Russian Dirt on Clinton? ‘I Love It,’
Donald Trump Jr. Said
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By JO BECKER, ADAM GOLDMAN and MATT APUZZOJULY 11, 2017
Donald Trump Jr. received an email on June 3, 2016,
promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. The information was described as being part
of Russia's support for his father’s presidential bid. His reply? “I love it.”
By Drew Jordan on Publish Date July 11, 2017. Photo by Sam Hodgson for The New
York Times. Watch in Times Video »
The June 3, 2016, email sent to Donald Trump Jr. could
hardly have been more explicit: One of his father’s former Russian business
partners had been contacted by a senior Russian government official and was
offering to provide the Trump campaign with dirt on Hillary Clinton.
The documents “would incriminate Hillary and her dealings
with Russia and would be very useful to your father,” read the email, written
by a trusted intermediary, who added, “This is obviously very high level and
sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for
Mr. Trump.”
If the future president’s eldest son was surprised or disturbed
by the provenance of the promised material — or the notion that it was part of
a continuing effort by the Russian government to aid his father’s campaign — he
gave no indication.
He replied within minutes: “If it’s what you say I love it
especially later in the summer.”
Four days later, after a flurry of emails, the intermediary
wrote back, proposing a meeting in New York on Thursday with a “Russian
government attorney.”
Donald Trump Jr. agreed, adding that he would most likely
bring along “Paul Manafort (campaign boss)” and “my brother-in-law,” Jared
Kushner, now one of the president’s closest White House advisers.
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On June 9, the Russian lawyer was sitting in the younger Mr.
Trump’s office on the 25th floor of Trump Tower, just one level below the
office of the future president.
Over the past several days, The New York Times has disclosed
the existence of the meeting, whom it involved and what it was about. The story
has unfolded as The Times has been able to confirm details of the meetings.
But the email exchanges, which were reviewed by The Times,
offer a detailed unspooling of how the meeting with the Kremlin-connected
Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, came about — and just how eager Donald
Trump Jr. was to accept what he was explicitly told was the Russian
government’s help.
The Justice Department and the House and Senate Intelligence
Committees are examining whether any of President Trump’s associates colluded
with the Russian government to disrupt last year’s election. American
intelligence agencies have determined that the Russian government tried to sway
the election in favor of Mr. Trump.
The precise nature of the promised damaging information
about Mrs. Clinton is unclear, and there is no evidence to suggest that it was
related to Russian-government computer hacking that led to the release of
thousands of Democratic National Committee emails. But in recent days, accounts
by some of the central organizers of the meeting, including Donald Trump Jr.,
have evolved or have been contradicted by the written email records.
Trump advisers have often insisted that the campaign had no
contact with various Russian insiders — claims which were later proven false.
By THE NEW YORK TIMES on Publish Date July 12, 2017. Photo by CBS News. Watch
in Times Video »
After being told that The Times was about to publish the
content of the emails, instead of responding to a request for comment, Donald
Trump Jr. posted images of them on Tuesday on Twitter.
“To everyone, in order to be totally
transparent, I am releasing the entire email chain of my emails” about the June
9 meeting, he wrote. “I first wanted to just have a phone call but when that
didn’t work out, they said the woman would be in New York and asked if I would
meet.”
He added that nothing came of it. But in an interview on
Tuesday with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, he said that “in retrospect, I probably
would have done things a little differently.”
At a White House briefing earlier Tuesday, Sarah Huckabee
Sanders, the deputy press secretary, referred questions about the meeting to
Donald Trump Jr.’s counsel, but read a statement from the president in which he
called his son “a high-quality person.”
The back story to the June 9 meeting involves an eclectic
cast of characters the Trump family knew from its business dealings in Moscow.
The initial email outreach came from Rob Goldstone, a
British-born former tabloid reporter and entertainment publicist who first met
the future president when the Trump Organization was trying to do business in
Russia.
