Very nice. But Iâll wait for Muellerâs interview transcripts.
No collusion. Conspiracy.
Let me guess â they all claimed they did nothing wrong, right? That they just talked about babies, puppies, and rainbows, correct?
Iâm with Seth.
âŚthey just talked about babies, puppies, and rainbows, correct?
And adoptions, just like Donnie did when he met with Vlad on that European trip.
Both very good questions.
On the whole though, what can you expect from a committee chaired by a Trump supporter Pubbie, intent on discovering as little as possible?
Were all of these testimonies in closed sessions?
At least these are transcripts from the Senate committee and not the House.
After the transcript was released, Junior claimed in a statement that he answered every question asked. Well, except for the one in which he was asked if he told his father about the meeting.
He didnât recall.
uh huh. Totally forthcoming.
Donald Trump, Jr.: interview transcript
Lies and donât recalls.
Paul Manafort (declined to be interviewed): notes from meeting.
No interview,although the cryptic notes are interesting, esp. âCyprusâ in light of other recent revelations.
Jared Kushner (declined to be interviewed): prepared statement for committee.
No interview, but nice self-serving statement.
Mueller knows whether or not Donny Sr. knew about the meeting (he did).
Iâm positive. If he didnât know that, most of the trails heâs been led to wouldnât have happened IMO. And the investigation would have ended last November.
100+ times.
Charges should be postponed until his father no longer has pardon power.
Apple and the treeâŚjr is just like his sperm donorâŚa liar and crookâŚ
Iâd like to see the notes Nunes took during testimony â a lot of drawings of hearts surrounding flowery renditions of the name âTrumpâ.
âDevin Nunes-Trump
Devin Trump
Mrs. Devin Trump
Mr & Mrs Donald and Devin Trumpâ
Just like when Two Scoops And Hannity have their pre-bedtime chats.
Completely off the topic, butâŚ
âŚhow screwed up is it that Junior has to go through Hicks to setup a time to talk with his own father?
Just back up and consider that one caveat, and a whole lot becomes much clearer.
Junior has been desperately trying to get Daddyâs affections pretty much his whole adult life ( I donât know about his childhood), while Daddy showers all his attention on his sister, Ivanka.
So in an attempt to show Daddy that he is a big boy, tooâŚhe sets up this meeting. So of course he called Daddy to tell him what he had done. And of course he rushed to Daddy to tell him how the meeting went. That was the entire reason for having the meeting from Juniorâs perspectiveâŚanother attempt to get just a little bit of Daddyâs attention.
And yetâŚhe STILL has to go through his Daddyâs latest younger woman to setup an appointment to discuss getting him out of the hot water it caused.
This is some epic level drama going on.
Oh, and by the way, if Junior didnât tell Donald anything about thisâŚhow did Donald know enough details to attempt to craft the first lie on AF1? Osmosis?
Iâll be reading through each doc throughout the day and posting some observations.
The Manafort Notes:
Cryptic is the word to describe them. Manafort doesnât understand much about MS Word, but he does know how to write notes in code. Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, who was working with Prevezon to dig dirt up on Bill Browder (ironically with overlapping time periods with his hire of Steele to investigate #trumprussia), is not a man who is predisposed to favoring Browder. Even he couldnât make out some of these references, and he had conversations with Natalia Veselnitskaya on a regular basis when he was working for/with her on the Prevezon case. Browder even had dinner with Veselnitskaya on the day before and after the Trump Tower meeting.
One theory I have is that these notes are mostly about a Russian demand that Manafort help them to frame a case against Browder so that he can be prosecuted under US law, and to push the continuing spin on âadoptionsâ as the Putin code word for the Magnitsky Act and other US sanctions against Russia. I think they are alleging that Browder has offshore accounts and has shares in various companies and that he has connections through this former Cheney spokesman (Glover) to the GOP. There is probably a big load of bs in the Russian claims, but I think theyâre also indicating that there are people connected to the RNC who are also connected to Browder, and they wanted Manafort to leverage those GOP/RNC connections to go after Browder and to make the case that Congress should overturn the Magnitsky Act because Browder is corrupt (a Trumpian argument if you think about it).
However, I donât think that theory fully explains these notes. First, that Simpson doesnât understand some of these references tells me that they are not tied to Browder but to something else. If such terms had been associated with Browder, Simpson wouldâve known about it, because his job was to dig dirt on Browder. Second, I theorize that the references to âIlliciâ, âValue in Cypres as interâ, âNot invest -loanâ, â133m sharesâ, âcompaniesâ and âActive sponsors of RNCâ are all pieces which had a distinct meaning to Manafort given his experience laundering money through Cypress via shell companies. I think they are references to how Russians move money into the US, and Manafort wouldâve understood what these terms meant.
To take another step in this direction, I would guess that the Russians were offering to insert money into the US to assist with the conspiracy (whether for operational reasons, grease payments or incentives for participants), and that this is how they would do it. The Russiansâ ask was help to frame Browder with the help of the GOP/Cheney connected folks who also knew him, and to use that as a basis to lobby against the Magnitsky Act.