Thread by @gregolear

Let's talk about the Trump Tower Meeting of 9 June 2016.

We are spending too much time on Giuliani, not enough on the facts.

[THREAD]

1/ The subject line of the email sent to Junior, Manafort & Kushner was: "RE: RUSSIA - CLINTON - PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL." So they all knew well in advance what the meeting was going to involve. Junior has admitted as much.

2/ It has long been suspected that Trump himself knew all about it in advance. As I'm not the first to point out, it's unthinkable that a meeting w/Putin's people, at Trump Tower, could be attended by Manafort, Kush & Jr w/o 45's knowledge.

3/ Now, per the Cohen news of last night, this suspicion is confirmed. Junior knew, and so did Trump Sr. In fact, the latter SIGNED OFF ON the meeting. With the Russians. To get dirt on HRC.

That's collusion, guys.

4/ You know who else was in the building that day? @Reince Priebus. Perhaps he could take some time from promoting Sean Spicer's book of lies to tell us what happened that day? Has he already told Mueller?

5/ Remember, the initial downplaying of the meeting—the original statement put out by Junior—was written by Trump himself on Air Force One, with input by Hope Hicks. That original statement was a BIG LIE. Oops!

6/ If you don't believe that Natalia Veselnitskaya and the others in the meeting were cut-outs for Putin, you're probably dumb enough to have Mariia Butina move to South Dakota with you.

7/ Also: the meeting was about "adoptions" in the way "Debbie Does Dallas" was about Texas. They were there to discuss lifting sanctions.

8/ And even "lifting sanctions" sounds a bit abstract. Let's make this more real: the Russians were there to lobby for the punishment for their Crimean crime to be forgiven, in exchange for....we're still not completely sure. But we can make an educated guess.

9/ The message Trump received that day was this: “Hit Hillary about the missing emails. Hit her hard. Don't stop. People don't like her, people don't trust her, and the email thing confirms their suspicions. That private email server of hers is going to give you the White House.”

10/ Trump took to Twitter that same afternoon & tweeted a reply to an earlier Clinton tweet: “How long did it take your staff of 823 people to think that up—and where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted?”

This was Trump’s FIRST mention of Hilary’s 33,000 “missing” emails.

11/ To recap: Trump's team meets with Putin's team, and RIGHT AFTER THAT, I mean within MINUTES of them clearing out, Trump starts up with the email business. For the first time. After never mentioning it before. 🤔🤔🤔

12/ This meeting was attended by a man now in prison awaiting trial for Conspiracy Against the United States. In case you forgot about Paulie Walnuts in solitary.

13/ AFTER the 6/9 meeting, Trump's people met more frequently w/the Russians: at the Moscow School; the RNC; Prague or elsewhere in Europe; the office of Jeff Sessions; Trump Tower w/Kislyak; Newark Airport; Rosneft offices in Moscow; Seychelles; Loew's Regency. All AFTER that.

14/ That's a lot of follow-ups for a meeting that was a waste of time, as Junior put it. And a lot of secrecy for something benign.

Again: Why did Trump and his people meet so many times with the Russians? Why did they lie about it? Why are they STILL lying about it?

We knew before, but now we KNOW.

[END]

I have a whole chapter on this meeting in my book, #DirtyRubles, now available on audio:
amazon.com/Dirty-Rubles-I…