In the June 3 email, Mr. Goldstone told Donald Trump Jr.
that he was writing on behalf of a mutual friend, one of Russia’s biggest pop
music stars, Emin Agalarov. Emin, who professionally uses his first name only,
is the son of Aras Agalarov, a real estate tycoon sometimes called the “Donald
Trump of Russia.”
The elder Mr. Agalarov boasts close ties to President
Vladimir V. Putin of Russia: His company has won several large state building
contracts, and Mr. Putin awarded him the Order of Honor of the Russian
Federation.
Mr. Agalarov joined with the elder Mr. Trump to bring the
Miss Universe contest to Moscow in 2013, and the Trump and Agalarov families
grew relatively close.
When Emin released a music video with a theme borrowed from
the television show “The Apprentice,” Mr. Trump, then the show’s star, made a
cameo appearance, delivering his trademark line: “You’re fired!” The elder Mr.
Agalarov had also partnered with the Trumps to build a Trump hotel in Moscow,
but the deal never came to fruition.
“Emin
just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting,” Mr.
Goldstone wrote in the email. “The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his
father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump
campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate
Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.”
Rob Goldstone’s Facebook page shows he checked in to Trump
Tower on June 9, 2016, “preparing for meeting.”
He added, “What do you think is the best way to handle this
information and would you be able to speak to Emin about it directly?”
There is no such title as crown prosecutor in Russia — the
Crown Prosecution Service is a British term — but the equivalent in Russia is
the prosecutor general of Russia.
That office is held by Yury Yakovlevich Chaika, a Putin
appointee who is known to be close to Ms. Veselnitskaya.
Arranging a Meeting
After sending back his reply of “I love it especially later
in the summer” — when voters’ attention would be heightened by the approaching
election — Donald Trump Jr. arranged to speak with Emin, sending along his
private cellphone number on June 6.
“Ok he’s on stage in Moscow but
should be off within 20 Minutes so I’m sure can call,” Mr. Goldstone wrote at
3:43 p.m.
Within the hour, Donald Trump Jr. had responded: “Rob thanks
for the help. D.”
The next day, Mr. Goldstone followed up: “Don Hope all is
well Emin asked that I schedule a meeting with you and The Russian government
attorney who is flying over from Moscow for this Thursday. I believe you are
aware of this meeting — and so wondered if 3pm or later on Thursday works for
you?”
Mr. Goldstone’s emails contradict statements he made in his
interview with The Times on Monday, when he said that he did not know whether
the elder Mr. Agalarov had any role in arranging the meeting, and that he had
no knowledge of any official Russian government role in the offer to provide
the Trump campaign with dirt on Mrs. Clinton. Instead, he said that Ms.
Veselnitskaya had contacted Emin directly, and that Emin had asked him to reach
out to the Trumps as a favor to her.
“I actually asked him at one point
how he knew her, and he said, ‘I can’t remember but, you know, I know thousands
of people,’” he said in the interview.
Subsequent efforts to reach Mr. Goldstone, who acknowledged
in the interview that he had spoken with someone at the Trump Organization over
the weekend in anticipation of news media attention, have been unsuccessful.
Mr. Goldstone, in a June 7 follow-up email, wrote, “I will
send the names of the two people meeting with you for security when I have them
later today.”
By that time, as the presumptive Republican presidential
nominee, Mr. Trump was already under the protection of the Secret Service and
access to Trump Tower in New York was strictly controlled. Ms. Veselnitskaya
told The Times that the person who accompanied her was an interpreter whom she
declined to name.
After being informed that the Russian lawyer could not make
the 3 p.m. time that had been proposed, and agreeing to move it by an hour,
Donald Trump Jr. forwarded the entire email chain to Mr. Kushner’s company work
email, and to Mr. Manafort at his Trump campaign email.
“Meeting got moved to 4 tomorrow at
my offices,” he wrote on June 8. “Best, Don.”
Mr. Kushner recently disclosed the fact of the meeting,
though not the content, in a revised form on which all those seeking top secret
security clearances are required to list contacts with foreign government
officials and their representatives. The Times reported in April that he had
failed to list his foreign contacts, including with several Russians; his
lawyer has called those omissions an error.
