Donald Trump Jr. hires lawyer for Russia probes

[webfact]

Donald Trump Jr. hires lawyer for Russia probes

By Karen Freifeld

 

FILE PHOTO - Donald Trump Jr. arrives at Trump Tower in New York City, U.S. January 18, 2017. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith/File Photo

 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Donald Trump Jr. has hired a lawyer to represent him in Russia-related investigations, his office and the lawyer said on Monday, as Republicans voiced concern about a meeting between the U.S. president's son and a Russian.

 

Trump Jr. hired New York lawyer Alan Futerfas, who specializes in criminal defence.

 

Futerfas would not say when he was retained or whether he played any part in the statements Trump Jr. made over the weekend about a meeting with a Russian lawyer.

 

Trump Jr. met the Russian, Natalia Veselnitskaya, in June 2016, during the presidential election campaign, at Trump Tower in New York.

 

He has said he agreed to meet Veselnitskaya, described by the New York Times as having links to the Kremlin, after being promised damaging information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

 

Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Trump's then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, also attended, the Times said. It called the encounter the first confirmed private meeting of members of Donald Trump's inner circle with a Russian national during the campaign.

 

Congressional committees and a federal special counsel, Robert Mueller, are investigating whether Russia interfered in the election and colluded with the Trump campaign.

 

Moscow denies interfering, and Trump, who became president on Jan. 20, says there was no collusion.

 

Futerfas told Reuters: “I look forward to assisting Donald Jr. and, quite frankly, there is nothing to all of the media buzz about the June 9th, 2016 meeting. That will be proven to be the case.”

 

A Republican member of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, Susan Collins, called on Trump Jr. to testify before the panel, which is looking into accusations of Russian meddling in the election.

 

"Our intelligence committee needs to interview him and others who attended the meeting," Senator Susan Collins told reporters at the U.S. Capitol.

 

Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the panel "absolutely" wants to speak to Trump Jr. about the meeting. Warner said he and the Republican committee chairman, Richard Burr, will decide later whether to ask Trump Jr. to testify in public or in a classified setting.

 

"Rest assured, Donald Trump Jr. will be someone that we'll want to talk to," Warner told reporters outside his Senate office.

 

Allegations of the Trump campaign's ties to Russia have cast a shadow over the Republican president's first months in office.

 

WHITE HOUSE DEFENDS MEETING

 

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said there was nothing inappropriate about the meeting with lawyer Veselnitskaya. "Don Junior took a very short meeting from which there was absolutely no follow-up," Sanders told reporters.

 

But Republican Senator Pat Toomey said it was not appropriate for presidential campaigns to solicit or accept negative information about a rival from a Russian.

 

"It encourages countries to come in and undermine our democratic process. And these countries have great capabilities to do that sort of thing," he told MSNBC.  

 

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday that the Kremlin did not know the identity of the Russian lawyer.

 

"No, we don't know who it is and, certainly, we cannot track down all movements of all Russian lawyers both within Russia and abroad," Peskov said.

 

A publicist who arranged the meeting with the lawyer last year said he did so at the request of singer and businessman Emin Agalarov, a Moscow-based client of his.      

 

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Writing by Alistair Bell; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Jonathan Oatis)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2017-07-11

[Andaman Al]

Oh Dear! I wonder who is paying for all the lawyers that the Trump team are hiring?

 

Trumps son is a hand grenade just waiting to go off. He is so obsessed with displaying himself as 'his fathers son' even down to the ridiculous pouting of his lips and he does not have two brain cells to process any information (in fact he is his fathers son). He is an interviewers dream, just ask him nice questions, make him feel that people think he is great and then -bam, ask him the difficult revealing questions and he will sing like a bird with no understanding of the consequence of his actions.

 

All these people seem to be 'forgetting' they had meetings. If you were on the campaign trail and someone called you to say they had damaging information to your opponent it is the kind of thing that you WOULD remember. If your son, son in law and campaign manager were having such a meeting then it is the kind of thing you would definitely want to know about. The whole thing stinks like crazy, and if it stinks of rotten fish there is a good chance of finding rotten fish. Add Donald Jr to the list of future recipients of people needing a Presidential pardon.

[tonray]

My country is finished if nothing comes of all of this.

 

8 years of Whitewater, nearly 8 years of Benghazi/Email, and now this ?

