I started this diary a while ago. Events overtook the news/public discussion and I never got around to finishing it. However, with Paul Manafort now sitting in jail and given that it’s for charges having nothing (so far) to do with his time on the Trump campaign it seems a good time to remind folks there are (probably) more charges of Conspiracy Against the United States ( en.wikipedia.org/... ) than ones Manafort is under indictment for sitting on Robert Mueller’s desk. Because they are also tied to Obstruction of Justice charges to someday be filed against Trump himself (and others) as well as violations of federal campaign finance law (www.law.cornell.edu/... ) this seems a good time to highlight what I believe is an overlooked part of what flowed from that infamous Trump Tower meeting Manafort took part in.
To be specific, I’m referring to collusion conspiracy to work with Putin/Russia to help elect Donald Trump, and the significance of the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting. That meeting, and the Obstruction of Justice case(s) as well as conspiracy to violate federal campaign finance law related to it are getting significant attention from the Mueller investigation. A successful case that can be prosecuted hinges on being able to prove corrupt intent, and establishing there was a quid pro quo agreed upon. I don’t want to delve into all the nitty gritty details in this diary of all the legal intricacies as it’s been done plenty of times already, and will surely be done again. Basically I simply want to establish here that even if foreign help ultimately is not given, and even if a quid pro quo is not completed trying to set either up is illegal. It’s also true that Obstruction of Justice doesn’t actually require an underlying crime to have been committed — it’s the corrupt intent that matters legally. And more importantly, establishing corrupt intent will involve more than the June 9 Trump Tower meeting itself having happened, and six weeks later Wikileaks dumping all those emails on the eve of the Democratic National Convention — and subsequent email dumps.
One of the running, and IMHO tragically too easily accepted narratives about the infamous Trump Tower meeting is that the contents of the file that was handed over was somewhat underwhelming — IOW not the “hard hitting dirt” Team Trump had expected to get. It’s important to remember however that a file was handed over — more on that later. What concerns me is that so little attention is being paid to what was leaked in the days and week(s) following the Trump Tower meeting, well before the explosive DNC email dump as the Democratic National Convention was about to start.
I’ve sometimes been accused of burying the lede in diaries or taking too long to get to the point so before making my case and providing what I believe is a detailed timeline I’ll give the cliff notes version upfront:
- Russia had it all set up before they even arranged the Trump Tower meeting
- Russia had no intention of handing over the “crown jewels” at the meeting, but rather some more generic dirt both to gauge interest, and if not just Don Jr. but the actual brain trust of Team Trump said “hell yes” to “set the hook” — with more than just Paul Manafort I might add because Kushner was there at the meeting.
- Although the Russians didn’t hand over the really juicy stuff they secured an agreement for a deal — they’d soon (as in right away) prove they had good stuff and the Trump campaign and Trump himself would prove they were not only on board but could deliver on stuff Russia wanted.
- Robert Mueller probably has Trump (and others) dead to rights on Obstruction of Justice but for the larger case about conspiring with Putin/Russia just how and why Manafort came to join the Trump campaign and what he has to say about the crucial time period he was with the campaign including & especially that Trump Tower meeting (in addition to the before & after) is crucial.
Ok, now that that’s out of the way let me dig into backing up my assertions.
Let’s start with a review of the lead up to the June 9, 2016 meeting. My first bullet point is I think crucial, and I believe the records prove Russia was prepared well in advance for what flowed from the June 19 meeting. Advance as in even before those emails between Goldstone and Don Jr. in fact. From Wired magazine: ( www.wired.com/... )
That’s in part because of how it aligns with two incidents not mentioned in the suit. Many of the early leaks appeared on a site called DCLeaks, which went live in June 2016 but was registered on April 19, which the suit confirms was a day after Fancy Bear broke into the DNC. But the same group that registered DCLeaks had attempted but failed to register ElectionLeaks.com on April 12, nearly a week before the Fancy Bear hack.
