Trump’s Son Met With Russian Lawyer After Being Promised Damaging Information on Clinton

[HomerJS]

It seems like Trump Jr. offered to listen, but nothing came of it according to the article, so how does that invalidate the claim that the Russians didn't help? Does offering to listen to someone automatically mean you've colluded with them even if you tell them nothing and they tell you nothing?

If you meet a hooker at a hotel you can by busted for prostitution before having sex.

 

[MrDudeMan]

That's exactly what needs to be looked into

I agree it should be investigated, but I was confused because it seems like people have already assumed the worst without any actual information. Either I missed the information or there's not a lot of news here...yet.

 

[MomentsofSanity]

I see what you're saying. I suppose this still isn't the smoking gun some people are hoping for, but I agree it certainly doesn't help the Trumps at all.

Looking at the email released. Would you say that, at minimum, Trump Jr. was actively willing to collude with what he was told would be an agent for the Russian Government to aid his father's campaign?

 

[MrDudeMan]

If you meet a hooker at a hotel you can by busted for prostitution before having sex.

That's not how it works. You can meet anyone you want anywhere you want, but once you've established verbal agreement about what services will be performed for a price, then you can get busted without actually doing it. Information had to be conveyed, so it's not the same unless Trump Jr. actually said something substantial. I'm not defending him just to be clear.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Looking at the email released. Would you say that, at minimum, Trump Jr. was actively willing to collude with what he was told would be an agent for the Russian Government to aid his father's campaign?

I'm not sure, but it's certainly possible. Without any actual evidence, it seems like it's just as likely that he would claim to have accepted the information without offering anything in return even though I think we would all call BS on that.

 

[vi edit]

Is a unidirectional information dump the same as a contribution? I read that as a monetary contribution.

Last summer the RNC platform radically changed their policy towards the Ukraine. It shocked and outraged a lot of the traditional RNC party. The timing of this came about a month after many of these conversations happened between Trump and Russian surrogates. There's a lot of tit for tat going on that is yet to be exposed.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Last summer the RNC platform radically changed their policy towards the Ukraine. It shocked and outraged a lot of the traditional RNC party. The timing of this came about a month after many of these conversations happened between Trump and Russian surrogates. There's a lot of tit for tat going on that is yet to be exposed.

Gotcha. Yeah, that doesn't look good.

 

[HomerJS]

That's not how it works. You can meet anyone you want anywhere you want, but once you've established verbal agreement about what services will be performed for a price, then you can get busted without actually doing it. Information had to be conveyed, so it's not the same unless Trump Jr. actually said something substantial. I'm not defending him just to be clear.

Jr already got an email indicating he was there to get info from Russia. Expected services were already established. Campaigns are not allowed to accept items of value from foreign governments.

 

[OutHouse]

1) Trump has repeatedly stated unequivocally that there was no collusion between his campaign and the Russians. These emails show that was a lie.
2) It is a federal crime for campaigns to solicit or receive a donation of any value from a foreign entity.

a lawyer with no ties to the russian government is a foreign entity?

 

[MrDudeMan]

Jr already got an email indicating he was there to get info from Russia. Expected services were already established. Campaigns are not allowed to accept items of value from foreign governments.

That's part of what I was asking. I'm sure foreign governments can't donate money, but I'm still not clear on information transference. Going back to the hooker analogy, it doesn't look like Trump Jr. offered anything in return, so it's not quite the same. The analogy also isn't a perfect fit, so that probably doesn't matter anyway.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

That's not how it works. You can meet anyone you want anywhere you want, but once you've established verbal agreement about what services will be performed for a price, then you can get busted without actually doing it. Information had to be conveyed, so it's not the same unless Trump Jr. actually said something substantial. I'm not defending him just to be clear.

I was just going to say this, counter point is *if* there was some kind of deal it gets ugly. Regardless any ethical person should say no, then report it if it was believable enough.
(Regarding Trump Jr not a Prostitute)

 

[MrDudeMan]

I was just going to say this, counter point is *if* there was some kind of deal it gets ugly. Regardless any ethical person should say no, then report it if it was believable enough.
(Regarding Trump Jr not a Prostitute)

I don't disagree with you at all. I'm just asking questions to try to understand.

 

[fskimospy]

a lawyer with no ties to the russian government is a foreign entity?

Uhmm, yes.

 

[K1052]

a lawyer with no ties to the russian government is a foreign entity?

Lawyer Who Met With Trump Jr. Has Ties To Russian Government

http://www.npr.org/2017/07/10/536478972/lawyer-who-met-with-trump-jr-has-ties-to-russian-government

Veselnitskaya has a history of advocating for the Russian government. Her clients include "state-owned businesses and a senior government official's son," reports the New York Times.

