Well, this is just getting worse and worse and it’s only been one day since it was reported that Donnie Jr., along with Manafort and Kushner took a meeting with a Russian Lawyer because they were promised she would provide “helpful” information for their campaign — which turned out to be unsubstantiated rumors about Russian laundering money into the DNC in order to Hillary Clinton.
Under the Federal Election Campaign Act simply going to this meeting was a violation of the law.
The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) prohibits any foreign national from contributing, donating or spending funds in connection with any federal, state, or local election in the United States, either directly or indirectly. It is also unlawful to help foreign nationals violate that ban or to solicit, receive or accept contributions or donations from them. Persons who knowingly and willfully engage in these activities may be subject to fines and/or imprisonment.
[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 9th, July 4th, June 21st, June 18th, June 14th, June 12th, June 9th, June 6th, and June 2nd.]
My general impression is this is yet another example of the “Can’t Shoot Straight Club”. Just the fact that this meeting wasn’t previously disclosed and public knowledge is suspicious. Don Jr. and the others may be trying to “play dumb” like it was a nothing burger where nothing happened but they don’t seem to understand that the problem started as soon as they entered the room as part of the Trump Campaign being in any kind of contact with a foreign national.
This was the first of several meetings including Flynn and Kushner secretly meeting Kislyak at Trump Tower, then setting up several follow on meeting between Steve Bannon, Flynn and Kushner with the Crowd Prince of Dubai, and another in the Seychelles Islands with the Crown Prince and Eric Prince, former head of Blackwater who was acting as a stand-in for Flynn since he was “too high profile” and Kushner's other meeting with the head of VEB bank — who was a graduate of the FSB Academy — which couldn’t have been about financing opportunities because that bank is still under sanctions and doing business with them is illegal.
Also there was the associate of Michael Flynn’s who tried to get hold of stolen copies of Hillary Clinton’s emails from Russian hackers.
That’s on top of both Carter Page’s trip to Russia and Trump surrogate Jack Kingston’s also going to Russia to tell businessmen there that “It’s time to end the [Crimea] sanctions, they’ve been in place long enough.”
This repeated set of secret contacts with Russians, while trying to get negative information about Clinton and trying to end sanctions isn’t an unlucky coincidence.
It’s a clear patten. A pattern of denial that has now shown to be nothing more than repeated lies.
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July 10th —
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Don Jr. issues a statement — changing his previous claims that there were “No meetings”, and his second claim that it was about “adoptions” — that he went to this meeting because he was asked by a friend he’d met during the Moscow Miss Universe pageant in 2013 and admits he went because of he promise of “helpful information”. He didn’t know Veselnitskaya previously, she talked about Russians funding the DNC (which is illegal) in order to help Hillary Clinton but her claims “vague and made no sense” and after discussing Russian adoption and the Magnitski act he ended the meeting after 20 mins because Trump wasn’t public official yet [which avoided a Logan Act violation].
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Brit Hume insist “Don Jr. was tricked by a Russian bait and switch” but there’s no evidence of collusion. Yeah, except that he jumped at the bait until he decided it was worthless which was kinda collusion-ish.
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Kellyanne goes on George Stephanapoulos and gets caught in her previous statements that there were “no contacts or meetings” with Russians.
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Kellyanne also talks to Chris Cuomo and whines endlessness that CNN doesn’t give Trump any positive coverage — although they do. [Admittedly they don’t go on about the Dow, VA and Infrastructure for 6-8 hours straight] She tries to do an infomercial about Trump the Great on the VA reform, the Opiod crisis and Infrastructure, Cuomo counters that Don Jr. statement is an admission that Russians were trying to ingratiate themselves into the Trump campaign, whether they succeeded that particular time is besides the point (they apparently did succeed later with multiple undisclosed Kushner/Flynn meetings with Kislyak and others.) “Don Jr. changed his story twice, that’s what matters” Cuomo says. She keeps whining for more positive coverage “Your panelists roll their eyes and furrow their brows, they need to be more balanced” as if they don’t have Jeffrey Lord and other Trump sycophants on every day. He says “You rally people to attack the press and our families” which they have.