Remember George Papadopoulous? He’d been in regular communication (lots of emails but by phone too) with top Trump campaign folks. And there’s at least one in person contact that’s rather memorable — that meeting where he’s sitting at the table with Trump himself present) about setting up a meeting between Trump & Putin. Granted, that was in late March before we know that he knew Russia had dirt on Clinton but it’s at least worth wondering whether once the mysterious professor that hadn’t taken him seriously until learning a couple of weeks before that picture was taken that Papadopolous was now part of the Trump campaign might have mentioned it. We also shouldn’t forget what got the whole counter-intelligence investigation started — Papadopolous shot off his mouth in May 2016 to a diplomat from one of our allies that the Russian’s had dirt in the form of Clinton related emails! Who knows who else he told? We do know part of email communications with the Trump campaign mentioned that Russia had thousands of emails that would be harmful to Clinton. ( www.usatoday.com/... ) So we know Papadopolous had trouble containing himself over knowing the Russians had hacked the DNC. There are emails proving he’d let the Trump campaign itself know that Russia had dirt in the form of emails before Goldstone and Don Jr. had their back & forth to set up the June 9 meeting. Admittedly I’m guessing, but I think that puts a different spin on Don Jr’s “If it’s what you say I love it” reply to Goldstone. Could it be he thought finally there would be proof what he’d heard was true, and that he would be the one to obtain it for his dad? And finally do something that would get him an attaboy from his pops? Regardless, we know he jumped at the chance to set up the meeting, and make sure others were in his office at Trump Tower when it took place.
Now we move to actually setting up the meeting. We know for sure about the emails exchanged between Rob Goldstone & Don Jr. — the promises Goldstone made and Fredo’s Donald Trump Jr’s “If it’s what you say I love it” response. We know that other key players on Team Trump were looped in because we have the emails to prove it, not to mention no less than Manafort and Kushner set aside time (when every waking minute was precious) to attend that meeting. We know all the team Trump players who attended swear, even “cross their hearts and hope to die pinky swear” that no one told Donald Trump himself about it. Hell, they probably claimed behind closed doors when asked by investigators they never, ever even thought about it in “The Donald’s” presence. Just as important and, I believed too often overlooked (or not emphasized enough) these days is what I said earlier — that Goldstone wasn’t the first person to tell key members of Team Trump that Russia had damaging information on Clinton. Given his interest in that Trump Tower meeting I think it’s likely Robert Mueller has been looking at whether Paul Manafort knew ahead of time too.
Oh, and before I forget I’m not buying any excuses about Trump and his family being political neophytes and simply not knowing it was illegal to accept foreign assistance. For one thing Jeff Sessions was involved in the campaign early on. Sessions himself knew better, and more importantly Sessions put some of his own Senate staff to work for the Trump campaign to help show them the ropes. Then we have Manafort himself, who had worked on U.S. campaigns for decades before realizing he could make far more money selling influence overseas. He too knew the law on this point quite well. Part of his expertise working on behalf of Russia/Ukraine to soften U.S. policy towards Russia was avoiding trouble with U.S. laws!
Anyway, we also know that the very day the meeting was confirmed by both sides Donald Trump publicly announced that the following Monday he’d be giving a major speech — one in which he be revealing to everyone in the country/world “interesting” stuff about Hillary Clinton. But as I’ve noted everyone involved in that June 9 meeting has assured, promised even that Trump didn’t know jack about it. Not that it was happening. Nothing about what was going to be talked about. Not what happened during it. Right under his nose in his beloved Trump Tower while he (Trump) was actually in his gilded “palace” as the meeting took place. The goobers and gooberettes out there in Trump World might buy that b.s. but some of us can add up something as simple as 1 + 1 = 2 OF COURSE HE KNEW ABOUT THE MEETING AND WHAT THE RUSSIANS PROMISED TO BRING! Alas, we never got the “bigly” speech that Donald Duckbrain quacked would show everyone once and for all how “crooked” Hillary and her emails & whatever actually “were.”
We know the meeting happened. We know who was there. We know calls were made & received by Don Jr. at crucial times leading up to the meeting as well as just before and just after it. Calls involving a blocked number. But Don Jr. can’t remember no matter how hard he tries just who was on the other end. Hell, he can’t even remember if his dad has a blocked number although everyone else in the world, including GOP folks and journalists know he has at least one — in his frigging Trump Tower penthouse! I for one think it’s a safe bet he’s got a blocked number cell phone, and blocked numbers from his office(s) as well. At least Robert Mueller doesn’t have to wonder about it because a first year law student could fill out a subpoena to acquire the information — and Mueller (and his team) are somewhat more advanced that law students.
