Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse



On Tuesday morning, after being told that The Times was about to publish the content of emails setting up a meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer, Donald J. Trump Jr. posted the email chain on Twitter, along with a comment. Here are the emails he posted.
 


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 elder son was surprised or disturbed by the provenance of the promised material — or the notion that it was part of an ongoing 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.”

Donald Trump Jr. agreed, adding that he would likely bring along “Paul Manafort (campaign boss)” and “my brother-in-law,” Jared Kushner, now one of the president’s closest White House advisers.

...

But the email exchanges, which were reviewed by The Times, offer a detailed unspooling of how the meeting with the Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, came about — and just how eager Donald J. Trump was to accept what he was explicitly told was the Russian government’s help.


[More To Fall ...]

“This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
 


Donald Trump Jr. is in a legal danger zone following his acknowledgment that he met during the heat of the 2016 presidential campaign with a Russian lawyer with Kremlin ties who offered to deliver damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Democratic and Republican lawyers and political operatives alike say explanations about the June 2016 meeting from President Donald Trump’s oldest son are way out of step with common campaign practices when dealing with offers for opposition research.

But perhaps far more important, his statements put him potentially in legal cross hairs for violating federal criminal statutes prohibiting solicitation or acceptance of anything of value from a foreign national, as well as a conspiracy to defraud the United States.

Politically, by discussing such a sensitive topic that could prove embarrassing if revealed, Trump Jr. and the other Trump campaign officials in the room for the meeting with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya, including Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, may have also exposed themselves to future blackmail threats, the legal experts said.

Those potential troubles deepened Monday night with a fresh New York Times report alleging that Trump Jr. was sent an email before his meeting with Veselnitskaya indicating the information she had was part of a Russian plan to boost his father in the race against Clinton.
 
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