Donald Trump Jr. gathered members of campaign for meeting with Russian lawyer before election

Sounds like the smoking gun? Maybe not ...

They allege that the Russian lawyer who set up the meeting was there under false pretenses!

Basically, shortly before the nomination of Trump, Don Jr. gathered some others for a meeting with a Russian lawyer.

President Trump’s eldest son briefly gathered others for the meeting, including his brother-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as then-presidential campaign manager Paul Manafort for the meeting at Trump Tower in New York City with the lawyer, identified by Trump family lawyers as Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Veselnitskaya used the meeting in June 2016 to have a conversation about a U.S. law called the Magnitsky Act that Russia leader Vladimir Putin reviles and has retaliated against by blocking U.S. adoptions of Russian children.

The encounter was short and the Trump team had no further contact with the woman or the policy issue, lawyers said.

OK. This is all according to sources. Our favorite thing, but Circa has been on top of this issue pretty good, and they're scooping the NYT on this.

It's important to note that Trump was not at the meeting or even aware of it, and that a translator and an American businessman working for a pro-Russian lobby also attended this very brief meeting -- 20 minutes. This is according to lawyers now.

Now this is where it starts to get real:

The president’s legal team said Saturday they believe the entire meeting may have been part of a larger election-year opposition effort aimed at creating the appearance of improper connections between Trump family members and Russia that also included a now-discredited intelligence dossier produced by a former British intelligence agent named Christopher Steele who worked for a U.S. political firm known as Fusion GPS.

“We have learned from both our own investigation and public reports that the participants in the meeting misrepresented who they were and who they worked for,” said Mark Corallo, a spokesman for President Trump’s legal team. “Specifically, we have learned that the person who sought the meeting is associated with Fusion GPS, a firm which according to public reports, was retained by Democratic operatives to develop opposition research on the President and which commissioned the phony Steele dossier. "

"These developments raise serious issues as to exactly who authorized and participated in any effort by Russian nationals to influence our election in any manner,” Corallo said.

If this is true, then was this a nothingburger setup designed to try to entrap the Trump campaign and create smoke? We know that intel cannot corroborate anything in the Steele dossier which has been discredited for months now. And if this is true, we have someone associated with the same firm setting up this meeting which lasted 20 minutes.

The lawyer they met was representing a man in a Civil Asset Forfeiture case. Justice alleges that he received money in the money-laundering scheme that was being prosecuted by Sergei Magnitsky who later died after being jailed.

Magnitsky had alleged there had been a large-scale theft from the Russian state sanctioned and carried out by Russian officials. He was arrested and eventually died in prison seven days before the expiration of the one-year term during which he could be legally held without trial.[4] In total, Magnitsky served 358 days in Moscow's Butyrka prison. He developed gall stones, pancreatitis and a blocked gall bladder and received inadequate medical care. A human rights council set up by the Kremlin found that he was physically assaulted shortly before his death.[5][6] His case has become an international cause célèbre[7] and led to the adoption of the Magnitsky bill by the US government at the end of 2012 by which those Russian officials believed to be involved in the auditor’s death were barred from entering the United States or using its banking system. In response, Russia blocked hundreds of foreign adoptions.[8]

Anyhow, the Asset Forfeiture case was settled this May, and the connection between the lawyer the Trump team met and Fusion GPS comes from a letter from Grassley.

The connection drawn by the president’s lawyers between Veselnitskaya and Fusion GPS comes from a letter this spring by the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley, who disclosed that Fusion GPS also provided litigation support in the Prevezon case.

Prevezon also apparently lobbied against the Magnitsky Act, according to Grassley's letter.

"Prevezon’s lobbying efforts were reportedly commissioned by Mr. Katsyv, who organized them through a Delaware non-profit he formed and through the law firm then representing Prevezon in the asset forfeiture case, Baker Hostetler. Among others, the efforts involved lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin and Fusion GPS, a political research firm led by Glenn Simpson," the letter said.

Grassley has asked the Justice Department to look at all the connections and is seeking information from Fusion GPS on whether opponents of Trump funded the creation of a salacious intelligence dossier to hurt his presidential bid. The FBI has said it has been unable to corroborate many of the allegations in the dossier that involved Trump.

So, they met a lawyer who has connection to the firm who created the fake dossier. Met for 20 minutes, and the Senate intel chairman is now looking into whether or not the two are connected?

