On June 7, Goldstone emailed Trump Jr. and said that “Emin asked that I schedule a meeting with you and [t]he Russian government attorney who is flying over from Moscow.”694 Trump Jr. replied that Manafort (identified as the “campaign boss”), Jared Kushner, and Trump Jr. would likely attend.695 Goldstone was surprised to learn that Trump Jr., Manafort, and Kushner would attend.696 Kaveladze Grand Jury “puzzled” by the list of attendees and that he checked with one of Emin Agalarov’s assistants, Roman Beniaminov, who said that the purpose of the meeting was for Veselnitskaya to convey “negative information on Hillary Clinton.”697 Beniaminov, however, stated that he did not recall having known or said that.698
July 18, 2019
By Bess Levin
Last week, ostensibly in the name of “transparency,” (click here) Donald Trump Jr. published a series of e-mails he exchanged last year with Rob Goldstone, an intermediary who was hoping to arrange a meeting between the Trump campaign and a Kremlin-connected lawyer whom, he promised, would deliver compromising information about Hillary Clinton as part of a Russian government plot to help his father win the presidency. (Junior’s infamous response: “If it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”) Since then, a series of follow-up reports have shown that the White House’s effort at transparency was anything but. Over the past several days, we’ve learned that in addition to Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and Goldstone, a music public relations executive with long ties to the Trumps, the June 9 meeting with attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower was also attended by Rinat Akhmetshin, an alleged ex-Soviet spy turned Russian-American lobbyist and Anatoli Samachornov, who was reportedly there as a translator for Veselnitskaya, bringing the total number to seven....
Junior is lying.
...he told Hannity. “This is everything.” Now, it turns out there was an eighth participant at the Trump Tower meeting, too. And if you thought the alleged ex-Soviet spy was bad, wait until you read about Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze....
...Kaveladze reportedly began working for Agalarov in the early 1990s, around which time federal investigators believe he began laundering money. According to an October 2000 report from the Government Accountability Office, Kaveladze was a central figure in a near decade-long effort to launder $1.4 billion of Russian and Eastern European money through U.S. banks. The report, which was flagged by ThinkProgress’s Judd Legum, alleges that “more than $800 million was deposited through wire transfer transactions from foreign countries into IBC/Euro-American client accounts at Citibank. Over 70 percent of these deposits was subsequently moved out of the U.S. banking system through wire transfer transactions to accounts in foreign countries. According to a Citibank official, these deposits included funds from Russia; and Citibank no longer opens accounts for clients of IBC/Euro-American because of concerns over suspicious account activity.”...
Imagine living in a country, like Russia, where the government not only looks the other way to money laundering but, advocates for it.
Returning to Special Counsel report, page 115 of the report and page 123 of the PDF:
Early on June 8, 2016 Kushner emailed his assistant, asking her to discuss a 3:00 p.m. meeting the following day with Trump Jr.699 Later that day, Trump Jr. forwarded the entirety of his email correspondence regarding the meeting with Goldstone to Manafort and Kushner, under the subject line “FW: Russia - Clinton – private and confidential,” adding a note that the “[m]eeting got moved to 4 tomorrow at my offices.”700 Kushner then sent his assistant a second email, informing her that the “[m]eeting with don jr is 4pm now.”701 Manafort responded, “See you then. P.”702
Rick Gates, who was the deputy campaign chairman, stated during interviews with the Office that in the days before June 9, 2016 Trump Jr. announced at a regular morning meeting of senior campaign staff and Trump family members that he had a lead on negative information about the Clinton Foundation.703
By Bruce Golding and Joe Tacopino
Paul Manafort, then-Trump campaign chairman, is surrounded by reporters on the floor of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on July 17, 2016. Rick Gates, a former business associate to Manafort, who testified against him on Monday, stands nearby
The star witness against Paul Manafort testified Monday (click here) that they committed crimes together by conspiring to hide millions of dollars in offshore accounts so the former Trump 2016 campaign chairman could cheat on his taxes.
Gates, once Manafort’s right-hand man, also said they doctored financial statements and misled American banks so Manafort could score millions of dollars in loans.
“Were you involved in any criminal activity with Mr. Manafort?” prosecutor Greg Andres asked Rick Gates.
“Yes,” Gates said.
“Did you commit any crimes with Mr. Manafort?” the prosecutor then asked.
“Yes,” Gates said....