 

If we cannot actually put some people in jail for breaking the laws even if they sit in high positions, we have no justice for the common man.

 

I think it was telling about changes in our society happening in the 90s until now. In the S&L debacle, I believe almost 1000 people were indicted and several hundred convicted with some jail time. During the financial crisis, not one indictment or conviction directly related to the crash of the economy due to mismanagement and fraud in the banking system and government.

 

 

We are done until the revolution which will likely not happen in our lifetime. I give up...I only have a few good years left and am going to stop worrying about it and enjoy my time here.

[boomerangutang]

Can he also rent a better brain?  He's already admitted to meeting with a Russian agent in order to get dirt on HRC.  I'm sure Jared and Manafort are loving Don Jr. now.   Who will be the first to turn stool pigeon?  Oh wait, that role has already been filled:  we haven't heard peep from Flynn for weeks.  I'm sure the FBI and Special Counsel are filling notepads with Flynn's ratting.  

 

Prediction:   Flynn and Manafort and Carter Page will, respectively, be Trump's Enemies-of-the-Week within a month or two.  Trump is to loyalty, what a wolf is to a caribou carcass.

[boomerangutang]

2 hours ago, Andaman Al said:

Oh Dear! I wonder who is paying for all the lawyers that the Trump team are hiring?

US taxpayers.  Just like taxpayers are paying for Don Jr's security details when he travels overseas, mostly Arabian peninsula and Russia, to cement biz deals.  Taxpayers are also paying for the following....

 

>>>  Security for all Trump's extended family members, whenever they go anywhere, overseas, or domestic.

 

>>> Trump's golf trips. He's already spent more hours on the links than Obama did in any 2 years. Trump also spent more on traveling to vacation places in his first 100 days, than the Obamas spent in an entire 4 year term.  Remember when Trump, during the campaign, ridiculed Obama for taking time off to play golf?

 

>>>  Security at Trump Towers, even when Melania and Barron aren't there.

 

>>>  Security at all Trump's resorts.

 

>>>  Ivanka's office and staff at the WH, even tho she's not in an official capacity,

 

[Chou Anou]

[Chou Anou]

[iReason]

 

"Trump Jr. hired New York lawyer Alan Futerfas, who specializes in criminal defence."

"Rest assured, Donald Trump Jr. will be someone that we'll want to talk to," Warner told reporters outside his Senate office.

 

Over "fake news"? 

 

Could it be because:

 The White House is under investigation for obstruction, collusion, fraud, racketeering, money laundering and espionage?

 

The wheels of justice are turning.

 

Because America is great, these rats will be eradicated from the White House. 

 

[Opl]

““Ned Price, who was a spokesman for the National Security Council in the Obama White House and worked for the CIA during George W. Bush’s presidency: It used to be the case that Americans would assume the Russians were just lying, but after Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about everything from mass voter fraud to illegal wiretapping, that credibility is in doubt. you are left wondering which side is more credible, and it’s not only with regard to Russia.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/10/trump-russia-donald-jr-white-house-240381

[PattayaJames]

The whole thing is yet another, nothing burger.

But when you are in the middle of a rabid  pack of wolves baying for blood, you need all the protection you can get.

Edited July 11, 2017 by PattayaJames

[iReason]

Warner: 'Clear evidence' that Trump officials met Russians to get info

 

"The vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Monday that Donald Trump Jr.'s acknowledgment of a meeting with a Russian lawyer last June is the first clear public evidence that senior Trump campaign officials met with Russians to try to discredit Hillary Clinton."

 

"This is the first time that the public has seen clear evidence of senior level members of the Trump campaign meeting Russians to try to obtain information that might hurt the campaign of Hillary Clinton," Sen. Mark Warner told reporters."

 

"It's also a continuing pattern that we've seen since the election of Trump campaign and Trump administration officials who have conveniently forgotten meetings with Russians, only when they are then presented with evidence they have to recant and acknowledge those kind of meetings"

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/10/politics/mark-warner-clear-evidence/index.html

 

The wheels of justice are turning.

To make America great again. 

[Rancid]

Meanwhile as the new McCarthyism (anyone remember those good old days of guilty until proven innocent) surges along, seems according to Forensicator that the Russian hacking of DNC never happened as forensic evidence shows it was a USB download and not a hack...oops. Let's see if we ever read about actual inconvenient evidence in the mainstream media.