So is this Russian collusion and who is colluding to do what? It may not be collusion from the Trump team at all.

Potential blockbuster!

a reply to: ketsuko


The Steele dossier has not been debunked or discredited at all. The implications in it on Trump having been involved in money laundering are the most damning pieces of the dossier. This Magnitsky Act revolved around money laundering, and if this incident resulted in Putin retaliating by refusing to allow American's to adopt Russian children, of all punishments, we're probably talking about Human Trafficking too!

This Natalia Veselnitskaya woman, apparently was lobbying on behalf of getting the Magnitsky act repealed? For the sake of the children? LOL....Yeah right!

Not buying the "Hillary was trying to set us up" campaign. Nope.

ZOMG Russia tho guyz, amirite? Can we get a nothing burger emoji? I'm so sick of seeing headlines about Trump and Russia. It is making me want to stop reading news altogether because I know the majority of it just isn't true. It's just nothing, day in and day out. Desperate words and BS..

a reply to: windword

Yeah, especially not since her people started birtherism ...

Here is a link to the complaint about the lobbying campaign to repeal the Magnitsky Act. The complaint was filed a month after the meeting in this OP.

The Russian lawyer was one of the lobbyists... and she was joined by Glenn Simpson also mentioned in the complaint. Mr Simpson founded Fusion GPS, described in the document as specializing in generating negative press against their clients’ opponents.

Lobbying Complaint

a reply to: ketsuko

Nice...

originally posted by: windword
a reply to: ketsuko


The Steele dossier has not been debunked or discredited at all.

Agreed,
And it probably will not be discredited by intel. A credible source who has credible sources, that much has already been pointed out by intel. A bunch of lawyers can waffle as much as they like with most ordinary people, but I don't think they would take on the secret services if they were forced to in a court.
The fact that a Russian lawyer was even talking to these people is not so good either, regardless of the subject matter, which reasonably could be considered anything.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: windword

Yeah, especially not since her people started birtherism ...

Who's people? Natalia Veselnitskaya's people? That makes sense!

a reply to: windword

Uhm yeah, the dossier has been debunked.

Worth pointing out that Kushner had already reported this meeting in a refiling before this story, so this would appear to be a leak directly from one of the investigations.

Perhaps "Team Trump" was gathering inside Intelligence.

He is smart that way.

a reply to: windword

"The Steele dossier" is total BS.


|*-*|

So this lady and her "employer" were involved with Fusion GPS, the very same people who were trying to get dirt on Donald and tank his presidential run...No , no one was being set up. Time to subpoena Fusion GPS and put a lock on all their records if they haven't already been shredded.

a reply to: xuenchen

originally posted by: Xcathdra
a reply to: windword

Uhm yeah, the dossier has been debunked.

Oh really? Here's a link to a summation of allegation contained in the dossier

Please feel free to debunk these 8 pages of individually listed allegations, and please don't forget to provide sources!

On another note, we don't know if the dossier published by Buzzfeed was THE dossier document, the whole document and nothing but the document, or if the actual document had been padded, scrambled or otherwise coded. We don't know if the Buzzfeed document is the same document that the intel community received.

originally posted by: windword
a reply to: ketsuko


The Steele dossier has not been debunked or discredited at all. The implications in it on Trump having been involved in money laundering are the most damning pieces of the dossier. This Magnitsky Act revolved around money laundering, and if this incident resulted in Putin retaliating by refusing to allow American's to adopt Russian children, of all punishments, we're probably talking about Human Trafficking too!

This Natalia Veselnitskaya woman, apparently was lobbying on behalf of getting the Magnitsky act repealed? For the sake of the children? LOL....Yeah right!

Not buying the "Hillary was trying to set us up" campaign. Nope.

I don't know what planet you were on but yes it was fake. In fact Comey pointed that out under testimony. It was created to hurt trump and now it look's like may have been part of a larger effort to discredit him.

Funny part is it was paid for by jeb bush and his campaign according to British press.

a reply to: dragonridr

Please cite the exact quote of James Comey saying the dossier was fabricated.

And now we have Podesta bugging out of the country ...

Who is Fusion GPS? And why are they stonewalling Congressional investigators?

A secretive Washington firm that commissioned the dubious intelligence dossier on Donald Trump is stonewalling congressional investigators trying to learn more about its connections to the Democratic Party.

The Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month threatened to subpoena the firm, Fusion GPS, after it refused to answer questions and provide records to the panel identifying who financed the error-ridden dossier, which was circulated during the election and has sparked much of the Russia scandal now engulfing the White House.

So Fusion GPS has been stonewalling Congress? Now this gets juicier ...

Moreover, federal records show a key co-founder and partner in the firm was a Hillary Clinton donor and supporter of her presidential campaign.

In September 2016, while Fusion GPS was quietly shopping the dirty dossier on Trump around Washington, its co-founder and partner Peter R. Fritsch contributed at least $1,000 to the Hillary Victory Fund and the Hillary For America campaign, Federal Election Commission data show. His wife also donated money to Hillary’s campaign.

Property records show that in June 2016, as Clinton allies bankrolled Fusion GPS, Fritsch bought a six-bedroom, five-bathroom home in Bethesda, Md., for $2.3 million.

Fritsch did not respond to requests for comment. A lawyer for Fusion GPS said the firm’s work is confidential.

So they donate to and have been bankrolled by the Clinton Machine.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is also investigating whether the FBI has wrongly relied on the anti-Trump dossier and its author, Christopher Steele — the old spy who was hired by Fusion GPS to build a Russia file on Trump — to aid its ongoing espionage investigation into the Trump campaign and its possible ties to Moscow.

The FBI received a copy of the Democrat-funded dossier in August, during the heat of the campaign, and is said to have contracted in October to pay Steele $50,000 to help corroborate the dirt on Trump — a relationship that “raises substantial questions about the independence” of the bureau in investigating Trump, warned Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

Senate investigators are demanding to see records of communications between Fusion GPS and the FBI and the Justice Department, including any contacts with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, now under congressional investigation for possibly obstructing the Hillary Clinton email probe, and deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, who is under investigation by the Senate and the Justice inspector general for failing to recuse himself despite financial and political connections to the Clinton campaign through his Democratic activist wife. Senate investigators have singled out McCabe as the FBI official who negotiated with Steele.

Like Fusion GPS, the FBI has failed to cooperate with congressional investigators seeking documents.

So now we are also dragging the FBI into this on the wrong side of the legal air as being tangled up in this. The FBI is stonewalling too.

Steele contracted with Fusion GPS to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia starting in June 2016, whereupon he outlandishly claimed that Hillary campaign hackers were “paid by both Trump’s team and the Kremlin” and that the operation was run out of Putin’s office. He also fed Fusion GPS and its Hillary-allied clients incredulous gossip about Trump hating the Obamas so much that he hired hookers to urinate on a bed they slept in at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton, and that Russian intelligence recorded the pee party in case they needed to blackmail Trump.

This is the same window of time that the meeting with lawyer took place -- June 2016. Plausible that both were part of the same plan. By then, it would have been apparent that Trump was going to be the nominee. The opposition would have held their powder until they needed it. Since it looked like Trump was going to win right up until the middle of election night ... we never saw the opposition research on Trump/Russia until afterward when it's being used to undermine him. Otherwise, any bets on the October surprise from the Democrats?

One clarification of Trump legal team spokesperson comment re Fusion GPS

It was a Republican (in 2015) who originally paid F GPS to get opposition research on Trump.

In September 2015, as the Republican primary campaign was heating up, he was hired to compile an opposition-research dossier on Donald Trump.....
But by mid-June 2016, ...First, Trump had apparently locked up the nomination, and his client, more pragmatic than combative, was done throwing good money after bad. And second, there was a new cycle of disturbing news stories wafting around Trump as the wordy headline splashed across the front page of The Washington Post on June 17 heralded, INSIDE TRUMP’S FINANCIAL TIES TO RUSSIA AND HIS UNUSUAL FLATTERY OF VLADIMIR PUTIN.

then....

Simpson...after all he had discovered, he’d grown deeply concerned by the prospect of a Trump presidency. So he found Democratic donors whose checks would keep his oppo research going strong. And he made a call to London, to a partner at Orbis he had worked with in the past

It was at that point that Dems $ ended up paying for the Steele dossier research, but it was John McCain, worried that T may be vulnerable to Russian blackmail, who ended up turning it in to the FBI.

Steele ended up outing the dossier via reporter David Corn.

source