Zerohedge.com (link provided by commenter JerseyGuy) makes a compelling case that the meeting with the Russian lawyer was a Democratic setup orchestrated by Fusion GPS, the firm hired to find dirt on Trump.
This certainly makes a lot more sense than the Russia conspiracy theory being pushed by the Trump-hating mainstream media.
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Lion of the Blogosphere 
Thing is that the public doesn’t care about this story. Let’s say it was true and that Trump committed treason: it doesn’t matter because the public doesn’t give a shit. The public *did* care about Watergate and that’s what did Nixon in.
I don’t know if Don Jr. broke any laws and I don’t care. That seems to be where most of the public is. The media will move on to a different Russia thing sometime in the next few weeks.
Otis the Sweaty
July 12, 2017 at 10:23 PM
That’s totally wrong. The broad public had no idea what Watergate was about, let alone cared, and the current Trump/Russia thing has nothing to do with treason, unless you’re defining “treason” as what’s bad for Democrats. The elephant in the room, which for some reason neither side wants to talk about, is that Democratic NGO’s (Masha Gessen, et al) have been trying to force Russia to go gay/trans, and Putin’s sick of it.
Explainer 21
July 12, 2017 at 11:30 PM
public cared enough about Watergate to give Nixon 25% approval by the time he left office. This Russia stuff has cost Trump, at most 2.5 approval points and probably none at all.
Otis the Sweaty
July 13, 2017 at 7:49 AM
John Nolte’s been pretty good on this.
Andrew E.
July 12, 2017 at 11:48 PM
The Zerohedge “report” is largely based on Posobiec/Hoft whose reputation is in the toilet.
Our old friend Chuck Ross is dismissing this info as “another screw up by Hoft,” fwiw.
Fiddlesticks
July 12, 2017 at 10:24 PM
Agreed about Gateway Pundit and Prosobiec in that they are jokes. She didn’t take that photo from McCain’s office. Also, McCaul didn’t ask for the lawyer to come for the hearing (I believe it was Rohrbacher). Still, a lot of interesting connections. I think the whole Goldstone involvement is very strange.
What I could see being possible: Natalia was not paid by Fusion and thought the meeting was genuinely about adoption policy. I could also perhaps see that Goldstone really didn’t know what he was doing and was told by a 3rd party to set up the meeting.
JerseyGuy
July 13, 2017 at 7:23 AM
Then why would it only be coming out now?
Magnavox
July 12, 2017 at 10:42 PM
Interesting theory about Trump that I just read here:
http://cluborlov.blogspot.cl/2017/07/trump-trolls-america.html
“It is common to see in Putin an inscrutable, cryptically menacing cipher, and in Trump a chaotic, bloviating buffoon. In a sense, they are right, but only on the surface. That surface, in the case of Putin and in the case of Trump, consists of a carefully synthesized public persona honed over many iterations and practice runs. For each of them, it has been conditioned by the specifics of Russia and the US, respectively: what the people there respond to well, what they expect and what they are capable of. The specifics of their public personae and what conditioned them are interesting in their own right.”
Trump isn’t a buffoon, but merely employing a persona he’s crafted over the years that people respond to well. Downplaying one’s intelligence is a smart move when playing to the proles. I never thought Trump was dumb in the first place.
Fact Checker
July 13, 2017 at 6:32 AM
Sorry that was not in reply to Magnavox’s comment.
Fact Checker
July 13, 2017 at 6:33 AM
There’s some pretty compelling evidence online that the meeting was a Dem setup, but if it were then why on Earth would they wait until now to release the email? Very little of this makes any sense. It’s all very disorienting. I guess this is the new normal.
Two in the Bush
July 12, 2017 at 11:49 PM
The theory would be that the set up would just be to justify the FISA spying that had been previously denied. They never wanted the actual meeting to get out because it might lead back to them and would be too risky. It was for internal purposes only. But somebody lower down the chain not in on the set up got wind of it and spilled the beans, thinking they’d be hurting Trump when in fact they’d be exposing Lynch.
Of course, I still maintain nothing burger. Her being anti-Trump and anti-Putin isn’t odd because she’s a SWLP and almost all Putin’s opposition comes from within that class. The visa exception makes sense if there was a request by a judge in a Federal Case the US was pursuing. Her overstaying her special exception also makes sense if it turns out that scenario lends itself to such abuse. The only thing I find suspicious is why wasn’t this leaked earlier? We know Obama Admin was monitoring Trump Tower like white on rice at that point. So surely they knew. And they’ve leaked every other thing that supports their kooky Russian theory. So why not this? That is the one thing that makes me say we should look in to this even if in the end I doubt anything comes of it.
PerezHBD
July 13, 2017 at 9:18 AM
We know Obama Admin was monitoring Trump Tower like white on rice at that point. So surely they knew. And they’ve leaked every other thing that supports their kooky Russian theory. So why not this?
Leak what? There’s nothing here to leak. Christ, Trump Jr. tweeted out the entire email exchange himself once he realized the nation’s enemies were going to make a “thing” out of this nothing. They’re desperate. That’s why they’re turning to this story now and not earlier.
Andrew E.
July 13, 2017 at 9:59 AM
I thought the stir was that some emails were recently leaked to The NY Times.
Lion of the Blogosphere
July 13, 2017 at 10:02 AM
Trump Jr. leaked the emails because the NY Times already had them (or at the very least has been told their contents). NY Times called Trump Jr. for statement and he told them he’d get back to them shortly, but instead of calling them back released the emails himself on Twitter.
