Trey Gowdy is "troubled" over the latest revelation in the saga of the "Russia" investigation

[usmbguest5318]

Well, just as icing on the cake, Xelor, the President stated last night from Paris that "Most people would have taken that meeting."
So much for claiming total innocence on his part. He better be careful what he says--his foot is slipping....

When I saw our President make that remark to the world, I felt ashamed.
Just ashamed. Nothing else to say.

I hear you.

I heard him jejunely say that and I thought "Tu quoque, you fatuously presumptive porcine SOS!"

You speaking a furrin' language again, Xelor?
LOL

SOS, in that sentence means "sack of sh*t." Or did you mean "tu quoque," which is indeed Latin.

 

[OldLady]

What is more disturbing that in an attempt to help a Russian Money Launderer, Barry and Loretta bypassed Obama's US Immigration Department's Visa Denial - refusal to allow this Russian lawyer, iving her instead a speial entry into the US. Add in the fact that Hillary's lawyer acted as this Russian lawyer's chaperone, and you have a troubling matter.

This Russian lawyer also turns out to be a lobbyist for Russian-US adoptions who also met with Cingressmen and the media.

But why was Barry and Loretta ignoring Immigration's ban into the US for this lawyer in order to help a Russian Money Launderer?

If Barry had not bypassed his own Dept of Inmigration's refusal to let this lawyer into the country, if Barry and Loretta would not have been helping a Russian money launderer win a case against Loretta's DOJ, there would have been no meetig between Jr and the lawyer.

Russian Money Launderer?
Hillary's lawyer acted as this Russian lawyer's chaperone
Really? You got a link to that with actual facts?

YOU can LOOK BACK at the links I posted.

So, no, huh? Fine stay ignorant.

 

[easyt65]

What is more disturbing that in an attempt to help a Russian Money Launderer, Barry and Loretta bypassed Obama's US Immigration Department's Visa Denial - refusal to allow this Russian lawyer, iving her instead a speial entry into the US. Add in the fact that Hillary's lawyer acted as this Russian lawyer's chaperone, and you have a troubling matter.

This Russian lawyer also turns out to be a lobbyist for Russian-US adoptions who also met with Cingressmen and the media.

But why was Barry and Loretta ignoring Immigration's ban into the US for this lawyer in order to help a Russian Money Launderer?

If Barry had not bypassed his own Dept of Inmigration's refusal to let this lawyer into the country, if Barry and Loretta would not have been helping a Russian money launderer win a case against Loretta's DOJ, there would have been no meetig between Jr and the lawyer.

Russian Money Launderer?
Hillary's lawyer acted as this Russian lawyer's chaperone
Really? You got a link to that with actual facts?

YOU can LOOK BACK at the links I posted.

So, no, huh? Fine stay ignorant.

Take your own advice / words, OL....or else stay looking like an old hypocrite.

 

[easyt65]

OL, here's some reading for you:

DOJ let Russian lawyer into US before she met with Trump team

Posts #110 - #113

Supporting Link:
Mystery solved? Timeline shows how Russian lawyer got into US for Trump Jr. meeting

 

[flacaltenn]

​

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:

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.
​

“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?”

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!

• 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.

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:

• 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.

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.

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..

There is definitely a different set of concerns related to Trump, Jr. and Kushner. Be that as it may, skip the espionage aspects; there is also the campaign finance aspect.

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.

If one is to accept Trump Jr.’s own explanation for why he took the meeting, one finds in it an unequivocal attestation to having violated campaign-finance laws, asserts Brendan Fischer. Foreign nationals are prohibited from contributing to U.S. elections, and U.S. citizens from soliciting such contributions. “Oppo[sition] research on your opponent is an in-kind contribution,” Fischer tweeted. “Arranging a meeting to facilitate the receipt of that contribution=solicitation.” Money is not the only thing one can contribute to a political campaign.