But getting back to the meeting, there was discussion of “stuff” and that Team Trump has tried to spin it as about adoptions. They also try to claim nothing else of significance happened but we also know part of it was about a file that was either handed over or left behind depending on who’s telling the story. The main thing to remember is that if little ole Natasha Vetlitskaya (can’t resist thinking about Rocky & Bullwinkle) only dropped the file on Don Junior’s desk neither he or the other members of Team Trump handed it back to her or any other participant from the Russian side before they left. Again, that’s important. We are told the file itself contained some unflattering information about Hillary but little if anything that wasn’t already known. It’s not surprising Team Trump found it somewhat underwhelming (especially in the context of what I noted about Papadopolous, and definately & especially Goldstone) and have gone to great lengths since to claim it was a “nothing burger” so it’s not even worth talking about. Even so, it’s important to remember the meeting wasn’t some five minute “This is it? Why have you wasted our time? Get the F*@K outa here and don’t let the doorknob hit you in the ass!” type of thing. It went on for a while.
Call me crazy but maybe, just maybe that discussion involved some specific suggestions about what the Russians were prepared to do as long as Trump gave the ok. More importantly I’ve written this diary because I think there’s evidence to back that up — evidence that a series of quid pro quos was discussed and carried out over the summer and fall. More to the point, I’m writing because I maintain the quid pro quo was not only formally agreed upon at that June 9 Trump Tower meeting but the establishment of mutual bona fides started right away.
These days everyone seems to want to count the massive document dump by WikiLeaks as the Democratic Convention was getting underway as when the leaks started. WRONG! The actual timeline is one that shows the Russians were demonstrating to Team Trump they had plenty — right away. Again, I have to note I’m assuming Team Trump wanted to team up with Team Russia (seriously, does anyone here except Putin’s cyber warriors monitoring us disagree?), and more importantly agreed to do so at the Trump Tower meeting, or at least within days after it took place. With that assumption in mind consider the following (again from Wired — the same article linked earlier) in the context of the June 14, 2016 announcement by the DNC that their systems were breached.
The timeline from there has been a matter of public record. On June 14, the DNC first disclosed the hack. The following day, a persona going by Guccifer 2.0—only recently confirmed to be a Russian intelligence agent—claimed responsibility, leaking a 237-page opposition research report on Donald Trump in the process.
The leaks continued steadily from there, as the suit details. Guccifer 2.0 struck again on June 27, June 30, and July 6. On July 22, WikiLeaks took the wheel, releasing nearly 20,000 internal DNC emails. (emphasis added)
Got that? While everyone talks about all the stuff WikiLeaks dumped out there, creating a narrative that it was (only) that site the Russians had worked with, an important step gets lost in the shuffle. During June, many weren’t taking Guccifer 2.0 seriously and/or questioning whether he was even connected to Russia (turn out he one of theirs all along) . However we know he both set up a site called DCLeaks to view what he was directly leaking and more importantly wound up stating he had lots more — and was going to pass it along to WikiLeaks! Guccifer 2.0 would continue leaking documents into July before finally handing the whole thing off (just like he said he’d do) to WikiLeaks.
Let’s take a look at what else was going on around that same time starting with the days before and after June 14 when the DNC announces the hack and June 15 when Guccifer claims responsibility:
From a timeline ( www.pbs.org/... )
- June 10, 2016 — Russian oligarch (and Putin pal of course) Aras Agalarov has a nice, expensive painting delivered to Trump at Trump Tower for his birthday. I think it’s safe to assume there was a nice Happy Birthday “note” — one that said more than happy birthday. “Coincidentally” this was just before news of the hack of the DNC became public.
- As noted on June 14 the DNC announces they were hacked, and on the 15th Guccifer 2.0 takes credit
- June 15 — What also happens is that Trump claims the DNC itself was responsible for the hack. (WTF? Of course this is Trump after all), He also writes a nice “thank you” note to Agalarov. Hmmmm. Might that note have included an “Ok — I see you can do what you said you’d do so I’m totally in now.” Remember, Trump (famously) doesn’t use computers/email personally.
