Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia) and Congressman Adam Schiff (D-California) are effectively leading Congress’ investigation into Russian meddling with our election. Both men are the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees in Congress.
Today, they received critical information about the activities of Donald Trump Jr. on behalf of his father. That information will make their jobs much easier.
In today’s Politico, ace reporter Louis Nelson tells us that Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was interviewed on NBC’s “Today” show, giving her side of the story about her meeting with Trump Jr. in June 2016: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/11/russian-lawyer-natalia-veselnitskaya-interview-240393. And the media, from CNN to NPR to The New York Times, are diligently reporting on Trump Jr.’s efforts (at any cost) to get his father elected to the highest office in the land.
Although here at AP we always strive to relate to you the news that didn’t happen, in yesterday’s “report,” we were mistaken.
There, we said that Veselnitskaya had been captured by Vladimir Putin’s thugs and taken to a Siberian gulag. Not so — at least for today.
Donald Trump Jr. — yup, the guy who was thinking of running for governor of New York — sought a meeting in Trump Tower in June 2016 with Veselnitskaya based on her teaser of having bombshell evidence against Hillary Clinton that would assuredly result in Trump Sr. being able to occupy the White House.
At the meeting were then Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump Sr.’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. But Trump Jr. was running the meeting.
Veselnitskaya claimed later that the “real” subject of the meeting was the dispute between Russia and the United States on the adoption of Russian children by Americans.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Vladimir Putin will do anything to increase his influence on the world stage, because, in Russia, the state is everything.
And that includes lying, as he did in Hamburg when he told Trump Sr. that Russia did not intervene at all in our election. Why? In Russia, elections are always a sham — and thus, he has all the tools at his disposal to manipulate our elections in his favor.
So now that Trump Sr. purports to be Commander-in-Chief, what has he just done to distract his ever-diminishing base from the Russia investigation?
As associate solitary reporter Johanna Jones watched, Trump Sr. told his Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, to invade Venezuela — where embattled president Nicolas Maduro is facing a constitutional crisis. Maduro wants to change the constitution of Venezuela to give himself even more power, as protests against his authoritarian government have reached their one hundredth day.
“Go down there and capture Maduro,” Trump Sr. told Mattis, “and bring him here. I need to teach him a thing or two about how to run a government."
A good soldier, Mattis did as directed. Thousands of American paratroopers are now descending on the Palacio de Miraflores in Caracas, and will soon grab Maduro from his presidential palace and bring him directly to Trump Sr.
Meanwhile, Putin, sensing that Trump’s days in the White House are starkly limited, told Veselnitskaya to offer Trump Sr. asylum. Associate solitary reporter Foma Kheroshonsky was with Putin in Moscow as he texted Veselnitskaya.
Jones has just learned that, on a conditional basis, Trump Sr. has accepted Putin’s invitation. “Johanna,” Trump Sr. told Jones, “it all depends on whether I can get McConnellCare passed in the Senate so I can then get the tax code changed to make blessedly rich people like me even more wealthy. If I can do that, I’ll stay here. If I can’t, I’ll go to Moscow. Vlad told me in Hamburg that whenever I need to get away from the cold in Moscow, I can stay at his mansion in Sochi, where the weather is much nicer."