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Keith Olbermann pulls up an old Trump tweet that he says shows Trump knew Manafort and Don Jr. meet with Veselnitskaya because it was the first time he said “33,000 of Hillary’s emails were missing.”
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FBI says about half (4 of 7) of Comey’s memos contain sensitive or confidential information indicating his sharing some of them with Senate investigators may be problematic even though he testified that he created all the memos as “Unclassified”, this means that he is now suffering from the same after-the-fact “up classification” problem that plagued Hillary Clinton and her emails. Ironic.
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Trump retweets a Fox and Friends segment that claims Comey revealed classified information to the media in his memos, when in fact the media doesn’t even have his memos, Mueller does. Senate intel had only reached an agreement to review them just last week and hasn’t fully reviewed them yet.
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Rep. Schiff say House Intel wants to question Don Jr. as does Sen. Susan Collins who wants him to talk to the Senate Intel committee. Donnie tweets he’ll be happy to talk to Senate Intel.
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Congressional staffers tell the Daily Beast that Treasury officials have attempted to water down the Senate’s New Sanctions Bill against Russia. Tillerson supposedly argues it would “handicap their desire to repair the relationship between the two nations.”
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After Trump tweets that if Chelsea Clinton had been a place holder for her mother as Ivanka had been for him at the G20 the “Fake media would have said Chelsea for Prez” — during an audio only briefing a WH reporters asks Huckabee-Sanders when he’ll finally put “Bill and Hillary in the rear view mirror?”
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Chelsea Hits Back.
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Former watergate assistant prosecutor Nick Akerman echoes Richard Painter’s call that Don Jr. actions may have “betrayed the United States” and could be considered “Treason.”
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Former CIA spy Lindsay Moran says that she has seen the Russian government use these kinds of tactics in the past on American citizens, “Legality aside, this is Russian intelligence tactics at their best,” she said. “Let’s promise Trump Jr. something that he wants, lure him in, bait and switch. It doesn’t matter whether they talked about nefarious activities with him at the meeting — the whole thing is nefarious.”
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Don Jr. sarcastically tweets admitting he went to get the opposition research info on Clinton that he’s “the first campaign rep to have a meeting to get information on an opponent”— yes, he would be for information From Russia!!
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Then Don Jr. lawyers up.
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On CNN Jennifer Taub of the Vermont Law School says that “A campaign taking anything of value from a foreign national” is a crime, and even attempting to do so by going to the meeting would be “conspiracy” to violate campaign finance laws. A Trump friendly former U.S. attorney disagrees, but then this wouldn’t be an issue under the DOJ, it would be under the FEC.
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The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) prohibits any foreign national from contributing, donating or spending funds in connection with any federal, state, or local election in the United States, either directly or indirectly. It is also unlawful to help foreign nationals violate that ban or to solicit, receive or accept contributions or donations from them. Persons who knowingly and willfully engage in these activities may be subject to fines and/or imprisonment.
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Sen. Mark Warner the ranking Democrat on the Intel Committee does a press conference and says “This isn’t the first time the public has seen clear evidence of an attempt by the Trump campaign to obtain information from Russia against the Clinton campaign. It’s a continuing pattern.” He also points out the Jared Kushner has already had to amend his security clearance forms twice because he keep “forgetting” to include meetings like this with Russians.
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Former CIA Director Leon Panetta tells Wolf Blitzer that Don Jr. “Just taking the meeting” is problematic and may be a violation of Federal Election Law (Bingo!).
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Sen. Chuck Schumer calls on Trump and Don Jr. to “Stop Lying.”
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Maggie Haberman at the NYTimes reports that the initial email to Don Jr. about meeting Veselnitskaya noted that the information came from the Russian Government, which pretty much blows up all the Trump denials that they never “colluded” with Russia, since they obviously went to the meeting knowing that it was info against Clinton that came from the Kremlin. What he should have done when he got that email was go straight to the FBI, but he didn’t.