Russiagate update: as the shoes prepare to drop…
… a Friday torrent of headlines should be ratcheting up the threat level for Donald Trump and his family to “Y’all are toast.” As Louise Mensch said, :The family that spies together fries together.” Julius and Ethel had nothing on the Donald and his spawn
- NBC News is reporting that the British publicist who set up the meeting between Russian agents… er, representatives and officials of the Trump campaign at Trump Tower in July 2016 is ready to tell all to Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his staff.
- Stephen Longman of the BooMan Tribune usefully points out that Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos were being scrutinized by the FBI simultaneously. You can safely wager that Mueller’s team has observed this not-so-mere coinydink.
- Josh Marshall found video footage of Sam Clovis, former Trump campaign official and failed Agriculture Department appointee, shilling for Russia’s position on the Ukraine — back in 2014. Watch it here.
- NBC News also confirmed the WSJ scoop that reported Mueller has subpoenaed Trump campaign officials demanding Russia documents: “The source said the campaign has already turned over some 20,000 documents voluntarily, so it’s not clear why the subpoena was issued. A subpoena ratchets up the stakes for noncompliance.” And obstruction of justice.
- A Moscow meeting that took palace during June of this year has now fallen under scrutiny in Trump probe:
Earlier this year, a Russian-American lobbyist and another businessman discussed over coffee in Moscow an extraordinary meeting they had attended 12 months earlier: a gathering at Trump Tower with President Donald Trump’s son, his son-in-law and his then-campaign chairman.
The Moscow meeting in June, which has not been previously disclosed, is now under scrutiny by investigators who want to know why the two men met in the first place and whether there was some effort to get their stories straight about the Trump Tower meeting just weeks before it would become public, The Associated Press has learned.
Congressional investigators have questioned both men — lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin and Ike Kaveladze, a business associate of a Moscow-based developer and former Trump business partner — and obtained their text message communications, people familiar with the investigation told the AP.
- Mueller is also looking into Paul Ryan’s conduct during the 2016 GOP convention pertaining to the removal of a pro-Ukraine plank from the party platform: Congressional aides may have answers on pro-Russia GOP platform change:
As U.S. investigators probe whether President Donald Trump’s campaign orchestrated a Russia-friendly change to the Republican Party platform last summer, three senior Capitol Hill aides — including Speaker Paul Ryan’s chief of staff — may have answers about how the episode unfolded.
The three staffers, who have not been accused of any wrongdoing, advised the GOP convention’s platform committee on foreign policy matters and had front-row seats when a low-profile group of delegates, acting in conjunction with Trump campaign officials, spiked a proposal urging a tougher U.S. policy against Russian aggression in Ukraine.
That change has drawn scrutiny from the House and Senate intelligence committees as they investigate whether any Trump campaign officials cooperated with Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Some witnesses say they expect it to become a topic of interest in special counsel Robert Mueller’s parallel criminal probe.
Spokespeople for the offices of two of the staffers told POLITICO they have not been in contact with Mueller or his team. But Ryan’s top aide, Jonathan Burks, would neither confirm nor deny whether he had heard from the special counsel: “I’m not going to have any comment,” he said.
- The New York Times goes into detail on Russia-Trump go-between Aleksander Torshin, who tried to arrange a Trump-Putin meeting in May 2016.
- Late Friday, NBC had a third big get for the day: Kushner failed to disclose to the Senate Judiciary Committee outreach from Torshin!
President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, failed to disclose what lawmakers called a “Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite” involving a banker who has been accused of links to Russian organized crime, three sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.
An email chain described Aleksander Torshin, a former senator and deputy head of Russia’s central bank who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as wanting Trump to attend an event on the sidelines of a National Rifle Association convention in Louisville, Kentucky, in May 2016, the sources said. The email also suggests Torshin was seeking to meet with a high-level Trump campaign official during the convention, and that he may have had a message for Trump from Putin, the sources said.
Kushner rebuffed the request after receiving a lengthy email exchange about it between a West Virginia man and Trump campaign aide Rick Dearborn, the sources said.
It’s as if Jared has something to hide — but is just realizing that he can’t hide anything from Robert Mueller or the “deep state” intelligence community.