Return to Special Counsel report:
...Gates believed that Trump Jr. said the information was coming from a group in Kyrgyzstan and that he was introduced to the group by a friend.704 Gates recalled that the meeting was attended by Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Paul Manafort, Hope Hicks, and, joining late, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. According to Gates, Manafort warned the group that the meeting likely would not yield vital information and they should be careful.705 Hicks denied any knowledge of the June 9 meeting before 2017,706 and Kushner did not recall if the planned June 9 meeting came up at all earlier that week.707
By Emily Jane Fox
...Over the last few weeks, (click here) Giuliani has said that he and the president are as close as ever and that there is no rift between them. But people around the president have grown increasingly wary of their relationship, as it becomes clearer that Giuliani was running what looks like a shadow State Department to deal with Ukraine, and use the power of the presidency to pressure Ukraine into pursuing investigations for political purposes that would benefit Trump.
If all of this sounds familiar, it is because it is nearly identical to the way Trump treated his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, after investigators from the SDNY opened a criminal investigation into what they determined were campaign-finance violations stemming from hush money payments made to women alleging affairs with Trump in the last days leading up to the 2016 election....
...“In my judgment, Michael Cohen is now even more valuable than before,” Lanny Davis, one of Cohen’s attorneys, told me over the weekend. “First, in assisting the ongoing congressional impeachment investigation to interpret the Trump code words to lie, as in ‘no quid pro quo, no quid pro quo’ to the E.U. ambassador, when he knows the truth is exactly the opposite. And second, to assist ongoing investigations by state and federal prosecutors.”
In picture left: Belarus born, Igor Fruman and Ukraine born Lev Parnas (second and third from left) pictured with Vice President Mike Pence (far left), President Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani. Both Fruman and Parnas are now USA citizens and Florida residents.
All in the family. Somehow the strips seem appropriate for the occasion. Who knew? Including John Solomon of the Washington Times that started all the rumors about Joe Biden and his son. When is someone going to hold him responsible for taking propaganda at face value and running with it? He never checked the facts behind the propaganda. Trump said of Solomon that he should receive the Pulitzer Prize for his work and Hannity, Ingraham and Dobbs mimicked him. Did the Washington Times write a full retraction? If John Solomon is responsible for all this fake news to benefit Trump, when is the Biden camp going to hold him responsible?And Cohen, according to people familiar with the situation, has information that could be pertinent to the SDNY’s investigation into Lev Parnas, one of the men who worked with Giuliani to dig up dirt on Trump’s political opponents. Parnas was taken into federal custody earlier this month, as he and Igor Fruman were about to board a plane outside of Washington, after having lunch with Giuliani at the Trump International Hotel a few blocks away from the White House, and charged with conspiracy, falsification of records, and lying to the Federal Election Commission about their political donations, which included a $325,000 donation through an LLC to support a super PAC created to support Trump’s candidacy. (Both men have pleaded not guilty.)
Parnas, according to these sources, contacted Cohen in the first few weeks after Trump took office. He introduced himself through text message and asked if he would be willing to set up a meeting with Trump, the purpose being that he wanted to propose a method to save the federal government money on fraud, waste, and abuse. Those who know Cohen also said that there was another occasion during which Parnas came in contact with Cohen that they said may be of interest to investigators looking into whether Parnas violated federal election laws. Cohen would be willing to communicate what he knows to investigators, it is said, and has added a new criminal-defense attorney, Robert D. Adler, to his legal team in recent months....
Returning to the Special Counsel Report:
Returning to the Special Counsel Report:
Many of the footnotes deal with evidence in a file or electronic record.
Footnote 694 DJTJR00467 (6/7/16 Email, Goldstone to Trump Jr.); @DonaldJTrumpJr 07/11/17 (11:00)
Footnote 695 DJTJR00469 (6/7/16 Email, Trump Jr. to Goldstone); @DonaldJTrumpJr 07/11/17 (11:00) Tweet;
RG000071 (6/7/16 Email, Trump Jr. to Goldstone);
OSC-KAV_00048 (6/7/16 Email, Goldstone to Kaveladze); Grand Jury
Footnote 696 Goldstone 2/8/18 302, at 7; Grand Jury
Footnote 697 Grand Jury see Kaveladze 11/16/17 302 at 7; OSCKAV_00048 (6/7/16 Email, Goldstone to Kaveladze).
Footnote 698 Beniaminov 1/6/18 302, at 3.
Footnote 699 NOSC0000007-08 (6/8/18 Email, Kushner to Vargas Catherine Vargas, an executive assistant to Kushner and the name appears in that context in the report).