 

As Trump Jr, if he's done something illegal then let him pay for it, or is this just another media feeding frenzy? Not up on US law, but the more politicians in jail the better.

[iReason]

Trump's long history with Russia just got a lot more complicated

There is an extraordinary, on-the-record picture of the U.S. president's financial entanglement and political deference toward Russia. (sub-title)

 

"Questions about links between President Donald Trump and Russians seeking his election no longer depend on anonymous sources generating what Trump calls "fake news."

 

"Combined with statements and actions by the president and numerous associates, Trump Jr.'s grudging acknowledgment fills out an extraordinary, on-the-record picture of the U.S. president's financial entanglement and political deference toward Russia, one of America's oldest adversaries."

 

"After entering the presidential race, the senior Trump got foreign policy advice from Lt. General Michael Flynn — who received $45,000 from a Russia propaganda outlet for a December 2015 speech where he sat with Putin at dinner."

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/10/trumps-long-history-with-russia-just-got-a-lot-more-complicated.html

 

 

[Silurian]

2 hours ago, boomerangutang said:

Prediction:   Flynn and Manafort and Carter Page will, respectively, be Trump's Enemies-of-the-Week within a month or two.  Trump is to loyalty, what a wolf is to a caribou carcass.

 

If Manafort sings it will be all over. If Manafort gets leaned on hard enough, he will flip and spill all the beans. Then you will see the brown stuff hit the fan. Should Trump toss Manafort under the bus, Manafort will no longer have any reason for loyalty and to keep quiet. Lawyer up Mr. Manafort and start making those deals!

 

[iReason]

4 minutes ago, Silurian said:

If Manafort sings it will be all over.

If Manafort gets leaned on hard enough, he will flip and spill all the beans.

Then you will see the brown stuff hit the fan.

Should Trump toss Manafort under the bus, Manafort will no longer have any reason for loyalty and to keep quiet.

Lawyer up Mr. Manafort and start making those deals!

 

They already threw him under the bus.

Hopefully, he'll show there is no love lost between them and come clean.

Right now, he just covering his own ass.

 

Sean Spicer’s laughable effort to distance President Trump from Paul Manafort

 

"To hear Sean Spicer tell it, Paul Manafort was a bit player in getting Donald Trump elected president."

 

"At a briefing Monday, the White House press secretary actually described Manafort as having

“played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time.”

 

"Except that Manafort was Trump's de facto campaign manager, his top aide."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/20/sean-spicers-laughable-effort-to-distance-president-trump-from-paul-manafort/?utm_term=.1d25df96bda3

 

Spicey's interchange here:

http://www.businessinsider.com/sean-spicer-campaign-manager-paul-manafort-limited-role-trump-campaign-politics-2017-3

 

Former Trump aide Manafort hires crisis communications firm

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/lobbying-hires/325053-former-trump-aide-manafort-hires-crisis-communications

 

And he's going to need more...

[Silurian]

Uh oh, looks like Junior's email is the turning point for the Drudge Report! It says something when the conservative media is changing their tune on the current administration.

 

Even the Drudge Report Has Finally Turned on Trump

http://gizmodo.com/even-the-drudge-report-has-finally-turned-on-trump-1796797487

 

[Scott]

Off-topic posts and replies removed. 

[Thakkar]

A ten step process for all those connected to the Trump campaign:

 

1. Fail to disclose any meetings with any Russians.

2. Reports emerge of meetings with Russians.

3. Deny the reports; denounce them as fake news

4. Further details emerge of said meetings.

5. Well, ok, yeah we met the Russians, but it wasn't about elections.

6. Reports emerge that the meetings were about elections.

7. Deny reports, denounce them as fake news.

8. More details emerge that the meetings were in fact about elections.

9. Arggle garggle blah blah, Obama, Hillary, Deep State, Benghazi, who cares? #MAGA!

10. Meanwhile, Lawyer up.

 

T

[Thakkar]

In ancient times when it was suspected that a foreign country had illegally tried to influence a US election, the Republicans went baths!t and DEMANDED that heads must roll.

 

Here's how Bill Clinton handled it:

 

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, Feb. 13) -- President Bill Clinton called today for a "vigorous" and "thorough" investigation into reports that representatives of the People's Republic of China tried to direct financial contributions from overseas sources to the Democratic National Committee.

