Ask and ye shall receive: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/us/politics/donald-trump-jr-russia-email-candidacy.html If the email exists, Jr is fucked. Nixon would be ashamed of this sorry shit; you can run a coverup and just leave incriminating emails lying around. edit: this isn't exactly incriminating, but it's hilarious and I can think of no better summation of this current American Moment than an alleged co-conspirator checking into a meeting of the conspiracy on Facebook: https://twitter.com/akarl_smith/status/884433012850667520
Is it illegal for Jr to seek out oppo research on the clintons from the Russian government? Donald Trump went on tv in a news conference to ask the Russians to show us the emails. Politically scummy, yes. Illegal? I don't think so. Now if on the other hand, Donald made a quid pro quo to the Russian government or a foreign agent for the info.... different story. Otherwise, my operating assumption is that all these guys from any party are scumbags and will do anything to get to the top. That's what politics is.
The quid pro quo it would seem are the potential lifting of sanctions in exchange for helping with the election in this way. They were talking about the Magnitsky act which is a sanction punishing human rights violators that pissed off putin and resulted in Putin banning American adoption of Russian children. This was discussed because Jr. admitted to what the Russian lawyer actually said. Jr. then said that the dirt she had on Clinton was of no value. Even if this were true, it wouldn't matter. And I think the oppo research was valueable to them.
I don't know if it's technically illegal but is the clearest information yet that someone in trumps camp was in contact with the Russians in some capacity to get information. If the information they were supposedly going to give them was connected with the hacking it spell more serious trouble for trump than anything else before.
https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr Jr tweeted the email chain. It's exactly as the Times described. No idea what the play is here from the Trump side; maybe they just understand better than the rest of us how true "nothing matters anymore" is.
I think they're just being stupid. Apparently Jr. has hired a lawyer to help handle this stuff, and I can't imagine the lawyer said this would be a good idea. What I find really interesting is how their statements have changed... it's gone from "we didn't meet with any Russians", to "we met with Russians but it doesn't mean anything."
I'm so wary of relying on articles that describe documents rather than being able to read the documents themselves that even last night when everyone was talking about the Times article I figured that the actual incriminating stuff was inferred or maybe read way into a reference or something. Never would I have imagined that the subject line would be "Russia - Clinton" or that it would include the line "oh you know it's all part of the whole Russian government helping Trump thing." I guess it all hinges on proving that they knew that help included the hacking and meddling rather than just providing intel sourced in other ways, or the quid pro quo element that someone else above mentioned. Jr clearly was obviously already aware there was something going on before then if the response to that line was nothing and not "wait what Russian government helping my dad thing again???" At the very least more shit should go down with Manafort and maybe Kushner (I forget if he was under oath at any point about this), but too bad the whole rest of their camp were only denying this shit to the media. Of course that's what SHOULD happen but I'm just going to assume nothing fucking happens. The administration and the right-leaning/"independent" media have for weeks now been getting ahead of all this by switching the narrative from "the entire Russian thing is entirely a lie made up by the Democrats to excuse their loss even though it all started months before the election" to "well even if the Russia stuff is true is it really bad?" And everyone has been falling right in line with that. I've long thought the Russia stuff was the actual version of Trump shooting a man on Fifth Avenue so even if Jr keeps tweeting out emails and one of them includes the line "yeah and look what else we found in the DNC emails that we hacked for you so you'd lift those sanctions lol" one half of this country would still rise up screaming that this is all just a deep state plot to keep Trump down and something something Killary as they're all led away in handcuffs.
I'll be honest, while I had hoped in my heart of hearts that the Trump Crime Family would be nailed for collusion with Russia, as a betting man if you asked me to put money on it when this first started, my money would have been on "definitely leaned into the efforts Russia was undertaking, but no explicit collusion occurred." I have such a low bar for these turds, and they still keep limboing under it.
I. Am. CACKLING. Here's a handy flowchart someone on Twitter made: Keep that name in the top right corner in your mind and then go to page 27 of the infamous pee tape dossier: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984-Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.html Since we are living in a world where facts are only what we choose to believe I'm choosing to believe this entire fucking thing is centered around a golden shower until the day I die.
Some of the comments in that Reddit "Did Junior really just do that?" megathread are kind of funny: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/6mn1zp/megathread_donald_trump_jr_releases/ https://twitter.com/JYSexton/status/884799323606847489
His tweets in full are really good: Twitter has simultaneously been the worst and best thing in the world for the past two years. I also like this one: https://twitter.com/IChotiner/status/884805005152321536
This might quite possibly be the dumbest thing I have ever seen in politics ever. It is absolutely hilarious. If you wanna get away with murder, you don't tell them where the fucking body is buried!!!
The mental gymnastics being done right now is grotesque. Motherfucker tweeted that he met with a Russian government agent and now he's great for being transparent. That's like my dog taking a huge shit on my carpet, then dragging me over so he could proudly present it to me. The issue here isn't if Jr. got any information from Russia. It's that the meeting happened at all. Jr. lied, multiple times, about this meeting. I'm so fucking sick of people saying, "Well, there's smoke, but no fire." I don't know about you, but I'm suffering from smoke inhalation. It looks pretty cut and dried to me that at least Jr. met with a Russian agent. To believe Jr. didn't relay this meeting with Trump is naivety at best, or willful stupidity at worst. Either way, I hope that people stop masturbating to anti-Clinton memes long enough to realize how badly Trump fucked this country.
I think this boils it down pretty well. I'd like to pose that last question to the board. At best doesn't this put everything into "there very well may have been collusion" now that we know the Trump side was open it?
The Congressional response has been pretty timid....and holy, fucking hell. Really? This makes Watergate look like a bad joke. I'm curious, because this is as bad as it gets in terms of sleaze, but illegal? What's the actual violation here? I'm not under-stating the importance (and seriously, my mind is fucking blown here), but curious. Was Trump Jr. on record as not meeting with the Russians? And if I understand this correctly, Trump Jr. was a non-entity in the investigation, until now where he's definitely going to be asked to testify. Finally, at what point will this scandal be a bridge too far for the average American? I can imagine the majority of Trump's supporters being disgusted by the dirty tactics, and this certainly borders on treason. When will the average American or worse, the actual Trump voters, admit that this election was indeed rigged: by Russia, for Trump, with his knowledge and participation AND DEMAND CHANGE? I think Joe Six Pack (myself included) recognizes now: Oh shit, there was something there after all. How does that feeling sour into: this administration has got to go? And how does that spill over into the political will to impeach or begin proceedings to impeach to force Trump's hand into a resignation? Does this speed the investigation up or slow it down?
Some discussion of that here. Legal experts say Donald Trump Jr has just confessed to a federal crime by Zak Beauchamp for Vox I'm not sure if that dog hunts though.