Trump Contradicts His Previous Statement About Trump Tower Meeting, Possibly Admitting to a Felony
Photo by John Sommers II/Getty Politics Features Donald Trump
Let’s start with 52 U.S. Code § 30121 (emphasis mine):
It shall be unlawful for—
(1) a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make—
(A) a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State, or local election;
(B) a contribution or donation to a committee of a political party; or
(C) an expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication (within the meaning of section 30104(f)(3) of this title); or
(2) a person to solicit, accept, or receive a contribution or donation described in subparagraph (A) or (B) of paragraph (1) from a foreign national.
Keep that last part in mind while reading Trump’s positively astounding tweet from yesterday morning.
Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2018
Finally, let’s compare that to Donald Trump Jr.’s statement to the New York Times after they discovered that this meeting took place (President Trump’s own lawyers confirmed that the president dictated Jr’s misleading statement to the Times):
“It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared [Kushner] and Paul [Manafort] to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up.”
Trump’s denial that anything came of the Trump Tower overture is the lone firewall between this tweet becoming an admission of a crime. However, if you believe president “the meeting was about adoption of Russian children—wait, no—it was to get information on an opponent,” is being truthful, then you really should pay more attention to what’s going on in the world. Our president’s brain is melting, and that’s before you get to the fact that he’s been a serial liar his entire life.
There’s been a lot of misinformation coming from team Trump over the famed Trump Tower meeting on June 9th, 2016, so here is a helpful thread laying out the timeline from trial lawyer, Max Kennerly.
April 18: George Papadopoulos connects with Ivan Timofeev, director at a Russian gov’t-funded Russian International Affairs Council.
April 25: Papadopoulos emails Stephen Miller “The Russian government has an open invitation by Putin for Mr. Trump to meet when he is ready.” /3
— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) August 5, 2018
April 27: Jeff Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak attend a small VIP reception at the Mayflower Hotel and discuss campaign and foreign policy. (Sessions later lies about this meeting during his AG confirmation hearing, then recuses himself from investigations.) /5
— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) August 5, 2018
May 2016: The Republicans who had paid for all the work going into Fusion GPS / Christopher Steele stop paying, because Trump clinched the GOP nomination.
Mid-May 2016: while drunk, Papadopoulos tells Australia’s top diplomat in Britain the Russians have “dirt” on Clinton. /7
— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) August 5, 2018
June 2016: Jared Kushner assumes control of all data-driven Trump campaign efforts. “We found that Facebook and digital targeting were the most effective ways to reach the audiences,” Kushner says later. “We brought in Cambridge Analytica.” /9
— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) August 5, 2018
June 7: Trump’s NJ GOP primary victory speech includes, “I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week [June 13] and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons.”
June 8: GRU launches DCLeaks. /11
— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) August 5, 2018
June 15: Guccifer 2.0 starts posting DNC emails.
Same day: Ryan, McCarthy and other Republican leaders meet privately. McCarthy says, “I’ll guarantee you that’s what it is… The Russians hacked the DNC,” and “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” /13
— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) August 5, 2018
July 7: Manafort is still emailing Kilimnik, offering intel and briefings for Deripaska, a Russian billionaire oligarch close to Putin with whom Manafort had prior business dealings, Manafort states in a July 7 email, “If he needs private briefings we can accommodate.” /15
— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) August 5, 2018
I think that’s enough for now about the Trump Tower meeting, don’t you think? And we haven’t even made it past July 14, 2016, merely a month after it. Source for all of that is this excellent timeline from @InvestigateRU. https://t.co/glkpQ6F7CY
— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) August 5, 2018
I’ll leave you with one more piece of potentially circumstantial evidence. Rob Goldstone—the British publicist who helped set up the Trump Tower meeting—checked in for the secret meeting on Facebook at 3:57 pm (I’ve written that sentence countless times over the past year and it still hasn’t become any less hilarious).
At 4:40 pm that same day, Trump tweeted this.
How long did it take your staff of 823 people to think that up—and where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted? https://t.co/gECLNtQizQ
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2016
As I highlighted in an article last year, every Trump tweet about Hillary Clinton’s e-mails prior to this one used the number 30,000—including one less than a month before the Trump Tower meeting. Each subsequent one after this tweet used the number 33,000—which was a previously reported figure by CNN.
So what changed that day? Why did Trump start using a more specific number 40 minutes after a meeting “to get information on an opponent” began? I would say that Robert Mueller will reveal the answer to that question, but given that the most damning information in this saga has come from POTUShitforbrains and his failson namesake, we can probably expect one of the Donald’s to tweet the truth in the coming weeks as Mueller’s probe continues to close in on a president who openly solicited the aid of a foreign adversary.
Jacob Weindling is a staff writer for Paste politics. Follow him on Twitter at @Jakeweindling.