From the Start, Trump Has Muddied a Clear Message: Putin Interfered
By David E. Sanger and Matthew Rosenberg, The New York Times
July 18, 2018
Two weeks before his inauguration, Donald J. Trump was shown highly classified intelligence indicating that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had personally ordered complex cyberattacks to sway the 2016 American election.
The evidence included texts and emails from Russian military officers and information gleaned from a top-secret source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the C.I.A. how the Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation.
Mr. Trump sounded grudgingly convinced, according to several people who attended the intelligence briefing. But ever since, Mr. Trump has tried to cloud the very clear findings that he received on Jan. 6, 2017, which his own intelligence leaders have unanimously endorsed.
The Trump Tower meeting increasingly looks as bad for Trump as it initially seemed
by Philip Bump, Washington Post
July 27, 2018
The natural first reaction is: Of course.
Of course Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who attended the meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and others at Trump Tower in June 2016 had closer ties with Russian officials than she let on.
And of course there would now be allegations — secondhand, but credible — that President Trump himself knew that the meeting was scheduled and what it was about before it took place.
After all, denial after denial from those involved in the meeting, statement after statement, has crumbled away or been perforated with holes. The scenario that seemed at the outset to be worst for Trump politically is increasingly the one in which we seem to be headed.
It’s long been the case that giving Trump the benefit of the doubt on having not known about the meeting in advance means setting aside mounting evidence and Trump’s habit of denying things that are later proved true.
Trump said explicitly last July that he didn’t know about the meeting before it happened. But, then, that’s what his campaign said about an alleged payment to former Playboy model Karen McDougal when that news broke in October 2016. A conversation between Trump and his longtime attorney and problem-solver Michael Cohen discussing that payment the prior month emerged this week.
On Thursday night, both NBC and CNN reported that Cohen, per a source close to him, was prepared to tell investigators that he was present when Trump Jr. told his father about the possibility of meeting with the Russian lawyer to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. The meeting stemmed from an email sent by a music publicist to Trump Jr. in which the Trump campaign was promised “some official documents and information” that constituted “very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
Trump Jr. famously replied: “If it’s what you say I love it.”