7/09/2017
In a stunning admission, Donald Trump Jr. stated to the New York Times that he met with Russian operatives in the hope of securing campaign information damaging to Hillary Clinton.
On July 9, 2016, Donald Trump Jr., along with campaign chief Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, held a meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian Lawyer Natalia Veselnitkaya. According to the New York Times, Trump Jr. was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet with the Kremlin-connected lawyer. Previously, Trump Jr. denied meeting with any Russian whereby he was representing the campaign. When Trump Jr. sets a meeting at the Trump Tower and invites the Campaign Manager to attend, it would be difficult for most people to assume it wasn’t about the campaign.
According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary: Definition of collusion – Secret agreement or cooperation especially for an illegal or deceitful purpose acting in collusion with the enemy
Does this support suspicions of collusion? If Donald Jr., Jared Kushner or Paul Manafort agreed to meet based on the belief that they would acquire political information on Hillary Clinton that they would use in the campaign, then yes it does. They would be working with the Russians to sway public opinion on the election.
According to Trump Jr., soon after meeting the Russian, “It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.” Trump said she then turned the conversation to adoption of Russian children and the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers. The 2012 law so enraged President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that he halted American adoptions of Russian children. “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,” Trump Jr. said.
Whether the Russian actually provided Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort information they would consider damaging to Hillary Clinton is almost irrelevant. The fact that they arranged a meeting at Trump Tower with the hope, and intent, of securing the damaging information is viewed by many to be just as damning.
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