SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE CONFIRMS TRUMP CAMPAIGN WANTED HELP FROM RUSSIA

…The caricature of the “Lyin Son” of Donald J. Trump

Evidence shows that the Trump campaign has been telling lies about not contacting the Russians.

It has taken months for the Senate Judiciary Committee to finally release the transcripts from the investigation of the Trump Tower / Russian meeting before the 2016 election with the Russian lawyer that had promised dirt on Hillary Clinton.

So, what did we learn from the more than 2,500 pages of congressional testimony and exhibits released by the Senate Judiciary Committee this week?

Well, we learned months ago that their first comment saying that "no one in the campaign has talked to any Russians" was a lie.  There have since been 79 instances shown where it has been proven that campaign members talked to Russians.

We also learned that Donald Trump Junior has a very poor memory because he mentioned “I don’t recall” or “I don’t remember” throughout most of his questioning.

We also learned that he was very disappointed when he learned at the meeting that the promised “dirt” on Hillary was a “nothing burger”, from the Russian lawyer that was promoted by the music promoter Rob Goldstone, saying that she was “well connected and had damaging material on Hillary”.

To confirm what they were actually looking for from the Russians was confirmed by Donald Jr. when he was asked:

“So your expectations for going into the meeting was there would be a smoking gun?”

Per Don Jr: “Based on what I had requested, I believed there would be some ‘damaging information,’ which is why I had asked to set up the meeting in the first place.”

There is the proof that Don Jr. had actually asked a foreign lawyer, with serious connections to an adversary nation for information about an American politician in an American election of the US president!

Here are just some of the other things we learned from the Senate transcripts:

·       The music promoter Rob Goldstone told the committee that his client, the Russian pop star and developer Emin Agalarov, had insisted he help set up the meeting between President Trump’s son and the lawyer during the campaign to pass along material on Clinton, overriding Goldstone’s own warnings that the meeting would be a bad idea.

·       The intensity with which Emin Agalarov and his father, the billionaire oligarch Aras Agalarov, sought the Trump Tower meeting, which has become a key point of scrutiny for congressional inquiries and the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

·       The testimony shows that attendees at the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting largely agreed with Trump Jr.’s long-standing contention that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, did not transmit dirt about Clinton. She has since denied she was acting on behalf of the Russian government but there is now proof she is well connected to the Russian Kremlin.

·       New information explains why Rob Goldstone had written the candidate’s son before the meeting that Veselnitskaya would bring “very high level and sensitive information” that was part of “Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump” — and why Trump Jr. responded, “if it is what you say, then I love it.”

·       The testimony also sheds light on the anxiety that rippled through President Trump’s orbit a year later, as news of the meeting became public and his aides and lawyers tried to manage the story.

·       The testimony also includes new details about Trump’s long interest in building business ties to Russia and a relationship with President Vladimir Putin.  It now shows that Trump was still trying too work a Moscow Trump Tower deal during the late weeks of the campaign.  In other words, another Trump lie when he said he had noting going on with business in Russia.

·       An Agalarov employee testified to the committee that the Russian mogul tried to get Trump a meeting with Putin when the Miss Universe pageant, which Trump owned, was held in Moscow in 2013.

·       The committee was told that Agalarov “secretly requested” the meeting through a Russian government official that the employee believed to be Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

·       Putin agreed to attend a pageant rehearsal but canceled at the last minute. Though Trump periodically claimed during the campaign that he knew Putin, there is no evidence the two men met until after Trump took office.

·       Much of the testimony released said  Trump Jr. accepted the sit-down with Veselnitskaya and invited his brother-in-law Jared Kushner and top campaign aide Paul Manafort to attend as well.

Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet soldier and Russian-American lobbyist who attended the meeting, told the committee that Trump Jr. had opened the session by getting straight to the point:  “ ‘I believe you have some information for us,’ ” Akhmetshin recalled the president’s son telling Veselnitskaya.

Goldstone testified that he too expected Veselnitskaya would deliver a “smoking gun” to help Trump’s campaign. He testified that he was embarrassed and apologetic when she instead used the session to press her view that the sanctions imposed on Russia for human rights abuses, known as the Magnitsky Act, should be lifted.

Goldstone said Kushner, then a top campaign adviser, was one of just three people who spoke during the meeting, interrupting Veselnitskaya at one point to ask her to refocus her presentation. Goldstone said he recalled that Kushner was irritated and he stayed for the entire meeting.  This contradicted Veselnitskaya’s public assertion the president’s son-in-law left early and never came back.

As for the president’s son, he told the committee he was disappointed that the Russian lawyer did not provide more information that could be used in the campaign: “All else being equal, I wouldn’t have wanted to waste 20 minutes hearing about something that I wasn’t supposed to be meeting about,” he told the committee.

Trump Jr. told the committee he never told his father about the meeting.

However, the telephone records say that Trump Jr. did talk to someone with a blocked phone number right after the meeting.  His father is known to have a blocked phone.  Robert Mueller has the ability to find out if the blocked phone number belonged to the president.

The testimony also discloses additional contacts between the Agalarovs, Goldstone and Trump aides during the campaign, confirming previous reports in The Washington Post.  According to the testimony, Goldstone connected top campaign aides with a senior executive from the Russian social media company Vkontakte, or "VK", who offered to use the site to help Trump’s campaign.

Goldstone also sought to lure Trump to a birthday party for Aras Agalarov in Moscow in 2015, suggesting he could set up a meeting between Trump and Putin if the candidate made the trip. Trump’s assistant declined, citing Trump’s busy campaign schedule.

Though panel Republicans conferred with their Democratic counterparts on point-by-point issues during the preparation of the transcripts, their release is just expected to touch off a another new wave of partisan bickering.

Neither Jared Kushner, now a top White House aide, nor Manafort, who has been charged with financial crimes related to his work before joining the campaign, sat for interviews. But the committee interviewed the five other men who took part in the session, including a Russian American lobbyist who once served in an Soviet counterintelligence unit.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has said she supported the release of the interview transcripts, but panel Democrats have verbally contend that the Republicans did not push witnesses to answer all the key questions and they are now preparing to end the inquiry prematurely.

In a statement, committee Democrats said the Trump Tower meeting was “one piece of a much larger puzzle and it confirms that the Trump campaign was willing to accept Russia’s assistance.”

They said there are “more questions than answers given the lack of cooperation by many of the individuals involved” and pressed for their committee’s investigation to continue.

President Trump has repeatedly insisted that his campaign did not collude with Russian efforts to interfere in the election, including through the hacking and distribution of Democratic emails.  However, even here with a Republican run Senate Committee, it is admitted that the Trump campaign did their darnedest to get dirt on Hillary from the Russians.

“I appreciate the opportunity to have assisted the Judiciary Committee in its inquiry,” Trump Jr., said in a prepared statement. “The public can now see that for over five hours I answered every question asked and was candid and forthright with the Committee.”

Yes, the public can clearly see that Don Jr. took 5 hours to say “I don’t recall” and “I don’t remember” multiple times.

Shortly after his election, President Trump’s spokeswoman Hope Hicks had said that no campaign officials had dealings with Russians during the campaign.  But now we know that was pure B.S. based on the transcripts from the Trump Tower meeting.

I’m just waiting for the Bob Mueller report on who’s blocked phone was called by Don Jr. right after the Trump Tower Russian meeting…..I think it was a Don Jr. call to his Dad.  As with Putin, no one does anything in the Trump circle without Trump's OK.

Copyright G.Ater  2018