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Wednesday, 12 July 2017
Donald Trump Jr posts emails from Russia offering material on Clinton: 'I love it'
Donald Trump
Jr has been forced to release damning emails that reveal he eagerly
embraced what he was told was a Russian government attempt to damage
Hillary Clinton’s election campaign.
The stunning disclosure raised questions over whether campaign laws
were broken and why senior Trump associates failed to report a hostile
act by a foreign power.
The emails show music promoter Rob Goldstone telling the future US
president’s son that “the crown prosecutor of Russia” had offered “to
provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information
that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father”.
British-born Goldstone adds in the exchange of 3 June 2016: “This is
obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of
Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump.”
Seventeen minutes later, Trump Jr welcomes this with the reply: “If
it’s what you say, I love it, especially later in the summer.”
In a later email, Goldstone describes the Russian lawyer they are due
to meet, Natalia Veselnitskaya, as a “Russian government attorney”.
Trump Jr agrees, adding that he would probably be accompanied by
“Paul Manafort (campaign boss)” and “my brother-in-law,” Jared Kushner,
husband of Trump’s daughter Ivanka and now a senior White House adviser.
The formatting of the emails suggests that Trump Jr forwarded the
whole chain to Manafort and Kushner before the meeting the three
attended with Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in New York on 9 June.
On Sunday, Trump Jr had said he had asked Manafort and Kushner to attend but not told them what the meeting was about.
Critics seized on the new disclosures to question why three of
Trump’s closest advisers were willing to accept such a meeting instead
of alerting authorities to interference by a foreign adversary. Special
counsel Robert Mueller and the House and Senate intelligence committees
are investigating Russian meddling in the election, thought to include
stealing Democratic National Committee emails and the use of
social-media bots to spread fake news about Clinton.
Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders read a short statement from
the president to reporters at the regular White House press briefing.
“My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency.”
She then refused to answer several questions on the matter, saying
they must be directed to Trump Jr’s legal counsel and outside counsel.
Asked about the president’s reaction to the unfolding drama, Sanders
replied: “I think the president is, I would say, frustrated with the
process, the fact this continues to be an issue and he would love for us
to be focused on issues like the economy, healthcare, tax reform,
infrastructure.”
‘These emails are explosive’
Clinton’s
running mate Tim Kaine, a senator from Virginia and member of the
foreign relations committee, told MSNBC: “These emails are explosive.
This should have set off alarm bells and red lights, and yet what it
seemed to do is activate their salivatory glands. This is just
wheelbarrows of new evidence for the special counsel and the Senate
intelligence committee.”
Trump Jr released the email chain on Tuesday apparently to pre-empt its publication by the New York Times, which, this weekend, first broke the news of his meeting with Veselnitskaya in June last year. Veselnitskaya had promised compromising information about Clinton but apparently failed to deliver.
In a statement posted to Twitter, Trump Jr explained: “To everyone,
in order to be totally transparent, I am releasing the entire email
chain of my emails with Rob Goldstone about the meeting on June 9, 2016.
To put this in context, this occurred before the current Russian fever
was in vogue.”
There is no such position as crown prosecutor of Russia, but
the most likely candidate would be the long-serving prosecutor general,
Yuri Chaika.
Chaika, a long-standing member of Vladimir Putin’s elite, was justice
minister for several years before being made prosecutor general in
2006, a post he has held ever since.
He was the subject of a documentary film by the Russian opposition
politician and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, who alleged systematic corruption by the prosecutor general and his two sons.
Goldstone told the Wall Street Journal his reference to the “crown
prosecutor” was meant to mean Veselnitskaya. “It’s a language thing,” he said.
He referred questions from the Guardian to his lawyer.
Trump Jr has given shifting explanations for why he accepted the
meeting, first claiming it was to discuss American adoptions of Russian
children, then acknowledging that he was interested in information about
Clinton.
The president’s eldest son denies any wrongdoing and tweeted on
Tuesday: “Media and Dems are extremely invested in the Russia story. If
this nonsense meeting is all they have after a year, I understand the
desperation!”