Mr. Manafort also disclosed that a meeting had occurred, and
that Donald Trump Jr. had organized it, in response to one of the
Russia-related congressional investigations.
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Ms. Veselnitskaya arrived the next day and was ushered into
Donald Trump Jr.’s office for a meeting with what amounted to the Trump
campaign’s brain trust.
Besides having politically connected clients, one of whom
was under investigation by federal prosecutors at the time of the meeting, Ms.
Veselnitskaya is well known for her lobbying efforts against the Magnitsky Act,
a 2012 law that punishes designated Russian human rights abusers by allowing
the United States to seize their assets and keep them from entering the
country. The law so angered Mr. Putin that he retaliated by barring American
families from adopting Russian children. Her activities and associations have
brought her to the attention of the F.B.I., according to a former senior law
enforcement official.
When first contacted by The Times on Saturday, Donald Trump
Jr. portrayed the meeting this way: “It was a short introductory meeting. I
asked Jared and Paul 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.”
Responding to Queries
The next day, after The Times informed him that it was
preparing an article that would say that the meeting also involved a discussion
about potentially compromising material on Mrs. Clinton, he issued another
statement: “I was asked to have a meeting by an acquaintance I knew from the
2013 Miss Universe pageant with an individual who I was told might have information
helpful to the campaign. I was not told her name prior to the meeting. I asked
Jared and Paul to attend, but told them nothing of the substance.”
He continued: “After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman
stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were
funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton. Her
statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting
information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had
no meaningful information. She then changed subjects and began discussing the
adoption of Russian children and mentioned the Magnitsky Act. It became clear
to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of
potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting.”
Mr. Goldstone recalled the meeting in much the same way.
Ms. Veselnitskaya offered “just a vague, generic statement
about the campaign’s funding and how people, including Russian people, living
all over the world donate when they shouldn’t donate” before turning to her
anti-Magnitsky Act arguments, he said. “It was the most inane nonsense I’ve
ever heard.”
Ms. Veselnitskaya, for her part, said in an statement to The
Times sent this past weekend that “nothing at all about the presidential
campaign” had been discussed at the Trump Tower meeting, adding that she had
“never acted on behalf of the Russian government” and that she had “never
discussed any of these matters with any representative of the Russian government.”
She has not responded to requests for comment since.
A spokesman for Mr. Putin said on Monday that he did not
know Ms. Veselnitskaya and that he had no knowledge of the June 2016 meeting.
Back in Washington, both the White House and a spokesman for
President Trump’s lawyer have taken pains to distance the president from the
meeting, saying that he did he not attend it and that he learned about it only
recently, a point Donald Trump Jr. reiterated Tuesday in his interview on Fox
News. He also said he would testify under oath in any of the investigations
into possible collusion between Russia and his father’s campaign.
Mr. Agalarov did not respond to a request for comment.
Emin, the pop star at the center of it all, will not comment
on the matter, either, Mr. Goldstone, his publicist, said on Monday. “Emin said
to me that I could tell journalists that, you know, he has decided to go with
just a straight no comment,” Mr. Goldstone said. “His reasoning for that is
simply that he believes that by him commenting in any way from Russia, it once
again will open this debate of Trump, Trump, Russia. Now here’s another person
from Russia. Now he’s another person from Russia. So he wants to just not comment
on the story. That’s his reasoning. It’s — the story will play out however it
plays out.”
Sophia Kishkovsky contributed reporting.
White House aides feeling ‘helpless’
as Trump Jr. scandal blossoms
As West Wing staff grapples with the
latest Russia controversy, the president is fuming about the negative coverage.
By TARA
PALMERI AND JOSH DAWSEY 7/12/17,
4:54 AM CET Updated 7/12/17, 8:14 AM CET
White House aides feel blindsided by the bombshell
revelations around Donald Trump Jr.’s campaign meeting with a Russian lawyer,
while the U.S. president is using his relatively light schedule to watch TV and
fume about the latest scandal, according to interviews with half a dozen White
House officials and advisers.
