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Its Mueller Time...
HoustonHusky
Member Posts: 5,978
Isn't this the day the Liberal nutjobs have been waiting for? We get to learn about all the Russian collusion that didn't happen, and how Mueller's Liberal lapdog Weissmann thinks mean Tweets and listening to the deputy AG (in firing Comey) somehow, someway might maybe mean obstruction of an investigation of something that never existed?
Comments
Come on there really WAS obstruction right?
I'm going to laff when the report comes out and complains about Trump tweeting about them...
"There is not enough evidence to prosecute".
All the reports on Hillary: Hillary broke the law by setting up a homebrew server and mishandled all sorts of top secret info but we decided not to prosecute because she's really dumb.
Mueller report: There was absolutely zip, zero, nada collusion between Trump and Russia and we decided not to prosecute.
Yeah..."same exact thing"
Idiot
Hilary lost. Get over it already.
Trump Jr. initially told reporters that the meeting had been "primarily about adoptions".[2][41] He then released a statement saying it had been a "short introductory meeting" concerning "a program about the adoption of Russian children".[42] A few days later Trump Jr. acknowledged that he went into the meeting expecting to receive opposition research from Veselnitskaya that could hurt Clinton's campaign, adding that none was presented and that the conversation instead focused on the Magnitsky Act.[23][43][44] Later a statement from Trump Jr.'s lawyer said Veselnitskaya had claimed to have information "that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Mrs. Clinton" but "it quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information".[45] Trump Jr. said he felt the adoption issue was her "true agenda all along" and the claims of helpful political information were a pretext.[46] After learning that the New York Times was about to publish the series of emails setting up the meeting, Trump Jr. himself published the email chain via Twitter, and explained that he considered the meeting to be "political opposition research".[19][47] He summarized the meeting as "such a nothing... a wasted 20 minutes".[48]
Veselnitskaya said that she intended to provide allegations to the Trump campaign about a firm connected to William Browder, a financier who lobbied for the Magnitsky Act. She said that the firm committed tax evasion in Russia and donated to Democrats.[49] She said in an interview, "I never had any damaging or sensitive information about Hillary Clinton. It was never my intention to have that."[50] She initially denied the allegation that she was or is connected to the Russian government. At a later date she disclosed that she was in regular contact with the Russian Prosecutor General's office and with Prosecutor General Yury Chaika, about sharing information she acquired in her investigation relating to the Magnitsky Act.[49][50][51]
On July 14, Akhmetshin stated in an interview that Veselnitskaya had claimed to have evidence of "violations of Russian law by a Democratic donor", and added that she "described her findings at the meeting and left a document about them with Trump Jr. and the others."[33][52]
Disclosure timeline
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The meeting, which took place on June 9, 2016, first came to the attention of authorities in April 2017, when Kushner reported on a revised security clearance form that he had met with Veselnitskaya.[53][2] On July 8, 2017, The New York Times first mentioned a June 2016 meeting with "a Russian lawyer who has connections to the Kremlin", arranged by Trump Jr. and including Kushner and Manafort.[2][41] Later that day, Trump Jr. released a statement calling it a "short introductory meeting" about American adoption of Russian children and "not a campaign issue".[2] The next day it emerged that Goldstone had told Trump Jr. that the meeting would provide the Trump campaign with negative information about Clinton, and that this offer was "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump", without mentioning adoptions or the Magnitsky Act.[41][19][4] Trump Jr. reacted by acknowledging that he had been expecting information about Clinton.[43] Over the next few days the identity of the attendees was established.[22]
On July 11 Trump Jr. tweeted the entire email chain leading up to the meeting, a few minutes before The New York Times published it as well.[19][54][55] Trump Jr. stated that he would have preferred to just have a phone call but that didn't work out.[54] He told Sean Hannity that the meeting had been fully arranged by email, and that he had received no further details by phone.[56] He would later contradict this statement during a closed-door interview with the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 7, acknowledging three short phone calls with Agalarov prior to the meeting.[57]
On July 12, 2017, President Trump stated in a Reuters interview that he had only known about the meeting for a couple of days, and that "many people would have held that meeting".[58] Trump praised his son Don Jr. for his transparency in releasing the emails, and claimed that they were victims of a "political witch hunt".[59][60] The same day Trump Jr. denied having told his father about the meeting.[48] On July 13, Corey Lewandowski was asked on NBC's Meet the Press why he had not been invited to the meeting. He replied that he was at a Trump rally in Florida on the meeting date, but there was in fact no rally in Florida that day.[61] Instead, Trump attended a Trump Victory fundraising lunch at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York, and returned to Trump Tower at 1:02 PM, where he "remained for the rest of the afternoon". According to emails, the Veselnitskaya meeting was scheduled for 4:00 PM.[62]
Although Goldstone's emails described Veselnitskaya as a "Russian government attorney",[19] Scott Balber, formerly a lawyer for Trump and now for Agalarov, said in a July 14, 2017 interview that she had no association with the Russian government.[71] For his part, Akhmetshin denied having ties to Russian intelligence, and said that the efforts by Veselnitskaya and himself "were not coordinated with the Russian government."[33] Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the government didn't know Akhmetshin or Veselnitskaya, or anything about the meeting.[72][73] In a November 2017 statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Veselnitskaya said "I have no relationship with Mr. Chaika, his representatives and his institutions other than those related to my professional functions as a lawyer."[21] However she also stated in April 2018: “I am a lawyer, and I am an informant,” adding that "since 2013, I have been actively communicating with the office of the Russian prosecutor general," Yury Chaika.[21]
CNN reported on October 9 that Balber had obtained the memo which Veselnitskaya took to the meeting,[74] and it was released by Foreign Policy.[75] It should be noted, though, that Veselnitskaya was Balber's only source for the document, as well as the only source of the claim that this is the same document that was brought to the Trump Tower meeting;[74] this matters because Veselnitskaya has elsewhere been indicted on charges of falsifying the origin of another document which she helped draft and release to US investigators in a separate investigation which is also related to William Browder and the Magnitsky Act.[76] The memo released by Veselnitskaya claimed that an American firm, Ziff Brothers Investments, illegally evaded tens of millions of dollars in Russian taxes, and contributed to Clinton's election campaign. Veselnitskaya reportedly coordinated this accusation in advance with Chaika, and Putin later repeated the charge.[77]
Two previously undisclosed emails from Rob Goldstone emerged on December 7, as discovered by congressional investigators. The recipients included Trump Jr., Kushner, and Manafort. In a June 14, 2016 email, five days after the meeting, Goldstone forwarded a news story about Russian hacking of Democrats' emails, describing the news as "eerily weird" in light of what had been discussed at Trump Tower.[78] This discovery contradicted the initial statement by Trump Jr. that "there was no follow up" after the meeting,[2] as well as his September 2017 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in which he stated: "Rob, Emin and I never discussed the meeting again".[78]
On May 16, 2018, the Senate Judiciary Committee released emails and text messages in which Trump attorney Alan S. Futerfas provided a prepared statement for Goldstone, Agalarov and Kaveladze, further asserting that it "would be our preference" if they did not say anything else in response to inquiries about the meeting.[79][80]
Michael Cohen asserted in July 2018 that the president knew of the Tower meeting in advance.[81]
For a "documented fact" you sure have problems documenting it.