Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), speaking Martha MacCallum on Fox News Tuesday, said that he was disturbed by the details in the emails disclosed by Donald Trump Jr., and not so much about what actually happened at the meeting.
MacCallum asked Gowdy, "So in terms of this Donald Trump Jr. story that’s out there today, are you troubled by any of it?"
Gowdy replied:
“Are you concerned that there was an effort to influence this campaign with regard to changing that,” MacCallum then asked, “or to find a sympathetic ear on that?”
Yeah, I’m troubled on three levels. Number one, the legal level, but I think that’s Bob Mueller’s lane. [On] the political level, Martha, here we are beginning another week, this one in July with a new revelation about Russia. And the third, which is more of a medical issue is the amnesia of the people that are in the Trump orbit. Someone close to the president needs to get everyone connected with that campaign in a room and say from the time you saw "Doctor Zhivago" until the moment you drank vodka with a guy named "Boris," you list every single one of those and we’re gonna turn them over to the special counsel.
Gowdy replied:
I’m not nearly as concerned with that. I’m much more concerned with the purported reason of the meeting as opposed to the real reason. The purported reason was for an agent of a foreign power to try to influence our election. That concerns me more than someone trying to sit down with a member of perhaps an incoming administration to lobby for a policy change.
I’m much more concerned with the words of the actual email than the real reason she wanted to meet,” he said.
“Which words in the email disturb you?” MacCallum asked.
Gowdy replied
Russian governments’ efforts to help the Trump campaign, official documents.
Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit! Gowdy may well be Trump's "Cronkite." I can't think of any elected official who's been more of a lickspittle to Trump than Trey Gowdy. Gowdy has long been one of the few sharp witted and acerbic defenders of all things Trump. Well, that too has now come to pass.
The fact of the matter is that the disclosures Gowdy admonishes Trump's team to make should long ago have been made.
The June 2016 sit-down with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was first brought to government officials’ attention when it was listed among the foreign contacts on Kushner’s amended application for a top-level security clearance, according to the New York Times. Kushner had initially omitted all of his meetings with foreign nationals from his SF-86, the questionnaire all applicants for national security clearances must fill out.
How many foreign contacts must one omit from their SF-86 forms to lose their security clearance immediately? Why hasn't Kushner's clearance been terminated? Why haven't all the individuals who, by dint of their convenient omissions of explicitly requesting information, pose a security risk been removed from the WH, at least temporarily sequestered from it and all it does even if not permanently?
Kushner managed to "forget" more foreign contacts than he listed, since he listed exactly zero. I mean, really. Who'd have known that Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, the head of a U.S.-sanctioned Russian state-run bank or a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer are "individuals associated with a foreign business or other foreign organization" that also did not employ Kushner? Is it that one or more of those individuals or the organizations for which they worked did employ Kushner; he listed them in a different section of the form? The answer: NOBODY!
Be that as it may, what's certain is that no asset of a foreign government would on an SF-86 list congresses with known or suspected operatives of that government. And how many times did Kushner submitted his SF-86? Three times!
Of course Gowdy isn't terribly concerned about the fact that Russians attempted to influence the campaign or the election's outcome. Anyone with the barest awareness of how the Russians do things is well aware the Russians will at least try to do something of that nature. He rightly is concerned that highly placed Trump campaign, now Trump Administration, players:
- First, the inaccurate form, which left blank the foreign contacts section.
- Next (and the next day), the form was amended to say that he had multiple contacts and would disclose those. The process of gathering information progressed throughout the winter and spring.
Really? It took the winter and spring to gather the scant bits of information the form requests? Does Kushner truly not have a calendar and an email program? I don't put every meeting I attend in my calendar, but the ones I and my boss will together attend surely does make it onto my calendar, if only to facilitate my ensuring I carve out adequate time for preparing for and traveling to and from the meeting. I'm sorry, but no senior principal is going to buy that it legitimately takes that long to gather such basic information.- Then the form was amended yet again to include the Trump Jr. meeting as soon as it was discovered, a source with knowledge of the process told CNN.
From Gowdy's remarks, which are the point of this post/thread, it seems that even he has reached the point of realizing the nation will be better off without Trump, his court, its jesters, and his cronies at the helm. He's clearly no longer seeing the lipstick and denying that our porcine president, Trump, is not a pig.
- Didn't comprehend the nature of how the Russians do things and in their zeal went ahead with the meetings and whatever disclosures may have resulted from them.
This may be possible re: Trump, Jr., particularly if he's literally as stupid as his father, but not Manafort, who also was in attendance. That said, just how oblivious or unpatriotic must one be not to know that discussing anything with Russians officials and their known cut-outs is a "no-no?"- Did comprehend the nature of what they were potentially getting into and, in their zeal to win, didn't give a damn and forged onward.
This is definitely something that could very well have been the case with Manafort, whom I would not be surprised to find that he's a witting or unwitting Russian asset, so deep are his ties to Russian officials.
Yeah.. Right On !!! The part I'm troubled about is that Don Jr is NOT SUBJECT to WH access clearances. Probably has much lower clearances. Because Don Jr is not PART of the Admin. Can't be. Runs Trump Enterprises. So the one re-filing the Form 86 (and others you'll never see) is Kushner. Who had to disclose this contact because he had access to the details of this set-up meeting during the campaign.
And the part that disturbs ME is that all this info goes to the FBI. WHERE IT WAS LEAKED to NY Times. If my applications were ever subject to leaks -- I'd have a Holy Cow.
Here's the problem with this deal that NO ONE in the media is gonna analyze for you. The BAD JUDGEMENT and lack of discretion on the part of Don Jr is certainly visible here. Even discussing the set-up of the meeting should have been a Red Flag (literally).. But I UNDERSTAND. Because at the time, ALL of the people involved were private citizens who NEVER HAD clearances and were never BRIEFED into the ways of foreign espionage and what to look for. They had NO sensitivity to how much fuss and paperwork is involved with "foreign meetings".. So they were NAIVE and "security virgins".
NO PERSON who has been cleared and read into secure programs would EVER take that bait without protecting themselves by disclosing it BEFOREHAND to their "security officer"...
This is simply what happens in campaigns where MOST people are civilians and outsiders and don't REALIZE the implications of such an "offered bait"... NO campaign should be run without adequate # of people who hold or HAVE held security clearances. And they should be the go-to for advice before ANY foreign contacts are made..
Once again you people fail to read! Look at the form. What does it say? It says "advice or support"!
It doesn't say, "had lunch with", "shared an elevator", "had sexual relations with" or anything of the sort.
That meeting would not qualify as required to be reported, and as someone who once held a TS SCI and has endured many background investigations, that does not need to be reported.
If it was required, no businessman could ever work for the government because the current administration would be out of office before he ever finished the freakin' questionnaire!
Jr was not acting in his capacity as a businessman. He was operating as part of a political campaign as Trump campaign officials accompanied him. She made it very clear what she wanted and Jr made it very clear that he was interested. He should have reported it to the FBI so they could wire him and find out what her connections are to Russia.
ANALYZE that proposal for me. What sense does that make? It was IDIOTIC to fall for it. Doesn't make ANY LOGICAL sense at all.. 