There are other criminal violations that may pertain to the meeting and its circumstances. Now, I can't say whether legally any of them may be be in play, but they are the sorts of things that would, or should, cross the mind of astute principals, which it is reasonable to presume Kushner, Manafort, and Trump, Jr. are. Moreover, Kushner and Manafort are both formally trained attorneys, and they were clearly privy to why the three of them were going to the meeting. Other possible offenses that may be in play, though I can't say just who on the campaign might have violated which one, and that both Manafort and Kushner know of include:

• Conspiracy to defraud the U.S.
  Conspiracy to defraud the U.S. is generally defined as cheating the U.S. government out of property or money, but has also been defined in legal judgments as interfering with or obstructing “lawful governmental functions by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest.” In the matter of the information that was, per the email, on offer from "Ms. V." (the Russian lawyer), a properly conducted presidential election could be construed as what was taken by illegal means.
  
• Accessory after the fact.
  Accessory after the fact laws may apply if the intelligence briefings Trump, Sr. received included the information that intelligence agencies thought the Russian government was trying to hack the U.S. election and if the information was then shared improperly. Accessory-after-the-fact statutes cover anyone who “knowing that an offense against the United States has been committed, receives, relieves, comforts or assists the offender in order to hinder or prevent his apprehension, trial or punishment.” U.S. intelligence agencies started expressing concern about foreign hacking of the 2016 race in May.
  
• Misprision of a felony.
  Anyone offered information obtained through a felony who does not bring that information to the U.S. government’s attention may face charges. “Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”

Those code sections come to my mind, and I'm not an attorney.

Then there's the matter of Trump, Jr.'s meeting with Ms. V. clearly giving the lie to his father's claim (via his WH press office) that nobody on his campaign met with Russians. On February 20, Trump spokesperson Sarah Sanders flatly declared that the Trump campaign had “no contacts” with Russia.


Now you tell me...Were you the POTUS's son, upon hearing that and clearly knowing that you'd met with Ms. V., would you not at least at that point share with your father that his staff are misrepresenting facts? Were you the POTUS, after learning that from your son, would you not instruct your press office to retract their statement and correct your own misrepresentations?

Were you a man of integrity, you sure would. Why would you? Because the integrity of the Office of the President of the United States is "bigger" than you or your son. On the other hand, were you already aware that the statement was untrue, you wouldn't do anything. And if the interactions of which you were aware were by you suspected to potentially be anything from merely shady to criminal, you definitely would not move to correct the record. (Given the closeness of the Trumps, it's unfathomable that Don Jr. would not have shared with his dad that he had an upcoming meeting that promised to yield material information detrimental to Clinton. It's also silly to think that Trump would not so much as offhandedly ask with whom the meeting was taking place.)

Of course, Trump clearly knew the instant it was uttered the statements Huckabee-Sanders and he were boldfaced lies (or at least that his statement was; Sanders may not have know of the meeting, though she should have).

• Feb. 2017 -- Donald Trump, Sr. said, "Russia is a ruse. I have nothing to do with Russia. Haven’t made a phone call to Russia in years. Don’t speak to people from Russia."

Trump personally met with the Russian ambassador on April 27, 2016 (!!!), prior to a major foreign policy speech. The Wall Street Journal, in a report that was little-noticed at the time but was recently picked up by AMERICABlog News, reported the meeting last year.

No -- you're NOT an attorney.. And if the meeting was a STING operation, private orgs and people can't get away with that in a manner that results in ANY legal charges. There is no "govt interest" in political opposition research. If there WAS -- the morons including McCain backing that Fusion GPS "dossier" would be in jail by now. For going to the Russians to get DIRT on Trump.. The entire dossier was a political hit piece -- not an "Intel Report" and PAID FOR by the "never Trumpers" on BOTH side of the tribal war...

 

[flacaltenn]

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..

Naive is a defense for someone who goes in a c store with his buddy to get a beer and the buddy decided to rob and murder the clerk. Naive won't get it here, he did it to get dirt.

It was naive. If it NEEDED to be done, it should have been setup as a reverse sting. HE became "the victim" of the prank -- because he never was briefed and made sensitive to the possibilties of Foreign espionage and blackmail...

He's not a little kid and he runs daddy's businesses.