Unlike prior Russia-related controversies, the White House
is not minimizing the political ramifications of Trump’s eldest son’s decision
to meet with the Kremlin-linked lawyer after being offered information that he
was told would “incriminate” Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its
government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
But top West Wing aides are exasperated by their limited
ability to steer the damage control and the risk that more damaging news has
yet to emerge.
One Trump adviser said the White House was “essentially
helpless” because the conduct happened during an “anything goes” campaign that
had few rules. This person said he had spoken to several people in the White
House on Tuesday and that “none of them knew anything about Donald Trump Jr.’s
meetings,” despite the fact that top adviser Jared Kushner was also present for
the controversial Trump Tower sit-down.
Many of the White House aides had previously dismissed the
Russia stories as “conspiracy bullshit,” this person said, but that this
development was not being dismissed as that.
Trump had been silent for days about the controversy around
his son. His first public response came in the form of a brief statement
delivered by White House principal deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee
Sanders on Tuesday: “My son is a high-quality person, and I applaud his
transparency.”
On Tuesday evening, Trump encouraged his Twitter followers
to watch his son on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s show, adding, “He is a great
person who loves our country!”
One White House aide said the president’s light public
schedule was a function of his upcoming trip to France on Wednesday — and that
“it makes sense that you have a couple days off between the one last week and
this one.”
But a second official said Trump’s schedule was unusually
light — and that he had been watching TV news and venting about the
investigation. He hadn’t expressed any specific opinions about Trump Jr., this
person said, but didn’t like that it was generating more negative coverage.
Others in the White House have been more explicit about
their frustration with Trump Jr., who served as an adviser and surrogate for
Trump’s campaign but has no official role in his father’s administration.
Instead, he and his brother Eric Trump have taken over the day-to-day
operations of the Trump Organization.
Some in the West Wing have seen Trump Jr.’s defenses —
including his decision to post the damning email chain setting up the meeting —
as tone deaf and naive about the political ramifications, according to a White
House official.
And since Trump Jr. is not a White House employee and is
represented by his own lawyer, the White House communications operation has had
to take a back seat, while holding its breath for the next batch of
revelations.
What the core issue will be going forward, the Trump adviser
said, is that the “Russia story will get worse and worse, and you can’t just
really say anymore, ‘fake news.'”
This person said the White House has “very little to no
role” in coordinating a response.
There’s also tension inside the White House as Vice
President Mike Pence’s communications team issued its own statement, appearing
to distance Pence from the president. Some West Wing aides felt particularly
bruised by the line that he’s “not focused on stories about the campaign, particularly
stories about the time before he joined the ticket,” seeing it as an admission
of guilt on the part of the campaign, according to a White House official.
Some of the most vocal defenses have come from cable news
surrogates such as former campaign communications aides Anthony Scaramucci and
Brian Lanza, who have gone to bat for Trump Jr. without the urging of the White
House.
“I’m absolutely 100
percent confident, and I know that he did not nothing wrong,” Scaramucci told
POLITICO. “He has very high integrity. There were countless meetings that led
to nowhere during the campaign, and this was one of those meetings.”
While chief of staff Reince Priebus and top adviser
Kellyanne Conway initially offered full-throated defenses of Trump Jr., the
White House has since been less vigorous. The White House has not held
on-camera briefings, instead pushing out Sanders to hold shorter off-camera
sessions with reporters.
Many of Trump’s aides feel that knowing less is more when it
comes to the Russia probe, as many staffers don’t want or have the extra
resources to spend on lawyers. Some have linked the White House press shop’s
relatively laid-back response to the latest scandal as a product of their fear
of being entangled in the Russia probe.
The lack of full-throttle response from the White House has
lowered morale internally, especially among those who are worried about policy
initiatives, including health care and tax reform, falling to the wayside,
according to one White House official.
