still early days, when the Trump team was small and consisted of only a few people. And yet, Junior found the prospect of obtaining Russian information on Hillary so enticing that he invited both adviser Jared Kushner and campaign chair Paul Manafort to be present. …
Finally, there is the timing. This meeting came just two days after Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination. This isn’t something that happened after the election or in the very last days of the campaign. This meeting came on June 9. It was in the very early stages, when Trump was still regarded as a joke by most of the press and public, and when the three people in that room—Trump Jr, Manafort, and Kushner—were directly responsible for almost everything in the campaign. …
Veselnitskaya made the Trump campaign an offer, explained the price, and provided a potential alibi. It was a neat package.
It’s unclear who the sources are who confronted Trump Jr’s false stories to release this information. However, three major staffers were fired from the Trump campaign within two weeks of the meeting, reportedly after clashes involving meeting-attendee Paul Manafort.
The actual email hasn’t yet been made public, and may alter the tenor of the story if released. However.
Mr. Goldstone’s message, as described to The New York Times by the three people, indicates that the Russian government was the source of the potentially damaging information. It does not elaborate on the wider effort by Moscow to help the Trump campaign.