Sure... But Daddys biz is not a prime target for Foreign espionage operations or sting operations set up by Foreign Interests. The campaign should have had more serious security advisors and briefings about the dangers. Because that synopsis of the story I just gave in bold letters is SO STUPID -- you could smell "prank" and blackmail from miles away....

I'll admit it smelled to high heaven--the wording of the approach, the whole thing. And the Russians got their answer--yes, this campaign is that stupid and yes, they are willing to play ball.
What this does is raise questions as to what happened next? That was the "approach." Will we ever find out? Probably not.

I suppose NOTHING went forward from there, because the meeting was a snooze. When "a friend" sets you up for that kind of farce -- you kinda ignore any follow-up.. This lady was flirting with John McCain just days before or after. Has links to the anti-Trump Fusion Group that McCain funded. APPARENTLY, it's not only Dems that are Covering their asses over stuff. McCain and Romney were right in the middle of the original anti Trump research..

 

[flacaltenn]

Well, just as icing on the cake, Xelor, the President stated last night from Paris that "Most people would have taken that meeting."
So much for claiming total innocence on his part. He better be careful what he says--his foot is slipping....

When I saw our President make that remark to the world, I felt ashamed.
Just ashamed. Nothing else to say.

Clinton campaign received dirt on Manafort from the Ukrainians. It's not illegal. It's just fucked up politics..

 

[usmbguest5318]

​

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:

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.
​

“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?”

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!

• 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.

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:

• 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.

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.

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..

There is definitely a different set of concerns related to Trump, Jr. and Kushner. Be that as it may, skip the espionage aspects; there is also the campaign finance aspect.

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.

If one is to accept Trump Jr.’s own explanation for why he took the meeting, one finds in it an unequivocal attestation to having violated campaign-finance laws, asserts Brendan Fischer. Foreign nationals are prohibited from contributing to U.S. elections, and U.S. citizens from soliciting such contributions. “Oppo[sition] research on your opponent is an in-kind contribution,” Fischer tweeted. “Arranging a meeting to facilitate the receipt of that contribution=solicitation.” Money is not the only thing one can contribute to a political campaign.

There are other criminal violations that may pertain to the meeting and its circumstances. Now, I can't say whether legally any of them may be be in play, but they are the sorts of things that would, or should, cross the mind of astute principals, which it is reasonable to presume Kushner, Manafort, and Trump, Jr. are. Moreover, Kushner and Manafort are both formally trained attorneys, and they were clearly privy to why the three of them were going to the meeting. Other possible offenses that may be in play, though I can't say just who on the campaign might have violated which one, and that both Manafort and Kushner know of include:

• Conspiracy to defraud the U.S.
  Conspiracy to defraud the U.S. is generally defined as cheating the U.S. government out of property or money, but has also been defined in legal judgments as interfering with or obstructing “lawful governmental functions by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest.” In the matter of the information that was, per the email, on offer from "Ms. V." (the Russian lawyer), a properly conducted presidential election could be construed as what was taken by illegal means.
  
• Accessory after the fact.
  Accessory after the fact laws may apply if the intelligence briefings Trump, Sr. received included the information that intelligence agencies thought the Russian government was trying to hack the U.S. election and if the information was then shared improperly. Accessory-after-the-fact statutes cover anyone who “knowing that an offense against the United States has been committed, receives, relieves, comforts or assists the offender in order to hinder or prevent his apprehension, trial or punishment.” U.S. intelligence agencies started expressing concern about foreign hacking of the 2016 race in May.
  
• Misprision of a felony.
  Anyone offered information obtained through a felony who does not bring that information to the U.S. government’s attention may face charges. “Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”

Those code sections come to my mind, and I'm not an attorney.

Then there's the matter of Trump, Jr.'s meeting with Ms. V. clearly giving the lie to his father's claim (via his WH press office) that nobody on his campaign met with Russians. On February 20, Trump spokesperson Sarah Sanders flatly declared that the Trump campaign had “no contacts” with Russia.


