Donald Trump Jr. got info he knew was from Russia

[cr47t]

[Let me just say that the reason I am posting this in a new thread instead of the Trump Admin Debates thread is because that thread is all but dead now, and technically Don Jr is not in the administration (to my knowledge).]

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/us/politics/trump-russia-email-clinton.html

 

The June 3, 2016, email sent to Donald Trump Jr. could hardly have been more explicit: One of his father’s former Russian business partners had been contacted by a senior Russian government official and was offering to provide the Trump campaign with dirt on Hillary Clinton.

 

The documents “would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father,” read the email, written by a trusted intermediary, who added, “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

 

If the future president’s eldest son was surprised or disturbed by the provenance of the promised material — or the notion that it was part of a continuing effort by the Russian government to aid his father’s campaign — he gave no indication.

 

He replied within minutes: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

 

Four days later, after a flurry of emails, the intermediary wrote back, proposing a meeting in New York on Thursday with a “Russian government attorney.”

 

Discuss. What are, in your opinion, the implications?

 

[i would like to request that you keep this conversation in as much a civil manner as you are able to. No flaming, please.]

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

It seems the response from Don Jr and the administration is more or less "yeah, it happened, but who cares?"

 

Honestly, the significance of this specific event in and of itself is blown a bit out of proportion, but it doesn't change the fact that it directly contradicts what the administration has said oh so many times.

[Dad]

Yeah this definitely belongs in debates.

[Brinolovania]

To add a bit, these emails were released by Donald Trump Jr himself tweeting screenshots of them earlier today, so we can be 100% sure they're legit. Here is the first tweet, containing his statement and last 3 pics of emails, mostly boring stuff about planning the time/place for the meeting: https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/884789418455953413 This second one, which I'd recommend reading through, has the initial emails which contain the actually relevant info: https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/884789839522140166.

 

The most interesting takeaway from this is that DJT Jr was directly told that someone associated with the Russian government had incriminating info about Clinton, and that said info was part of "Russia and it's government's support for Trump." Regardless of whether or not any actual collusion happened here, which seems unlikely given what we know about the meeting, this still seems to show willingness or intent to collude. It's the biggest publically-available piece of evidence we have about the Trump campaign actually doing sketchy stuff with Russia, although ofc we don't know what Mueller and the FBI know behind the scenes. Either way, this is starting to get pretty damn spicy.

 

I do want to give Donny Jr at least a bit of credit, though. He said he was 100% willing to cooperate with the investigation, and he's followed through on that.

[Draconus297]

So Trump is lying. What else is new? There isn't anything particularly surprising about this bit of news, except that Donald Jr. is very, very weird in how he responds to texts. Seriously, what the hell is that reply text?

[Fusion X. Denver]

Hopefully, it leads to somewhere conclusive eventually. Probably won't, but could at least start shifting gears in the investigation.

Gonna be interesting to see where the rabbit hole leads us.

[Yui]

Yeah this definitely belongs in debates.

I was thinking the same, but the responses so far seem more in-place in General. That said, I'll be keeping an eye on things here and if we start looking like a Debates thread, I'll move it accordingly.

[Aerion Brightflame]

He didn't get any info.

 

His meeting with a female Lawyer from Russia in relation to this was already a story earlier in the week. An interview between Chris Cuomo of CNN, and Kellyanne Conway proved as such;

 

"After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton," Trump Jr. said in the statement. "Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information."

 

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/10/politics/kellyanne-conway-anchor-clash-cnntv/index.html

 

So the issue of 'Trump Jr got infor from Russia' is in fact not an issue at all. No information was obtained, and as such, it should not be the point of discussion. The point of discussion should be whether the attempted collusion is illegal or not. Because that's all this shows; That the Trump campaign sought to get dirt on Clinton, and that one of the sources they sought it from was a Russian connection. And how that may or may not compare to comments made by the adminstration (I.e. if any statements to the contray have been made under oath say).

[mido9]

 

There's a video on it here.

Basically, donald trump jr got a call from a former tabloid journalist telling him that a russian contact wanted to speak to him about his dad and russia, with HUGE INCRIMINATING DATA OMG!!!!!, but the journalist and contact lied, the contact just wanted to talk about some crappy bill that made it easier to adopt russian children that got repealed(who cares?). The conversation very very quickly got ignored.

 

He basically got IRL clickbaited, essentially.

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

He basically got IRL clickbaited, essentially.

Pretty much.

 

The issue is that the trump campaign insisted up and down that they never clicked on clickbait, and that even though there was no substance to what the contact had, he absolutely went into the meeting assuming he would be getting something which, if nothing else, is a blatant attempt at collusion.

[Dr. Cakey]

There's a video on it here.

 

Basically, donald trump jr got a call from a former tabloid journalist telling him that a russian contact wanted to speak to him about his dad and russia, with HUGE INCRIMINATING DATA OMG!!!!!, but the journalist and contact lied, the contact just wanted to talk about some crappy bill that made it easier to adopt russian children that got repealed(who cares?). The conversation very very quickly got ignored.

 

He basically got IRL clickbaited, essentially.

 

Okay, I clicked on this topic on a whim, and I shouldn't be commenting for several reasons, but now that I'm here I'm posting against my better judgment (and even my worse judgment thinks there are better uses of my time). I haven't followed this story at all, so everything I'm about to say is just based on the CNN article in Brightflame's post. So if I'm being redundant, say so.