She also was married to a former deputy transportation minister in the Moscow region.

 

[Chromagnus]

I don't disagree with you at all. I'm just asking questions to try to understand.

Here is an article about why it might not matter that the Russian Lawyer didn't actually have any good dirt:

https://www.vox.com/world/2017/7/10/15950590/donald-trump-jr-new-york-times-illegal

Legal experts say Donald Trump Jr has just confessed to a federal crime

Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 with the express purpose of getting information the Russian government had supposedly acquired on Hillary Clinton, according to a New York Times report published on Monday night.

Trump Jr. then confirmed the story on Tuesday on Twitter by releasing the actual emails between him and British publicist Rob Goldstone setting up the meeting — emails that proved without a shadow of a doubt that the Trump Jr. was told beforehand that the information he would be getting came from the Russian government.

“This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” Goldstone wrote to Trump Jr. “ “If it’s what you say I love it,” he replied.

Trump Jr. had already admitted in a statement that he took the meeting with the Russian attorney, a woman named Natalia Veselnitskaya, to get useful information on Hillary Clinton. His defense of his actions was that the meeting didn’t bear fruit: that “it quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.” In other words, there’s no way this constituted meaningful collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia because Veselnitskaya didn’t provide him with anything useful.

But experts on national security and election law say this “defense” is, legally speaking, no defense at all.

“The emails are simply put damning as a legal matter,” explains Ryan Goodman, a former Defense Department special counsel and current editor of the legal site Just Security. “The text of the emails provide very clear evidence of participation in a scheme to involve the Russian government in federal election interference, in a form that is prohibited by federal criminal law.”

Jens David Ohlin, a law professor at Cornell University, is even blunter: “It’s a shocking admission of a criminal conspiracy.”

Trump Jr.‘s decision to take the meeting in and of itself likely violated campaign finance law, which does not require you to actually get anything useful from foreigners. In other words, the mere fact that Trump Jr. asked for information from a Russian national about Clinton might have constituted a federal crime.

“The law states that no person shall knowingly solicit or accept from a foreign national any contribution to a campaign of an item of value,” Goodman tells me. “There is now a clear case that Donald Trump Jr. has met all the elements of the law, which is a criminally enforced federal statute.”

Why Trump Jr. may have broken the law
The statute in question is 52 USC 30121, 36 USC 510 — the law governing foreign contributions to US campaigns. There are two key passages that apply here. This is the first:

A foreign national shall not, directly or indirectly, make a contribution or a donation of money or other thing of value, or expressly or impliedly promise to make a contribution or a donation, in connection with any Federal, State, or local election.

The crucial phrase here is “other thing of value,” legal experts tell me. It means that the law extends beyond just cash donations. Foreigners are also banned from providing other kinds of contributions that would be the functional equivalent of a campaign donation, just provided in the form of services rather than goods. Like, say, damaging information the Russian government collected about Hillary Clinton.

“To the extent you’re using the resources of a foreign country to run your campaign — that’s an illegal campaign contribution,” Nick Akerman, an assistant special prosecutor during the Watergate investigation who now specializes in data crime, says.

Here’s the second important passage of the statute: “No person shall knowingly solicit, accept, or receive from a foreign national any contribution or donation prohibited by [this law].”

The key word from Trump Jr., according to University of California Irvine election law expert Rick Hasen, is “solicit,” which has a very specific meaning in this context. To quote the relevant statute:

A solicitation is an oral or written communication that, construed as reasonably understood in the context in which it is made, contains a clear message asking, requesting, or recommending that another person make a contribution, donation, transfer of funds, or otherwise provide anything of value.

Trump Jr. was clearly soliciting information that he knew was coming from a foreign source. Given that political campaigns regularly pay thousands of dollars to opposition researchers to dig up dirt, it seems like damaging information on Clinton would constitute something “of value” to the Trump campaign.

The solicitation bit is why it doesn’t matter if Trump Jr. actually got useful information. The part that’s illegal, according to the experts I spoke to, is trying to acquire dirt on Clinton from a foreign source, not successfully acquiring it. And his statement more or less admits that he did, in fact, solicit this information.

“The most recent [developments] are especially significant because they include specific statements on the record conceding the Trump campaign’s expressed interest in what the Russians could provide,” Bob Bauer, White House counsel for Barack Obama from 2010 to 2011, writes at Just Security. “Those statements show intent — a clear-cut willingness to have Russian support — and they reveal specific actions undertaken to obtain it.”

Trump appears to have recognized some danger. On Monday afternoon, he hired a lawyer, Alan Futerfas, to represent him on issues relating to the Russia investigation. So far, Futerfas has not responded to a request for comment.

