The New York Times lights a fuse...Pipe-bombPresident Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign, according to three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it.
The meeting was also attended by his campaign chairman at the time, Paul J. Manafort, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kushner only recently disclosed the meeting, though not its content, in confidential government documents described to The New York Times.
Now, to be fair, the Trump Team's account of the meeting is slightly different. Well, it's actually NOT different, they admit to most of it, but defend themselves by adding:
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.
* * *
It became clear to me that [repealing the Magnitsky Act] was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting.
Nevertheless, this is big for three reasons:
1. This was not reported by anyone on applications for security clearance until recently (when Kushner updated his application a couple weeks ago).
2. This is the first time that we have a reported, detailed meeting between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin for purposes of collusion to influence the election.
3. While what was discussed at the meeting is in dispute, it is not in dispute that the meeting arose because the Trump Campaign wanted to obtain damaging information on Secretary Clinton (illegally hacked by the Russian Military apparatus) from a Kremlin agent. At the very least, high-ranking members of the Trump campaign were open to collusion with a foreign power to help elect Casino Mussolini.
ETA- Oh, and in other news, Trump discussed forming a cyber-security task force with Putin for purposes of ensuring our elections are safe. I don't know whether I should be flippant and add that it is akin to a fox guarding a hen-house or serious and point out Russia has a history of using apps, games, and other innocuous coding to trojan-horse malware and spyware into computers of unsuspecting users.