- June 21, 2016 — Guccifer dumps more documents. “Coincidentally” that same day Trump fires Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowsky and promotes Paul Manafort from his job of running the GOP Convention to Lewandowshy’s job. Again I say Hmmmm.
- July 7, 2016 — Manafort writes an email saying he’s willing to arrange private briefings to a Oleg Derispaska (a top Putin pal Manafort owed a boatload of money to and had been fighting a lawsuit from until he joined the Trump campaign and ODP dropped the suit btw)
- July 11th, 2016 — The Trump campaign pushes through that change in the GOP platform weakening the stance on providing weapons to Ukraine (making things easier for Putin who was angry his man Yankovich was deposed in 2014 and had to flee to Russia) — which happened to be the ONLY plank in the GOP platform the Trump campaign had any interest in or gave any input on.
- As I see it that’s one helluva set of coincidences, or more plausibly at that June 9, 2016 meeting in Trump Tower a plan was discussed and agreed upon where a series of back and forth proof Russia could and would do what they said they could do & Trump agreed both to signal his approval of moving forward with the plan to accept Putin’s/Russia’s assistance, and that if satisfied Russia could and would deliver with help that would damage Clinton they show they could influence the GOP in some way — like that platform change on Ukraine. Again, if you don’t follow GOP politics that was something significant, at least back then.
From there we know how things went.
Per Wikipedia ( en.wikipedia.org/... ):
On July 18, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 provided exclusively to The Hill numerous documents and files covering political strategies,[2] including but not limited to correlating the banks that received bailout funds with Republican Party and Democratic Party donations2]
On July 22, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 stated he hacked, then leaked, the DNC emails to WikiLeaks.[4][5][6][7][33][48] "Wikileaks published #DNCHack docs I'd given them!!!", tweeted Guccifer 2.0.[7]
Again I want to emphasize that Russia’s delivery of goods to the Trump campaign didn’t start with or by Wikileaks in late July as the Democratic National Convention was starting. They started much, much sooner — a week after that Trump Tower meeting. As I’ve already note they were already set up to do so. Russia got its ducks in a row before even setting up the Trump Tower meeting.
I for one consider that and the first stuff put up on DCLeaks awfully significant, and that Robert Mueller also believes that. I think others should too. And talk a lot more about it. Journalists in particular should be talking about it, although their little fee fees are a bit wounded about having so eagerly swallowed the bait of all that juicy, headline generating Clinton stuff instead of keeping a level head and doing some actual investigative reporting. Well, the NYT gave them a “non-apology apology” template to follow not long ago and I predict we’ll see other outlets come up with the same weak assed type of “oops, we might not have gotten things quite right” drivel. One can only hope they will do a little thinking and not only come up with some of the questions I’ve come up with but start covering it and informing the public. Granted, the ones in the WH press corps don’t have “Candyman” Dr. Ronny Jackson anymore handing out “the good stuff” if they get headaches from thinking too hard but they should somehow be able to manage.
Now, with all that as my set up let me get to my (admittedly this is speculation) belief on the deal (and its origins) I believe was struck and the back and forth steps by which it was implanted.
Imagine, early in the 2016 campaign how things looked to Vladmir Putin, back when it was virtually a given here and everywhere in the world that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic Party nominee.
Putin knows full well that the deep mistrust the GOP held towards his country when it was the controlling one of the old USSR survived the Cold War intact. In fact, it was deep enough that it led the GOP to support the measures Obama took to sanction both Russia and Putin & his fellow oligarchs personally via the Magnitsky Act — when they fought him (Obama) tooth and nail on damned near everything else. Even without that, Putin has dreamed of weakening NATO to allow conditions that would enhance his ambition to create a Russia with the influence of the old USSR. Since the U.S. is NATO’s most powerful member, getting the U.S. to soften it’s stance on Russia is crucial — and to do THAT he first has to soften up the GOP itself. So he creates a grassroots effort to start changing GOP attitudes. More on that later.