 

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/02/13/chinese.money/

 

Meanwhile, in Modern Times, the Russians are accused of interfering in American elections. Initially, Trump dismisses all such claims and throws aspersions on:

ALL major American intelligence agencies.

Major mainstream news organizations in America and abroad.

A former president, who, without any evidence, he accuses of wiretapping his office.

Some hapless 400 pound loser living in his mom's basement.

 

Trump then calls the whole thing a witch hunt, fires the FBI director, smears everyone in sight and says that the whole thing is a partisan stunt to deny him legitimacy.

 

Meanwhile, Republicans and his supporters are completely unconcerned even as more and more revelations come to light that not only did the Russians interfere in the election, but that high level Trump campaign operatives met with Russians, including Russian spy masters and close Putin associates, did not disclose those meetings as required, and initially denied them when exposed.

 

Trump supporters are instead VERY, VERY worked up about an inconsequential handshake that may not have been a snub but was reported as such.

 

This is the new normal. We here who engage in earnest debate with such people are also somewhat complicit in helping to normalize a situation that, just two years ago, would've been the synopsis of a Twilight Zone episode rejected by producers as too outlandish.

 

T

 

[jcsmith]

For those crying McCarthyism or touting that he had received no good evidence, the fact of the matter is that he took the meeting under the pretense that the Russian government had useful information on Hillary Clinton. And on the basis of that he brought along his brother in law and the campaign manager who Trump has been claiming for months was not a big part of their campaign (and who has for months been the subject of issues with Russia). That alone is a major problem. There is absolutely no reason to believe his account of what happened because he has already changed his story on at least two occasions. Because this is yet another undisclosed encounter with Russians. You know the question they have been getting asked for months and denying, ridiculing, etc? Only to find one after another come to light which the staff conveniently has forgotten to leave off their security applications. 

There's two things that could have occurred here. The Trump campaign could have all been hit with one of the little flashy things from Men In Black and honestly and truthfully forgotten all of these meetings, or they are lying. Given the fact that they continually keep getting caught in these lies, and that Men In Black's little flashy thing is fictitious, you have to wonder why do they all have Russian amnesia? Why did the president of the United States ask at least three investigators to let the Flynn case go? And why in the world isn't Fox News talking about it?

Edited July 11, 2017 by jcsmith

[Andaman Al]

It is crystal clear where this is going. The Senate intelligence committee will summon Trump Jr, who will sit there with his lawyer next to him and when asked any question, the lawyer will whisper in Jr's ear and he will claim the 5th every single time.

[iReason]

4 minutes ago, Andaman Al said:

It is crystal clear where this is going. The Senate intelligence committee will summon Trump Jr, who will sit there with his lawyer next to him and when asked any question, the lawyer will whisper in Jr's ear and he will claim the 5th every single time.

 

I would love to see it.

 

 

[Andaman Al]

I hope Donald Jrs lawyer is a good lawyer . A lot of people are depending on it.

 

 

[Thakkar]

marisa kabas (@MarisaKabas)

11/7/2017, 6:39 AM @JoyAnnReid i made a flowchart to simplify <deleted> is happening

[Thakkar]

 

 

[Grubster]

One would think something big is going to happen in this mess before Trumps first year is finished, this is evolving really fast compared to most big scandals. Trump and his people seem to fan the flames here. Unbelievable stuff coming out almost every week. Its gonna make for a very long and funny movie someday.

[iReason]

58 minutes ago, Thakkar said:

marisa kabas (@MarisaKabas)

11/7/2017, 6:39 AM @JoyAnnReid i made a flowchart to simplify <deleted> is happening

 

[Andaman Al]

6 minutes ago, iReason said:

 

The President of the United States! His supporters must be bursting with pride. Fighting for truth, justice and the American way......

[jb61]

A tempest in a tea pot.

yaaaaawnnnnnnnnnn

[iReason]

6 minutes ago, Andaman Al said:

The President of the United States! His supporters must be bursting with pride. Fighting for truth, justice and the American way......

EMIN, the son of the Russian oligarch that bankrolled the inept one's 2013 Miss Universe Pageant.

(later the inept one pimps himself out to appear in this video)

 

EMIN'S  publicist set up the Russian meeting with DJ jr., Manafort and Kushner.