 

The key point, currently, is that he changed his claims. (EDIT: The real key point is whether or not meeting a foreign agent in this context is legal or not, but I don't know anything about that subject, so I'm not going to comment on it.) In his initial statement, he said the meeting was mainly about adoption policy. At this point, the NYT had reported the meeting took place, not saying anything about the content. Here's the quote from his statement the article gives:

 

"I asked (Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner) and (then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort) to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at that time and there was no follow up," Trump Jr. initially said in a statement.

 

Later, the NYT followed up on the story based on what they were told by some White House advisers, and it was only at this time that they reported the lawyer had offered to give information about the DNC. His new statement was this:

 

"After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton," Trump Jr. said in the statement. "Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information."

 

Though he does still say the meeting was actually about adoption:

 

He added, "She then changed subjects and began discussing the adoption of Russian children and mentioned the Magnitsky Act. It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting."

 

Now, I'm not a completely unobservant reader. I did notice in his first statement he said the meeting was "primarily" about adoption policy, not solely about it, so technically his two statements don't contradict each other, though the first one is at least a little misleading.

 

That's assuming his second statement is true. Maybe this obvious and I don't have to say this, but: If nothing illegal happened, he would say nothing illegal happened, and if something illegal happened, he would say...nothing illegal happened.

 

But unless more information surfaces, pointlessly speculating about what ""really"" happened at the meeting would just be, um, pointless speculation. I'm not trying to argue that "He says he's innocent, so he must be guilty!" like this is a movie or something. All I'm saying is that him claiming innocence (twice, in different ways) means nothing one way or the other.

 

Er, by the way, this is kind of tangential, but if you seriously want me to watch a video by someone whose channel trailer is called "Take the Red Pill" and has Mike f***ing Cernovich in the featured channels...I'd respectfully prefer not to.

[~ P O L A R I S ~]

I have no doubt that Donald Trump Jr. did meet with a Russian state official and I have no doubt that Russian state officials played a role in the 2016 election. The denial of any such meetings having occurred from Trump's staff including White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus does suggest collusion and I don't think it's unfair to assume Trump's campaign colluded with the Russian government or that this was not the only meeting that occurred between the Trump campaign including members of the current Trump administration with the Russian government. I also think that Trump being elected is in the interests of the Putin administration and that the Russian government has more leverage in its relations with the American government as a result of Trump being elected than it had under Obama or would have under Hillary Clinton. 

 

All that said, this shouldn't come as a surprise. American government has taken an active strategic role in the politics of other countries including Russia for a very long time (remember containment?) Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State under the Obama administration that enacted regime changes around the world. If the principle that it's wrong to meddle in foreign elections is general yet you turn a blind eye when the United States does it, then I have to question what you consider America's role in the world to be. Neither the notion that Hillary Clinton received no foreign or otherwise unscrupulous support nor the notion that Trump is Putin's puppet make sense to me. I think Hillary Clinton's campaign received a lot of money from a lot of people who'd undermine the best interests of the American people, and I think the Trump administration is fully capable of acting with autonomy in its dealings with the Russian government. 

 

As a Canadian I can't vote in American elections but they are very close to home and every bit as relevant to my country as our own elections. I absolutely would've voted for Obama against McCain in 2008, I absolutely would've voted for Obama against Romney in 2012, and I absolutely would've voted for Trump against Hillary Clinton in 2016 because the Democratic party has gone unchecked for too long and somewhere along the line became a dangerously interventionist, hyperbolically politically correct, and reprehensibly smug media darling of a party that would've been even worse for both America and the rest of the world than the Republicans tend to be. Hopefully the Democrats can come correct in 2020 as I'm not a fan of Donald Trump. I find him rather glib and I do think he kicks certain marginalized Americans who are already down, but I think Hillary is more harmful than he is and would kill more people, period. If it were Bernie vs. Trump, I'd have voted for Bernie. If it were Bush, Cruz, or Rubio against Hillary, I'd have saved myself the trip to the polls. 

[mido9]

The key point, currently, is that he changed his claims. (EDIT: The real key point is whether or not meeting a foreign agent in this context is legal or not, but I don't know anything about that subject, so I'm not going to comment on it.) In his initial statement, he said the meeting was mainly about adoption policy. At this point, the NYT had reported the meeting took place, not saying anything about the content. Here's the quote from his statement the article gives:

 

Later, the NYT followed up on the story based on what they were told by some White House advisers, and it was only at this time that they reported the lawyer had offered to give information about the DNC. His new statement was this:

 

Though he does still say the meeting was actually about adoption:

 

Now, I'm not a completely unobservant reader. I did notice in his first statement he said the meeting was "primarily" about adoption policy, not solely about it, so technically his two statements don't contradict each other, though the first one is at least a little misleading.

 

That's assuming his second statement is true. Maybe this obvious and I don't have to say this, but: If nothing illegal happened, he would say nothing illegal happened, and if something illegal happened, he would say...nothing illegal happened.

This isn't that unusual. The meeting was specifically about the adoption act, that's what they discussed for almost all the meeting, the lawyer didn't have any info about anything involved with russia so he probably didn't care to include it.

[Dad]

 I think Hillary Clinton's campaign received a lot of money from a lot of people who'd undermine the best interests of the American people. 

 

Saudi Arabia.  That's who you're thinking of.  Same people Trump just sent a billion dollars to.

 

With all that in mind, yeah, you're right.  This isn't a surprise.  The question, as I'm sure we've all seen on our facebook feeds, Twitter feeds, and subreddits, is not whether or not collusion happened.  It's how much took place.  But as Cakey pointed out, unless there's some inside knowledge, all we can do is speculate.