More directly Putin, who presides over a cash strapped country that can’t possibly build or maintain an old Soviet style arsenal realized years ago there’s a cheaper way to wage war. So he develops a serious cyber warfare capability, and refines it via “beta testing”, using it overseas to screw with various country’s elections before turning loose his his big guns on the United States. As I noted he sees a certain inevitability to Clinton winning the Democratic nomination and a very good chance of winning the Presidency, and that won’t mean anything good for him. He desperately wants, hell he needs to see the Magnitsky Act and other sanctions lifted. If not that at least he needs them weakened, and Clinton won’t be the least bit interested in doing what he (Putin) wants.
Trump OTOH is someone he/Russia has been keeping tabs on and even cultivating for a long time. If not decades as some evidence suggests, at least for years. Putin also knows Trump has been virtually begging for years to meet him to “kiss the ring” and secure Putin’s blessing for a big real estate deal in Moscow. IOW Trump wasn’t just low hanging fruit, he was begging to be harvested. Given the rhetorical bombs he knows Trump would throw during the campaign (and that even if he didn’t win the nomination Trump would keep speaking out) that slick social media campaign he (Putin) has been setting up will be very effective indeed on GOP voters. Moving forward everyone in the GOP establishment will have a riled up base on their hands when the election is over. One that regardless of who wins in 2016 the GOP will have to contend with for years to come, as the GOP base will have a nationalist/populist flavor very much at odds with GOP orthodoxy. At the very least Putin knows he can cause enough disruption to ensure that what Obama had to put up with from a GOP Congress would be a picnic compared to what Clinton would be in for — he knows damn well the GOP will still hold the House. With stuff he’s been working elsewhere, he might be able to weaken some of the western cooperation that’s made those sanctions so effective.
Miracle of miracles, Donald Trump lays waste to the GOP and as it becomes apparent he will be the GOP nominee Putin decides for sure that THIS is truly the time to make use of years, hell (seemingly, or at least possibly) decades of Soviet/Russian cultivation of Trump. Finally he’s got a really, and I mean really well placed useful idiot in America! In his heart Putin probably realizes he can’t push Trump over the finish line (at least at this point in the timeline) but he still sees Trump as useful for a couple of reasons. First there’s the general disruption to our national discourse and other seeds he’s planted can help harden polarization. Second, and more importantly by doing so he can start to reshape not just those Evangelicals and gun goobers but even the GOP establishment to take a softer stance r.e. Russia. More on that in a minute.
Even as it looks like he may win the nomination, and even after he clinches it late in the primary season Trump almost certainly still figures he’ll lose in the fall. Not that he doesn’t want to win, or believe he should win because he will never, ever, ever, ever get over President Obama calling him out and humiliating him at that one WHCA dinner — we know how narcissistic Trump is and having people sitting right there in the room laughing at him is a slight that he will live with the rest of his life & somehow “outdoing” Obama someday won’t erase it. But Trump thinks it will help. However, in his pragmatic and normal (for him) course of life running for President is a way to make himself not just relevant but rack up a lot of something he badly needs — cash. Maybe he watched Stephen Colbert’s series of shows on how corrupt the system is & how easily campaign money can be “re-purposed” completely legally but more importantly for those with no ethics or conscience converted to personal use when the campaign is over and the fundraising mechanisms shut down if you created the right ones in the right order. He’s also looking at his own “Trump News” network (think about that Hannity! If Trump had lost he’d be doing his very best to bury your worthless butt) and will have the perfect vehicle to promote his “I could have been President if I’d really wanted it but can do much more “for the country” this way forum. Or simply after losing just using his newfound status/celebrity to make more money, and anytime his “celebrity” started to fade he’d trot out some “Hillary only won because it was rigged” b.s. to make himself relevant again.
The main benefit he’d be looking for though is to maybe start widening his source of funding so as not to be dependent only Russia. In his (Trump’s) own mind creating the disruption in the system Putin wanted would both get him his long dreamed Trump Tower Moscow but also allow him to be less dependent on Putin too. It’s complicated I know. Inside out and upside down even but that’s Trump and his “business acumen” in a nutshell. Again, it doesn’t make much sense but we’re talking about the mass of toxic sludge where Trump’s brain is supposed to be so mutations in the form of weird and simultaneously contradictory ideas and thoughts are to be expected.
