Discussion: WaPo: POTUS Dictated Initial Statement On Don Jr. Meeting With Russian Lawyer

Jared is such a stand up guy. I mean, he also wanted to let everyone that there were many more people there than had been initially fingered but daddy Trump would not budge.

So I am pretty sure Reince doesn’t leak a story that makes Jared & Ivanka look like Dudley & Dianne Doright. Nobody has mentioned Melania yet, so as long as we are throwing shit against the fan, I will say little Barron hacked his dad’s phone and accessed the audio recording of the dictation. There was only one thing Melania could do then, call Jeff Bezos.

“Multiple sources” surely includes the Kushner group, which is portrayed favorably in the account. They’re afraid that “innocent” Donald is going to take them down with him. Hard times coming.

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Trump lied? Shock of shocks.

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Say buh-bye, troll.

ETA: 2 minutes from knitting to unraveling. Kudos!

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Nobody is under NDA for anything that occurred since Trump took office, or even during the transistion.

NDAs never stop a person from answering LEO during an investigation of potential crimes.

With both of those points out of the way, Priebus was in Trump Towers the day of this meeting. So he will undoubtedly face questions…as will lots of other people…about what they observed that day.

And right now, I tend to agree with @georgeh this looks like it has Priebus’ fingerprints all over it. Priebus is in his own hot water regarding his meeting in Feb with the FBI trying to get them to go lie to the press about investigations into Russian collusion. That alone is motivation to talk, but being tossed to the curb in such a humiliating manner no doubt significantly sweetened the pot for him.

That’s the problem with trashing people as you fire them, when they know where skeletons are buried, even if you have incriminating evidence on them. It sets up a race to the investigators that Trump doesn’t want to start, but gives Priebus every motivation to run.

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That isn’t the most likely path this story took to end up in WaPo. A far more likely scenario is Priebus starts talking to Mueller’s people, and one of them drops what is a relatively innocuous (legally. Lying to the press isn’t illegal in and of itself), but very damning in the press, detail. Just to see what happens.

Mueller’s people have a definite interest in doing things like to send a signal “Someone in your inner circle is now talking. Here is a detail that we could only have gotten from someone in the inner circle”. Its how they are going to flush out rats, as everyone starts looking to save their own skin.

Priebus just looks like the most obvious candidate right now. But what this leak does do regardless of the source…is send a clear signal to Trump that his inner circle is talking. And if they dropped this little nugget, they almost certainly are dropping much more incriminating stories.

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Likely one of a few reasons Sessions is only out of favor and not fired.

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Yet, ultimately, Jr. himself released the actual email chain that blows wide open the story Daddy crafted for him. Within a matter of days.

That’s a pretty interesting detail to me.

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If Mueller has been assembling a crack team and meticulously building an investigation I suppose it’s only because of lifelong habit. All he has to actually do to build the obstruction of justice case is pour a coffee and read the morning papers. Every third or fourth day a huge new piece of evidence lands on his doorstep.

But this is Trump. He always doubles down on the stupidest expedient, he’s always thought he was smarter than everyone else, and he’s in this Russia crap five miles over his head. It’s “Richard III” being acted out in real life, with the ghosts of all his misdeeds haunting his dreams on the night before the final battle and urging him to “Despair, and die!” His allies are melting away, and he’ll be left desperate and alone. And the rest of us will point and laugh. Karma’s a bitch, big shot. And a mind is a terrible thing to be out of all your life.

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Yeah, but not his alone.

The idea that Kushner wanted “full transparancy” is purest bullshit, further underbussing of Junior by the guy who’d just been put in charge of creating a data operation out of thin air and just somehow finds the time to go to a meeting about he knew not what. Kushner was in favor of releasing everything that he knew would come out because it was in email and putting together a cover story that wasn’t inconsistent with what was in writing, which meant Junior took the blame.

This meeting was exactly what every single person in the IC who’s commented says it was: the initial reach-out to them by the FSB and/or the GRU to find out if they were interested in cooperating. And if it had ended there, what they’re saying and doing now would look very different.

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If you want to know why the Senate GOP cowards selected John McCain to cast the decisive vote against ACA repeal, look no further than “he’s not a hero.” I’m sure the “maverick” jumped at the chance to get one back at the bully.

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The whole Jared is the white knight who just wanted to do the right thing is pure bs and has his legal team’s prints all over the story. I totally get that we have a confluence of so many leaks and leakers that any story is naturally going to rely on multiple sources. My best guess is Jared’s people confirmed the story once word leaked that DJT dictated the whole adoption meeting nonsense while adding Jared just wanted to come clean from the get go.

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She’ll be over-hydrating, I imagine, for the task at hand.

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Yes…now that completely tracks for me. Its sort of been Jared’s M.O. He denies or says noting, until its confirmed by the press, and then he concocts a lie that just covers what the press has so far, which tries to paint him as pure as driven snow.

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Just as a sidenote on this story…

This will immediately break open any nonsensical claims that Kelly is setting up a strict chain of command for who can talk to the President (an absolute requirement for the CoS job in this WH, to have any remote chance at being successful). Both Jared and Ivanka will be consulting directly with Trump on how to best handle this current blow up.

Futhermore, lets assume that Kelly wasn’t in these discussions on AF1 (Probably a pretty safe assumption, though I haven’t bothered to look it up. But as an example for the point I am trying to make, it serves the purpose). He would specifically NOT want to be in any discussions about how to do damage control regarding it. Because it draws him into the muck too, and significantly raises the chances that he will become part of a conspiracy to commit Obstruction of Justice.

These are both reasons why its absurd to think that Kelly is going to instill the long dreamed of “pivot” to a more orderly WH. He won’t, and he can’t.

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I’m enjoying this. I’ve got a semi-trailer full of the stuff out front.

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This shouldn’t be a surprise because we all knew he was a “dictator”! :smile:

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Multiple leaks of damning evidence. Everyone trying desperately to clear their own name, or at least minimize the damage caused to themselves, all trying to cast blame onto the other guy…each one a bull in a china shop. Or more simple stated, a demolition derby in the White House. Everyone is in it only for themselves. They all want to be the last one standing. In exchange for a lenient sentence when all is said and done.

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I read an article last night (somewhere!) that said the problem with Trump is that he attacked the whole ‘Russian thing’ like a PR problem instead of a criminal investigation. Sounds about right.

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