Junior

So yesterday the Senate Intelligence Committee published about 1800 pages of closed door testimony from their hearings (so far, unlike the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, they have not yet issued a bogus, self-contradictory “final” report, supported only by the radical racist and rabidly partisan Republicans, in an attempt to pretend the burgeoning scandal of Russiagate, where new revelations of Treason, Bribery, and Obstruction of Justice deluge us daily, simply doesn’t exist despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary) of which 224 are transcripts of their interview with Donald Trump Jr.

This is of course but a small fraction of the material the SIC have collected and the part they released about Junior (and this is only part of his testimony) focuses mostly on the infamous June 9, 2016 meeting in Trump Tower.

This article by Judd Legum of Think Progress focuses on the attempt to Obstruct Justice after the meeting and cover up the probability that Donald Trump himself was fully aware of it, if he did not personally direct it.

These are the revelations from Don Jr.’s extraordinary testimony about his meeting with the Russians
by Judd Legum, Think Progress
May 16, 2018

The transcript reveals that Emin Agalarov called Trump Jr. on June 6, 2016 to discuss the meeting.
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Trump Jr. claims to have no recollection of the call but about 25 minutes later, he called Emin Agalarov back. More significantly, in between the two calls, Trump Jr. had another conversation with someone with a blocked number.
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Corey Lewandowski, who served as President Donald Trump’s campaign manager, testified separately that Trump’s primary residence had a blocked number. Later in the interview Trump Jr. claimed that he did not know whether his father used a blocked number. This seems dubious since Trump Jr. said he communicates frequently with his father.

In addition to the meeting itself, another issue of interest is the effort to cover it up. Trump Jr. released a series of statements, none of which accurately described the nature of the meeting — either its substance or how it was set up.

The key question is whether President Trump had any involvement in crafting these inaccurate statements. Trump Jr. said his father may have been involved through his Communications Director, Hope Hicks
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Prior to the meeting become public, Trump Jr.’s attorney, Alan Futerfas, reached out to several participants to “harmonize” their stories. Specifically Futerfas drafted a statement for Goldstone (Rod Goldstone, promoter for Emin Agalarov, a Russian pop star whose father, Aras Agalarov, is a Russian Oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin) about the meeting and asked him to release it.
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The effort to coordinate stories prior to the meeting becoming public raises questions about whether the narrative presented in the interviews is accurate.

“These are” tends to make it seem like it’s all the revelations which a quick scan of your newspaper or listen to Cable News will show you is clearly not the case.

Now all this and much much more has been known by Robert Mueller and his prosecution team for months. Obviously their investigation is considerably in advance of these materials, for instance, he has the testimony under oath of Hope Hicks who the day after her interview decided that it was a good idea to retire from Team Trump.

I have chosen to highlight this sliver because Judd Legum did a pretty fair job summarizing it and the task of providing an overview of the entire Russiagate Plot on this, the first anniversary of Mueller’s appointment, is just too damn much work and I have other things to do.

Don’t let anyone tell you there is no there there or that this will end soon because just what we publicly know about this case is worse than Nixon and lightyears beyond a consensual non-marital blowjob between Bill and Monica. If Congress does not impeach they will be surrendering the sovereignity of the United States to the Rossiyskaya Federatsiya and thus, Traitors.