Donald Jr. Was Willing To Hear Juicy Kremlin Gossip On Hillary (VIDEO/TWEETS)


Late yesterday, we learned that rumors of collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and Russia literally extended to the Trump family’s doorstep. In a story that ran below the fold of Sunday’s edition, The New York Times reported that Donald Trump Jr. met with a lawyer with deep ties to the Kremlin just two weeks after his father effectively locked up the Republican nomination.


Donald Jr.’s account of this meeting simply doesn’t add up. He claims that he came to the meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, whose client list includes several state-owned businesses, at the request of an “acquaintance”–without knowing with whom he would be meeting. Moreover, two other people came to Trump Tower for the meeting–his brother-in-law, Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort. They have both stated that Donald Jr. organized the meeting.

On top of that, the meeting was supposedly centered around an adoption program that Russia shut down in retaliation for American blacklisting of suspected Russian human rights abusers. But if that’s true, then why were two top campaign officials on hand–one of whom has a long history of dodgy deals on behalf of Russian interests?

Under the circumstances, it was only a matter of time before another shoe dropped. As it turned out, it took less than 24 hours. On Sunday afternoon, The Times, quoting White House advisers and others who knew about the meeting, revealed that Donald Jr. agreed to the meeting after being told that someone with Kremlin ties was willing to give him “damaging information” about Hillary Clinton.

In a statement, Donald Jr. said that Veselnitskaya only made “vague” and “ambiguous” statements about Russian interests funneling money to the Democratic National Committee and propping up Hillary. The conversation then turned to the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 law that banned officials suspected in the 2009 murder of Russian dissident Sergei Magnitsky from entering the United States or accessing the American banking system. In retaliation, Russian president Vladimir Putin banned Americans from adopting Russian children.

If that’s true, Donald Jr., why didn’t you throw Veselnitskaya out of the room and let her have it for wasting your time with such “vague” and “ambiguous” talk? And why did you even meet with her in the first place? Congressman Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, wanted to know the answer to the latter question even before this latest development. He finds it hard to believe that a “Russian government advocate” would want to meet with the Trump campaign chairman and Trump’s two closest advisers for something unrelated to the campaign. For that reason, Schiff wants to question “everyone that was at that meeting.”

Schiff may have more reasons to ask questions. CNN’s Brian Stelter noted the contrast between Donald Jr.’s statement on Saturday and his statement on Sunday.

And NBC’s Bradd Jaffy noted how much his line has changed in the space of a few months.

In light of this new development, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus may have egg on his face. On “Fox News Sunday,” Priebus suggested The Times’ initial report was a lot of fuss over nothing–and even suggested that the meeting might have been a Democratic false flag. Watch here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNA6bCOWvkA

Priebus claimed that Veselnitskaya may have ties to Fusion GPS, the Democratic-leaning opposition research firm that helped put together the “golden showers” dossier–a document that Priebus dismissed as “phony,” despite the fact that key portions of the dossier have been independently corroborated by American intelligence. But just hours later, The Times revealed that White House advisers knew Donald Jr. went to the meeting to hear dirt about Hillary.


To put it mildly, this is potentially devastating. It represents the first public sign that Trump campaign operatives were at least willing to accept help from Russia. And apparently that willingness went to the highest levels of the Trump campaign. After all, when you’re talking to Donald Jr. and Kushner, you might as well be talking to Trump himself.

Is there anything criminal yet? Richard Painter, George W. Bush’s chief ethics counsel, certainly thinks we may have reached that point. He thinks that meeting amounted to treason.

He went further in an interview with MSNBC. Watch here.

Painter said that for all intents and purposes, Donald Jr. went to a meeting in hopes of getting opposition research from a country “known to engage in spying inside the United States”–something you simply don’t do unless you want to be “accused of treason.” He added that had this happened in the Bush White House, he’d be asking Donald Jr. and/or Kushner “a lot of questions,” because this is “a very serious situation” even if it isn’t criminal.


Calling this “very serious” is being kind to it. If this is accurate, senior officials and advisers from a major-party presidential campaign–one of whom was the candidate’s son–thought nothing at all about accepting help from a hostile foreign power. When the best-case scenario is that this meeting was grossly inappropriate, it isn’t a good sign.

(featured image courtesy Max Goldberg, available under a Creative Commons-BY license)

Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.