Now you tell me...Were you the POTUS's son, upon hearing that and clearly knowing that you'd met with Ms. V., would you not at least at that point share with your father that his staff are misrepresenting facts? Were you the POTUS, after learning that from your son, would you not instruct your press office to retract their statement and correct your own misrepresentations?

Were you a man of integrity, you sure would. Why would you? Because the integrity of the Office of the President of the United States is "bigger" than you or your son. On the other hand, were you already aware that the statement was untrue, you wouldn't do anything. And if the interactions of which you were aware were by you suspected to potentially be anything from merely shady to criminal, you definitely would not move to correct the record. (Given the closeness of the Trumps, it's unfathomable that Don Jr. would not have shared with his dad that he had an upcoming meeting that promised to yield material information detrimental to Clinton. It's also silly to think that Trump would not so much as offhandedly ask with whom the meeting was taking place.)

Of course, Trump clearly knew the instant it was uttered the statements Huckabee-Sanders and he were boldfaced lies (or at least that his statement was; Sanders may not have know of the meeting, though she should have).

• Feb. 2017 -- Donald Trump, Sr. said, "Russia is a ruse. I have nothing to do with Russia. Haven’t made a phone call to Russia in years. Don’t speak to people from Russia."

Trump personally met with the Russian ambassador on April 27, 2016 (!!!), prior to a major foreign policy speech. The Wall Street Journal, in a report that was little-noticed at the time but was recently picked up by AMERICABlog News, reported the meeting last year.

No -- you're NOT an attorney.. And if the meeting was a STING operation, private orgs and people can't get away with that in a manner that results in ANY legal charges. There is no "govt interest" in political opposition research. If there WAS -- the morons including McCain backing that Fusion GPS "dossier" would be in jail by now. For going to the Russians to get DIRT on Trump.. The entire dossier was a political hit piece -- not an "Intel Report" and PAID FOR by the "never Trumpers" on BOTH side of the tribal war...

if the meeting was a STING operation

Several people have written about a sting operation. I don't know why. (hypothesis contrary to fact) I've neither seen nor heard that any such thing was going on and that members of the Trump team were party to it. I'm sitting here even now trying to suss why you even mentioned "sting operation" to me....

There is no "govt interest" in political opposition research.

Right, and that being so is relevant to the criminality (or not) of what Don Jr. et al did how?

 

[Sundance508]

Trying to get dirt on your political opponent is as old as the hills....the democrats want to be so 'self-righteous' about it. bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Like they are so innocent...like they never did it....ever look at ads during election time....how they mud sling....where did they get the mud and who gave it to them...matters not...just they have it and they use it...that is how the game is played...make your opponent look as bad as possible...get real folks.

 

[Borillar]

Much ado about nothing? One thing you will never see is a like minded independent opinion in the democrat party. The last democrat who showed an independent streak was Joe Lieberman and they kicked him out of the party.

He was never kicked out. He lost a primary election and then turned around and ran as an independent. If anything, he thought he was bigger than the party.

 

[Old Rocks]

​

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:

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.
​

“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?”

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!

• 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.

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:

• 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.

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.

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..

Jesus fucking Christ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am just a old millwright, but I would know better than that. And the treasonous fat senile old orange clown has admitted that he knew of the meeting before it took place, and said or did nothing. Of course, prior to this, he stated that there never were such contacts with the Russians by any of his people.

Trump says his advisers were not in contact with Russia during election campaign. Moscow says otherwise

 

[flacaltenn]

​

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:

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.
​

“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?”

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!

• 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.

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:

• 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.

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.

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..

Jesus fucking Christ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am just a old millwright, but I would know better than that. And the treasonous fat senile old orange clown has admitted that he knew of the meeting before it took place, and said or did nothing. Of course, prior to this, he stated that there never were such contacts with the Russians by any of his people.

Trump says his advisers were not in contact with Russia during election campaign. Moscow says otherwise

REALLY?? El Loco Cheetoh Grande ADMITTED knowledge of the meeting prior?

You should grab another cup of coffee with that Ensure chaser and read some..

Trump denies knowledge of son's Russian meeting

Trump denies knowledge of son's Russian meeting
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 07/12/17 05:41 PM EDT