On Monday evening, the Washington Post reported that Donald Trump was directly involved in preparing the cover story for the Trump Tower meeting between his senior campaign staff and a team of propagandists provided by the Russian government.
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Flying home from Germany on July 8 aboard Air Force One, Trump personally dictated a statement in which Trump Jr. said he and the Russian lawyer had “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children” when they met in June 2016, according to multiple people with knowledge of the deliberations.
Not only does this show Trump’s personal involvement in crafting the cover-up story, it’s literally the same cover story that Trump himself used in brushing aside reports of his lengthy, unmonitored conversation with Vladimir Putin.
President Donald Trump told The New York Times on Wednesday that he and Russia's president Vladimir Putin discussed adoption when they huddled on the sidelines of the G-20 in Germany last month.
And it directly contradicts the statement from Trump’s lawyer in which he denied any involvement in providing the cover story for the meeting that involved his son, son-in-law, and campaign chair. A statement that threw his son under the bus for crafting what turns out to be a complete fabrication.
Sekulow: I do want to be clear — that the president was not involved in the drafting of the statement and did not issue the statement. It came from Donald Trump Jr. So that’s what I can tell you because that’s what we know.
The statement was a lie. The contention that Trump wasn’t involved in creating the statement was a lie. What does that say about Trump’s description of his own meeting with Putin?
The evidence leaves no doubt: Donald Trump directed a cover-up intended to disguise the nature of contacts between his campaign staff and the Russian government. That’s now the baseline.
Not only that, but Trump’s legal representative engaged in denial that Trump had been involved in the cover-up. Quite literally a cover-up of the cover-up. Watergate is now somewhere very far in the rear-view mirror.
The level of interference and obstruction this generated is difficult to fathom—but it should be very easy to charge. After all, these weren’t statements made by accident or out of ignorance. They were blatant, deliberate attempts to confuse the public and evade blame for actions that, on close examination, are revealed as the very definition of collusion. They were told they were being offered information from the Russian government. They expressed a desire for that information. They acted on that information. They protected their sources. That’s collusion.
Trump’s team continues to push the idea that Trump himself was not involved in the Trump Tower meeting or any system of collusion that developed out of that meeting. But why should anyone believe a word coming from this White House?
- They lied about the purpose of the meeting.
- They lied about how the meeting was arranged.
- They lied about who was present at the meeting.
- They lied about what was said at the meeting.
- They lied about documents that were exchanged at the meeting.
Those lies were built with the direct, personal input of Donald Trump. It wasn’t just that he was aware of the cover-up and knew that it was wrong. He created the cover-up. He dictated the statement. In doing so, he knowingly and blatantly disseminated a lie.
The strategy, the advisers agreed, should be for Donald Trump Jr. to release a statement to get ahead of the story. They wanted to be truthful, so their account couldn’t be repudiated later if the full details emerged.
But within hours, at the president’s direction, the plan changed.
And, one day before the story of the Trump Tower meeting broke in the news, Donald Trump had a meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin. When asked about the contents of that meeting, Trump claimed that it had the exact same purpose as the cover-up he personally put together for the collusion of his campaign staff.
That Donald Trump and his campaign staff colluded with the Russian government to obtain and distribute information that could be used to his benefit in the 2016 election is obvious.
That Donald Trump engaged in an effort to obstruct information into that collusion, through the spreading of false information, and either firing or threatening to fire those engaged in the investigation, is definitive.
What Donald Trump actually offered Vladimir Putin in the conversation that went unheard by any other American … that’s unknown.