“How much longer can we assume that the American people
don’t care about Russia?” the official mused.
But in some corners of the West Wing, Tuesday was business
as usual. One White House official said National Economic Council Director Gary
Cohn had attended meetings on tax policy Monday and Tuesday, and that some
other officials, such as chief strategist Steve Bannon, had continued to talk
about Iraq and Qatar. Marc Short, the head of legislative affairs, visited
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Capitol Hill, according to a person
familiar with the meeting.
Some White House aides were in frequent contact with their
State Department counterparts, as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tries to
navigate a diplomatic solution among the Gulf States regarding Qatar.
Hill aides, however, said it was frustrating that the White
House had no public focus on health care.
Trump, one senior Republican aide said, could be using his
Twitter feed to make the case for repealing and replacing the Affordable Care
Act. Instead he railed about the slow pace of appointments, tweeting on Tuesday
morning, “The Senate Democrats have only confirmed 48 of 197 Presidential
Nominees. They can’t win so all they do is slow things down & obstruct!”
“It doesn’t make any sense to me why they are focusing on
appointments,” this person said. “It’s the thing they’ve done the worst.”
White House aides and advisers also spent part of the day
guessing who was leaking — and what their motivation was.
Trump Jr. had looped in then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort
and senior adviser Jared Kushner to the email chain, and included them in the
meeting with the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, at Trump Tower.
“There’s only a few names on those emails,” one person close
to the White House said. “And it would have to be someone out to get the
president’s son.”
There’s a general feeling of paranoia in the West Wing about
who leaked details of the meeting, with speculation that it may have come from
within the White House.
But one White House aide said, “There’s no way to know.”
Authors:
Tara Palmeri and Josh
Dawsey
Julian Assange: I urged Trump Jr to
publish Russia emails via WikiLeaks
Site founder says he believed president’s son should release
documents anonymously, given that Trump Jr’s ‘enemies’ already had them
David Smith in Washington
Tuesday 11 July 2017 22.35 BST Last modified on Wednesday 12
July 2017 05.30 BST
Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder, has claimed that he
contacted Donald Trump Jr and tried to persuade him to publish emails showing
he was eager to accept sensitive information about Hillary Clinton via the
anti-secrecy website.
Instead, the US president’s eldest son did so via Twitter,
igniting a firestorm of criticism around his apparent willingness to work with
the Russian government against his father’s Democratic rival.
“Contacted Trump Jr this morning on why he should publish
his emails (i.e with us),” tweeted Assange, who is based at the Ecuadorian
embassy in London. “Two hours later, does it himself.”
Asked by another Twitter user to explain, Assange
elaborated: “I argued that his enemies have it – so why not the public? His
enemies will just milk isolated phrases for weeks or months ... with their own
context, spin and according to their own strategic timetable. Better to be
transparent and have the full context ... but would have been safer for us to
publish it anonymously sourced. By publishing it himself it is easier to submit
as evidence.”
It was not clear whether Assange’s use of the word “enemies”
was the reference to the media or political rivals.
The Australian added: “He’s surely had advice and/or is
confident on the facts. I’d argue that even the completely innocent need
@WikiLeaks.”
WikiLeaks played a prominent role in the US presidential
election, publishing emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee (DNC)
and Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta.
As a candidate, Trump declared: “I love WikiLeaks!” US
intelligence agencies concluded that the hacking was carried out by Russia.
Trump’s longtime confidante Roger Stone communicated with
Assange and a hacker known as “Guccifer 2.0”, who began posting DNC documents
on 15 June – less than a week after Trump Jr’s meeting with a Russian lawyer in
New York.
WikiLeaks’ apparent overlap of interests with the Trump
campaign drew scrutiny at the time. Robert Mackey of the Intercept website
wrote in August last year: “The WikiLeaks Twitter feed has started to look more
like the stream of an opposition research firm working mainly to undermine
Hillary Clinton than the updates of a non-partisan platform for whistleblowers.”
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