Footnote 700 NOSC00000039-42 (6/8/16 Email, Trump Jr. to Kushner & Manafort); DJTJR00485 (6/8/16 Email, Trump Jr. to Kushner & Manafort).
Footnote 701 NOSC0000004 (6/8/16 Email, Kushner to Vargas).
Footnote 702 6/8/16 Email, Manafort to Trump Jr.
Footnote 703 Gates 1/30/18 302, at 7; Gates 3/1/18 302, at 3-4. Although the March 1 302 refers to “June 19,” that is likely a typographical error; external emails indicate that a meeting with those participants occurred on June 6. See NOSC00023603 (6/6/16 Email, Gates to Trump Jr. et al.).
Footnote 704 Gates 1/30/18 302, at 7. Aras Agalarov is originally from Azerbaijan, and public reporting indicates that his company, the Crocus Group, has done substantial work in Kyrgyzstan. See Neil MacFarquhar, A Russian Developer Helps Out the Kremlin on Occasion. Was He a Conduit to Trump?, New York Times (July 16, 2017).
I was looking at the website for the Crocus Group (click here) didn't see anything about Kyrgyzstan there, but, I don't speak Russia either. It appears the Group is a good builder, there is even an oceanarium. There are happy Russians receiving keys to their apartments which I think they purchased. There are multiple upon multiple high rises in the development area.
Just as a side note, I watched a report from Erbil, Iraq last night. I was impressed, of course by the reporting, but, the city lights in the background and at least one high rise was noted. I think I am impressed. We get all this bad news out of the Middle East all the time, but, perhaps (and it is difficult to tell in the dark) there is an improvement in the quality of life of Iraqis.
Footnote 705 Gates 3/1/18 302, at 3-4.
Footnote 706 Hicks 12/7/17 302, at 6.
Footnote 707 Kushner 4/11/18 302, at 8.
Footnote 708 Cohen 8/7/18 302, at 4-6.
Footnote 709 Cohen 8/7/18 302, at 4-5.
Footnote 710 Cohen 9/12/18 302, at 15-16.
Footnote 711 Interview of: Donald J. Trump, Jr., Senate Judiciary Committee, 115th Cong. 28-29, 84, 94-95 (Sept. 7, 2017). The Senate Judiciary Committee interview was not under oath, but Trump Jr. was advised that it is a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 (click here) to make materially false statements in a congressional investigation. Id. at 10-11.
It is probably better to go through the motions of a swearing-in for the sake of brevity.
Footnote 712 Manafort 9/11/18 302, at 3-4; Kushner 4/11/18 302, at 10.
Footnote 713 Written Responses of Donald J. Trump (Nov. 20, 2018), at 8 (Response to Question I, Parts (a)- (c)). We considered whether one sequence of events suggested that candidate Trump had contemporaneous knowledge of the June 9 meeting. On June 7, 2016 Trump announced his intention to give “a major speech” “probably Monday of next week”—which would have been June 13—about “all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons.” See, e.g., Phillip Bump, What we know about the Trump Tower meeting, Washington Post (Aug. 7, 2018) (click here) . Following the June 9 meeting, Trump changed the subject of his planned speech to national security. But the Office did not find evidence that the original idea for the speech was connected to the anticipated June 9 meeting or that the change of topic was attributable to the failure of that meeting to produce concrete evidence about Clinton. Other events, such as the Pulse nightclub shooting on June 12, could well have caused the change. The President’s written answers to our questions state that the speech’s focus was altered “[i]n light of” the Pulse nightclub shooting. See Written Responses, supra. As for the original topic of the June 13 speech, Trump has said that “he expected to give a speech referencing the publicly available, negative information about the Clintons,” and that the draft of the speech prepared by Campaign staff “was based on publicly available material, including, in particular, information from the book Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer.” Written Responses, supra. In a later June 22 speech, Trump did speak extensively about allegations that Clinton was corrupt, drawing from the Clinton Cash book (published May 2015). See Full Transcript: Donald Trump NYC Speech on Stakes of the Election, politico.com (June 22, 2016)
That is really interesting. All of a sudden Trump decides to make a speech about the Clintons after the Russian meeting is supposed to take place, however, it could be attributed to other events so the connection could not be made absolutely. Wow. I think the word that comes to mind is "slippery." These folks seem to be very slippery when it comes to clearly make connections to conspiracy.
Continued in next entry - thank you.
