On Sunday the New York Times reported that Donald Trump's son arranged a meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer who offered to provide the Trump campaign with damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
The Times reported last night that Trump Jr. was explicitly informed before the meeting that the Russian government was taking action to support Trump.
WASHINGTON — Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.
The email to the younger Mr. Trump was sent by Rob Goldstone, a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped broker the June 2016 meeting. In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he was interested in receiving damaging information about Mrs. Clinton, but gave no indication that he thought the lawyer might have been a Kremlin proxy.
The 2016 election always comes back to email, doesn't it?
For it's worth, the Russian lawyer in question, Natalia Veselnitskaya, has denied that she promised to deliver damaging information on Hillary Clinton, but with Trump Jr. publicly admitted that he was seeking it, I'm not sure if her side of the story really matters nor do believe she can be trusted any more than Trump Jr. can be.
We can be sure of at least one thing: young Donny knew exactly what he was getting into and we know that because, while I was writing this post, he posted the incriminating email himself.
Here's my statement and the full email chain pic.twitter.com/x050r5n5LQ
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 11, 2017
Here is page 4 (which did not post due to space constraints). pic.twitter.com/z1Xi4nr2gq
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 11, 2017
The subject line of the email chain, which was forwarded to Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, is "FW- Russia - Clinton - private and confidential" and Rob Goldstone says it's "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."
The next question is who is more pissed off today, Trump Jr's lawyer or Jared Kushner's lawyer? Kushner was already on the hot seat for not disclosing this meeting on his security clearance form.
The Times published their own write-up of the email chain shortly after Trump Jr. posted it himself. Donny presumably posted the emails because he knew the Times was about to publish them.
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.” [...]
He replied within minutes: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”