The New York Times reports more on the meeting between Trump campaign staff and a Russian lawyer with Kremlin ties. As Robert Reich asserts, “The smoke is getting awfully thick.”
"Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father's candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.
"The email to the younger Mr. Trump was sent by Rob Goldstone, a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped broker the June 2016 meeting. In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he was interested in receiving damaging information about Mrs. Clinton, but gave no indication that he thought the lawyer might have been a Kremlin proxy. Mr. Goldstone's message, as described to The New York Times by the three people, indicates that the Russian government was the source of the potentially damaging information. It does not elaborate on the wider effort by Moscow to help the Trump campaign. ...
"[T]he email is likely to be of keen interest to the Justice Department and congressional investigators, who 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."
 |
Donald Trump Jr. gives a television interview
at the 2016 Republican National Convention
in Cleveland, Ohio July 19, 2016.
REUTERS/Mark Kauzlarich/File photo
|
By Matt Apuzzo, Jo Becker, Adam Goldman And Maggie Haberman