During the summer, Putin probably had his own conflicting thoughts and feelings. On the one hand he saw a candidate on the Democratic side he detested and would make life just as difficult for him as it had been and maybe even worse, but that would probably win in the fall even in the face of his massive & multi-faceted cyber attack. On the other he had his useful idiot Trump, who although useful was still an idiot prone to go off on wild tangents. Chess is a national pastime in Russia and Putin knew all his carefully positioned pieces on the board and all his carefully planned (ahead) moves could be scrambled at any instant by Trump proverbially flipping the chessboard forcing him (Putin) to improvise on the fly. IOW he worried that an out of control Trump might get overeager and so wild & crazy that his antics would wake up not just the establishment GOP but even enough old school GOP voters r.e. their ingrained mistrust of Russia and ruin the whole thing. I’d be willing to bet Putin worried about that a lot, and for a good while even after Trump took Office. In any case, what probably made him go all in was the intensity of “Clinton Derangement Syndrome” (he probably has the disease himself) among a startlingly large segment of the U.S. population and thought maybe, just maybe it’s possible to exploit all the divisions (some of which he’d been helping to create) in our country to put the guy he owns lock, stock and barrel into the White House. There’s another important point I said a couple of times I’d get to later and now it’s later.
For years Putin had been courting two large, and more importantly passionate about actually voting each and every election groups within the GOP base in the U.S. among which there’s a lot of overlap. — gun owners and right wing “Christians.” Putin of course has no love for either group. The idea of him allowing any type of gun rights and gun ownership in Russia that exists here in the U.S. is laughable to any objective observer. Hell would freeze over first. As for religion, it’s a useful tool for him at the moment but if churches in Russia were to become as politically active as they are here in the U.S.the crackdown on religion in Russia would be every bit as widespread and brutal as it was in what Putin longs for — the heyday of the old Soviet Union. However, Trump isn’t the only gullible idiot who can easily be “wowed” and/or susceptible to flattery on the conservative side of the political spectrum in this country. So for a lot of years now Putin has financed a comprehensive outreach to Evangelicals and other hard core GOP religious voters in this country and also to gun groups. More importantly he didn’t rely on the NRA, or the top names in the Prosperity Gospel “Christian” leadership — he built an actual grass roots effort separate from some careful approaches to big name groups/leaders. He sowed a lot of seeds and they were already bearing fruit when Trump’s candidacy exploded.
Combine that with a social media effort that had been in development for years and which had been “beta tested” overseas and Putin couldn’t resist betting big on Trump. He had himself a candidate being nominated as the GOP standard bearer, a fervent group of “Christian” voters who would sacrifice themselves to the lions before voting for a (“horrors!”) Democrat even if that Democrat was Jesus himself returned, and an equally fervent group of gun goober fetishists, a great many of whom were sympathetic towards if not members of the first group.
Talk about your three way marriage made in hell!
It’s crucial to keep in mind what Putin’s two major goals have been. Recreating the power & influence of the old Soviet Union, and his own personal enrichment and enough enrichment for his oligarch pals to keep them content and he can’t stay in power and do the former without doing the latter. However for THAT to keep rolling along he really, really needed to get the Magnitsky Act and other economic sanctions lifted. Re-opening the wounds in America’s credibility created by George W. Bush would aid in that effort as well as without our leadership other countries would be less committed to those pesky sanctions that made it tougher to launder and hide the wealth stolen from the Russian people. From Putin’s point of view, even if Trump didn’t win he could start changing the narrative, starting with changing the GOP establishment’s view of Russia, as in softening its opposition. Even starting out small, once a crack in the façade of “Russia can’t be trusted — remember the USSR” was opened it could and would be quickly widened, even with a Democrat in the White House.
And if somehow he could install Trump in the Oval Office? Manipulating Trump would be child’s play for a spymaster like Putin, and if that didn’t do the trick Putin could always flat out threaten Trump with financial ruin, the humiliation for which Trump simply could not abide no matter what Putin ordered him to do. As I’ve said earlier the only problem Putin probably worried about was Trump going off half cocked with stuff before Putin was ready to exploit certain acts. And even Putin had to worry (back during the campaign — things are quite different now as we know) that Trump’s excesses on Twitter might at some point cause the rank & file in the GOP political world to start worrying about the future of their Party, and more importantly their own political fortunes.
