Since my last incremental update Donald Trump jr. released the email chain which led to his meeting with Russian anti-Magnitski Act Attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya and a former Russian counter-Intelligence officer Rinat Akhmentshin who has previously been accused of being involved in international hacking.
So who thought it would be good idea to bring an ex-Russian Spy into Trump Tower to discuss dirt on Hillary Clinton?
What’s been most interesting was Trump’s performance art in France in defense of his first-born namesake. He claims that Veselnitskaya “wasn’t a government lawyer”, even though the email from Goldstone said specifically that she was, so Donald Jr. thought that she was when he agreed to take the meeting. He says that “nothing happened” even though the FEC rules only require that you attempt to “receive anything of value” which obviously he did and Common Cause has already filed a complaint to the DOJ & FEC about that. He claims that she was only in the country because of “Loretta Lynch” when the DOJ has nothing to do with extending Visas, Lynch has denied her involvement and as a matter of fact the Magnitski Act case that Veselnitskaya was defending Denys Katsyv against was ongoing at that time and only ended in an abrupt settlement after prosecutor Preet Bharara was fired by Trump. Veselnitskaya herself says that the paltry $6 Million settlement amount is so small “It seems like an apology by the U.S. government” for having brought the suit in the first place.
Now, I wonder why that happened?
We also now know that the reason Emin Agalarov was so tight with Don Jr. was because Junior was the point person on building a new Trump Tower in Moscow with the Agalarov family until Russia invaded Crimea in 2014 and Obama placed sanctions on them that shut that deal down, hence TrumpCo has been trying to lift sanctions on Russia ever since starting almost as soon as they entered the White House.
Also it’s revealed that the other Trumpster who was trying to access dirt on Hillary Clinton by gaining access to her email from Russian hackers, GOP donor Paul W. Smith besides recruiting a White Supremacist to aid him had committed suicide just 10 days after telling his story to the Wall Street Journal, which some might argue shows a considerable “consciousness of guilt.”
On top of all that there are increasing questions about Jared Kushner’s security clearances since he’s had to update his foreign contacts list from zero to literally more than 100, and there’s also more scrutiny on possible links between his voter micro-targeting operation with Cambridge-Analytics and Russian cyber bots and trolls, although one of his assistants on that project Brad Pascale denies this.
Naturally we should take that claim as seriously as we did the claims by TrumpCo that “They never met with any Russian nationals” during the election, right?
Meanwhile two House Democrats have filed articles of Impeachment against Trump over his firing of James Comey and members of the DNC have sued the Trump campaign for conspiring to release their personal information via the Russians.
[This post is part of a larger series including my original Master Timeline (which begins in 1986 when Trump first began talking about becoming a diplomat/negotiator with Russia so he could “end the Cold War in an hour” has been split due to length with a new Master List Vol 2 beginning in Mid-June.
There are also view previous incremental updates for July 10th, July 9th, July 4th, June 21st, June 18th, June 14th, June 12th, June 9th, June 6th, and June 2nd.]
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July 11th —
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Don Jr. releases his emails with Rob Goldstone, pre-empting another New York Times report on them. They completely confirm Maggie Haberman’s previous report that they were told Veselnitskaya was a “Government Lawyer” from Russia and the information was provided by the “Crown Prosecutor” of Russia because the Russian Government “wanted to help Trump.”
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Veselnitskaya talks to NBC and denies she ever worked for the Russian government or tried to tell Trump Jr. anything about Clinton but that “they wanted it very badly.”
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Harvard Law Prof Laurence Tribe says ““We now have the proverbial smoking gun: TJr was part of criminal conspiracy to violate fed crim laws banning foreign aid to any US campaign,”
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Jared Yates Sexton who’d’ been working on this story for a year concurs with Tribe: “This is the dumbest and biggest crime in the history of American politics. There's not even a close second.”
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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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July 12th —
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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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July 13th —
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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.
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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 “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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July 14th —