The emails blows the best defense he has out of the water
In order to actually nail Donald Trump Jr. on solicitation charges, experts say, prosecutors need to be able to show that he knew the person he was soliciting emails from a foreign source. Trump Jr.’s Sunday statement gave him a tiny bit of wiggle room on this point. In it, he said: “I was not told her name prior to the meeting,” implying that he didn’t know much about the person he was meeting — perhaps including, among other things, her nationality.

According to Goodman, the former Defense Department special counsel, this line was the one thing that kept Trump Jr.’s statement of from being a clear-cut confession of having violated the law. But the emails, he thinks, blow this excuse out of the water. They show that Trump Jr. went into the meeting with knowledge that he was going to the meeting in an attempt to solicit information from the Russian government.

If Bauer, Goodman, and Hasen are reading the statute correctly, then Trump Jr. has now openly admitted damaging facts that prosecutors would otherwise need to prove to make a case against him. And now we’ve seen emails that prove Trump Jr.’s intent was to solicit information from a foreign source. It seems hard to imagine federal prosecutors won’t look at that.

“I’d want to get everyone who was involved in that meeting in front of a grand jury, and find out what they say about what happened there,” Akerman, the former Watergate prosecutor, said when asked what he’d do in light of the recent news.

Mr. Futerfas certainly has his work cut out for him. So, too, to the attorneys representing Jared Kushner and former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, who attended the meeting and were CC’d on the crucial email. “The emails also directly implicate Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, who are included on the entire email chain,” Goodman says.

And now the question becomes: What did the president know and when did he know it?

 

[vi edit]

I don't know why, but I get this feeling that Trump/Russia are sitting on some damaging new info about Clinton, and this charade is their way of bringing it to light.

One theory is that Russia is teasing Trump and testing him on sanctions. They want sanctions removed and this is one of their threats. Theory is that Russia itself dropped this email with NYT.

 

[MomentsofSanity]

a lawyer with no ties to the russian government is a foreign entity?

Lawyer Who Met With Trump Jr. Has Ties To Russian Government

http://www.npr.org/2017/07/10/536478972/lawyer-who-met-with-trump-jr-has-ties-to-russian-government

You have the worst timing.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

One theory is that Russia is teasing Trump and testing him on sanctions. They want sanctions removed and this is one of their threats. Theory is that Russia itself dropped this email with NYT.

Exactly the point I was trying to make earlier

 

[Jhhnn]

Oh, I'm not expecting viewers to come to their senses... it's just going to be amusing (in a tragic sort of way) to watch the contortions.

I dunno... Trumpism is a symptom of some deeper stirring among the Repub base, something I don't quite understand. I mean, they know they're getting screwed. They're just having trouble properly identifying the real reasons for it & ways to counteract it. Some of their most cherished & well propagandized beliefs inhibit that from happening.

They believe Trump is somebody he's not, that he speaks for them when he merely speaks to them in terms that affect them emotionally. Trump has an astounding ability to mess with people's minds. It overlays all the work right wing propagandist have put into messing with their minds for decades.

He will betray their trust. He already is. It was always his intention. It's the very nature of a con man.

Some of 'em will catch on & some won't. It's not necessary that they all do.

 

[UNCjigga]

One theory is that Russia is teasing Trump and testing him on sanctions. They want sanctions removed and this is one of their threats. Theory is that Russia itself dropped this email with NYT.

Oh snap... didn't think of that!

 

[alien42]

a lawyer with no ties to the russian government is a foreign entity?

you're so cute when you lie.

 

[UNCjigga]

you're so cute when you lie.

Like, did he even read Don Jr.'s emails???
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ting-a-russian-government-attorney-annotated/

 

[JSt0rm]

treason. lock them up. probably a little extreme to kill them over this but it would send a message to those who want to subvert our democracy.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Another good theory I heard moments ago is Intelligence does these kind of offers to test the water before jumping in
Send in some rube or someone unqualified to make a statement or offer. Keep info away from that person and see what the response is. Which in this case was "sounds great!"
This explains why the lawyer had nothing to back up her claim, she was a test that was expected to fail

 

[woolfe9998]

Lawyer Who Met With Trump Jr. Has Ties To Russian Government

http://www.npr.org/2017/07/10/536478972/lawyer-who-met-with-trump-jr-has-ties-to-russian-government

Yes, and her e-mail also makes a representation on behalf of the Russian government, saying that this information was part of their effort to support Trump. It seems pretty clear that whatever her past ties, she was acting on behalf of the Russian government in relation to this meeting, or at least claimed to be.