In any case, with Trump as the nominee and Paul Manafort installed to run the convention and eventually the campaign Putin had his vehicle — that fateful change in the GOP platform. Now, one might say Party Platforms at conventions are worthless documents, but softening the GOP’s stance on Russia (and its aggression) that went back all the way to the beginning of the Cold War? Over a half century’s attitude that Russia needed to be reigned in on all fronts? That change, while seemingly insignificant was anything but. It wouldn’t have happened at all without all the years of prep work I described earlier, work that pre-dated the candidacy of one Donald Trump or installing an operative (Paul Manafort) at the top of his campaign at a crucial moment. It proved to Putin he could start moving GOP attitudes, softening the GOP’s position on Russia.
More importantly it proved that Trump would in fact play ball, that he would do all he could to provide the “quo” part of the quid pro quo I maintain was discussed directly and agreed upon in that fateful June meeting in Trump Tower. I maintain that Putin wanted to be sure, really sure that Trump and those closest to him (other than Manafort who he already controlled) would truly play ball. That Trump was willing to “work the GOP” on sanctions and even defy GOP orthodoxy. Which Trump wasted no time doing. Remember, there was a time when many in the GOP publicly expressed frustration & even concern about Trump’s unwillingness to criticize Putin or take on Russia. That vote on a whole batch of new sanctions almost a year ago was almost unanimous in both the House and Senate!
Anyway, Putin literally set them up at that initial meeting with what I have no doubt even he (Putin) knew was a violation of U.S. campaign finance law — by not just offering foreign assistance in the form of that file, but having them accept it. A seemingly minor crime to some, but enough to hold over Team Trump’s head just in case. It’s not any different than some mobster getting an upstanding accountant to do some minor fiddling with an audit that would never get noticed unless someone really looked for it. But once done, that crime that could cost a CPA not just their license but their freedom meant being owned by that mobster’s crime family for the rest of their life. And the “favors” would not only grow, but lead to that accountant being a full-time employee laundering huge sums of money.
Dangle the bait, and once it’s taken set the hook.
That’s what I say went down in that Trump Tower meeting. Manafort possibly & maybe even probably knew the score all along, but Don Jr. & Kushner as well as Trump himself needed to be reeled in. Putin knew they’d be disappointed with that puny file handed over at the meeting, but I maintain his lawyer on the scene and the others said they would prove right away they had the good stuff if Trump (and the others) proved not only that they were on board, but could start to deliver during the summer on things Putin wanted. They wanted a firm commitment that Trump was on board by doing so (and by giving them that file, putting them on the hook so to speak) and some type of assurance that Trump/the campaign could demonstrate something tangible in the way of influencing the GOP on Russia policy. That makes that platform change at the GOP convention all the more important.
The Trump Tower meeting was for formalizing a quid pro quo, or perhaps more accurately a series of increasingly significant ones.
However, well before that meeting Putin/Russia put a lot of work in on their plan (some parts for years, before Trump ever became a candidate) to set everything up. More to the point it involved a lot more than the eventual Wikileaks email dump(s). A deal (Trump loves making deals!) was struck that day in Trump Tower and Russia started proving (within a week) that they really could deliver what they said they could. And that they (Putin/Russia) would provide the “mother lode” provided Trump provided certain promises were formally made, and more importantly that Trump/his campaign could demonstrate an ability to lead the GOP places they’d never been willing to go during Putin’s lifetime — like engineering that change in the Party platform which was a really, really huge deal in GOP dogma regarding Russia and it’s actions.
I think it’s important to not only recognize, but push publicly the timeline of what happened starting less than a week after that Trump Tower meeting. Because it’s important to the entire case of convincing the public a quid pro quo was discussed and agreed upon on June 9, 2016 and that mutual acts so each side could prove the other was “in” started immediately.
We’ve learned Robert Mueller is still aggressively seeking evidence related to that June 9, 2016 meeting so to anyone who has read this and thinks I’m making too big a deal out of all this I’d say if Mueller is still digging then it’s because he’s building a more complete timeline not only for the Obstruction case but conspiracy (to commit computer fraud and campaign finance law for starters) against Trump and others. That I believe is why he’s pushing Paul Manafort into the corner — of a jail cell.