Goldstone told the Associated Press on Monday he set up the meeting
on behalf of a client, pop star Emin Agalarov, the son of a Moscow-based
developer, Aras Agalarov, who has close ties to Putin and tried to
partner with Trump in a hotel project.
Aras Agalarov worked with Donald Trump to bring the Miss Universe contest to Moscow in 2013. Trump appeared in a music video with Emin Agalarov that featured several Miss Universe contestants.
Goldstone’s 3 June email says the Russian government’s support for
Trump is “helped along by Aras and Emin”. He asks if Trump Jr wants to
speak to Emin about it directly and proposes: “I can also send this info
to your father via Rhona” – presumably Rhona Graff, Donald Trump’s
longtime executive assistant – “but it is ultra sensitive so wanted to
send to you first.” It is not clear from the emails whether Goldstone
did send any of the information to Trump Sr, who has denied all
knowledge of the meeting through his lawyer.
In an interview with the New York Times on Monday,
Goldstone implied that he was at the meeting with Veselnitskaya and
that it produced nothing of note. She offered “just a vague, generic
statement about the campaign’s funding and how people, including Russian
people, living all over the world donate when they shouldn’t donate”
before turning to an American law that blacklists Russians suspected of
human rights abuses.
Goldstone told the paper: “It was the most inane nonsense I’ve ever
heard. And I was actually feeling agitated by it. Had I, you know,
actually taken up what is a huge amount of their busy time with this
nonsense?”
Before the publication of Trump Jr’s emails, Veselnitskaya had denied
she had gone to the meeting with information about the Clinton
campaign. “It’s quite possible that maybe they were looking for such
information, they wanted it so badly,” she told NBC, denying that she
had any to offer. She also answered “no” when asked if she had ever
worked for the Russian government.
Russian lawyer who met Trump Jr denies links with KremlinTrump Jr was at Trump Tower in New York on Tuesday, according to a police officer at the building.
Eric
Trump, Donald Jr’s brother, was spotted in the lobby at around 1.30pm
with his wife Lara. Asked by the Guardian if he had any comment on his
brother’s emails or knew Goldstone himself, Eric Trump did not respond.
He then headed quickly to a gold elevator and headed upwards, staring
silently ahead.
The revelations around 39-year-old Trump Jr’s involvement is one of
the biggest blows yet in the saga of the Trump campaign’s alleged ties
to Russia, which the president has dismissed as a “hoax”. Republicans on Capitol Hill were taken aback but reluctant to weigh in just yet.
At least two Republicans on the Senate intelligence committee,
Senators John Cornyn and James Lankford, said Trump Jr should testify
before the panel, which is overseeing one of three parallel
investigations into Russian interference in the US election.
John McCain, a frequent critic of the Trump administration,
said there were “many allusions and many stories of meetings and
communications”, while noting he expected there was more yet to come.
“There’ll be many more shoes that will drop,” the former presidential candidate told CNN.
Richard Burr, the Republican chief of the Senate intelligence
committee, said it was “too early to draw any conclusions”. “We’re gonna
look at everything and go where the facts lead us,” Burr told reporters
on Capitol Hill.
Burr would not say if his committee was aware of the emails. His
Democratic counterpart, Mark Warner, said it was significant that the
emails had been forwarded to Kushner and Manafort.
“They’ve got a lot of explaining to do, because all these denials of
any knowledge of Russian government involvement seems to be a gross
contradiction here,” Warner told Roll Call.
Some of Trump’s most ardent defenders nonetheless stood by the
president. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who competed bitterly against
Trump for the Republican nomination, blamed the media for fixating on
Russia.
“Russia is a significant adversary,” he told reporters. “Part of the
irony of this media obsession with Russia is that the Obama
administration began with Hillary Clinton bringing the big reset button with Russia.
“Substance matters,” he added. “Policy matters.”
Norm Eisen, former ethics czar under President Barack Obama, said:
“It’s another significant step forward in the investigation of Trump
collusion with Russia because it represents an offer to collude and an
acceptance of collusion to harm the campaign of Hillary Clinton and
intrude upon our democracy.”
He added: “I believe it’s potentially legally actionable but we need
to let the investigation play out. I predict it will not be the last
bombshell.” Additional reporting by Shaun Walker in Moscow and Oliver Laughland in New York
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