And while you and I and ever sane person may agree that there is nothing to this meeting, for the Left it is the Holy Grail. Trump Jr. plus Jared and Manafort meeting with an actual living, breathing Russian? That is HUGE in their delusional minds. Plus the goofy email the music promoter wrote about Russia waning to help Trump? This is by far the strongest “evidence” they’ve ever had for their Russian theory. There is no way they sit on something like this.
PerezHBD
July 13, 2017 at 10:30 AM
The deep state/permanent government knows what they have and what they don’t. These concocted Russia “connections” with team Trump are garbage now that Trump somehow won the election. But if Hillary had won as she was supposed to they’d be worth a whole lot more in that political climate. Hell, they may have intended these made-up connections to be the pre-text for starting the war they wanted so badly. But instead they’re stuck playing their cards one by one in a desperate rear guard action trying to prevent Trump from rolling up the entire operation.
Andrew E.
July 13, 2017 at 12:02 PM
the trump hate is actually bernie hate. oh believe me.
Beverly Hills Berniebro
July 13, 2017 at 12:15 AM
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/341788-exclusive-doj-let-russian-lawyer-into-us-before-she-met-with-trump
Exclusive: DOJ let Russian lawyer into US before she met with Trump team
map
July 13, 2017 at 12:34 AM
Trying to paint Veselnitskaya as anti-Trump is completely ridiculous. What she is, is pro-Russian and pro-her client, Peter Katsyv, who was being sued in the US and who is a target of the Magnitsky act. The simplest explanation is that Veselnitskaya was trying to gain an advantage for her client. She wasn’t working on behalf of the Russian state, she was working on behalf of a rich Russian individual. The Trumps are being victimized for their lack of political sophistication and their corrupt circle of friends, like Goldstone. Don Jr. thinks like a real estate developer/promoter, not like a politician, and Veselnitskaya knew how to manipulate that. She is very sharp. I have no doubt she approached the Clinton, Cruz and Rubio campaigns as well, but since they are all more sophisticated political operatives Veselnitskaya wouldn’t have resorted to a crude quid-pro-quo to influence them. (She might, for example, have had a third party donate funds to the Clinton foundation, untraceable). I suspect Vesenitskaya didn’t take the Trumps seriously and was thus not very careful about her meetings. She was probably just testing Don Jr. to see how easy he was to influence. To his own discredit, he seems to be an idiot.
Peter Akuleyev
July 13, 2017 at 4:42 AM
I’m not sure if he is an idiot. His kids seem to be pretty intelligent. I just think he’s very naive (not a criticism, I’m sure I would make a lot of mistakes as well) about political operations.
JerseyGuy
July 13, 2017 at 7:40 AM
Fair enough. Point is, Don Jr. is out of his league and Veselnitskaya was taking advantage of that. But for her and her client’s benefit, not for the Democrats. She had nothing to lose by approaching Trump.
Peter Akuleyev
July 13, 2017 at 10:32 AM
Here at LOTB I wrote this about Donald Trump Jr. on July 20, 2016, after he gave a good speech at the RNC:
“Don Jr. was a pleasant surprise because I hadn’t been terribly impressed by what I’ve seen of him before this. I forget the details, but in the past he’s fallen for one or two Twitter hoaxes that Ivanka would never have been fooled by.”
That was just six weeks after the meeting with the Russian lawyer. Don Jr. isn’t dumb, but he’s susceptible to confirmation bias and makes no effort to paper over gaps in his knowledge. He got excited by Goldstone’s email because it offered proof of Hillary’s corruption, and since Don already believed Hillary was corrupt it made sense to him that proof would be in the hands of somebody.
But a jaded guy like me would figure anyone who has proof of another person’s corruption is probably corrupt and implicated themselves, so it’s very unlikely they’d just volunteer that information. There was also evidence in Goldstone’s email that he had no idea what he was talking about. Take his reference to a Russian “crown prosecutor.” How could Russia have a crown prosecutor when it’s not a monarchy? Don never thought about those things, probably because he doesn’t know what a crown prosecutor is.
But I’m operating from the premise that things are almost never as good as they appear, so look for the holes. I wasn’t born to a billionaire with a sinecure waiting for me and every means to do as I please. When you’ve had a life as charmed as Don Jr.’s, though, things really are as good as they seem.
At least he’s likeable rather than callow and cruel.
Richard
July 13, 2017 at 10:46 AM
As I said, he lacks the paranoia of his social inferiors.
Lion of the Blogosphere
July 13, 2017 at 11:54 AM
And as much as you could say the Trumps are naive about politics, it could be equally said that the political press are naive about the Trumps. Never occurred to them that calling Don Jr. for comment would result in him scooping their entire story (one of the reporters working on the story had a hilarious Twitter meltdown where he bemoaned Trump Jr. tweeting out the story he had worked tirelessly for a year to develop).
PerezHBD
July 13, 2017 at 12:02 PM
Friends of mine told me I should be presented to Donald Trump personnaly as he is coming for Bastille Day, because I am the most pro-Trump person there is in France and the only one among top French Ivy graduates 🙂
PS : I could (and would) probably have gone to Elysée reception (through acquaintances) but I’m spending holidays in the south of spain. Enjoying long holidays is a part of being a french person nowadays.
Bruno
July 13, 2017 at 5:17 AM
are there expected to be massive anti Trump protests for Trump in France? Is the media angry at Macron for inviting Trump?
Otis the Sweaty
July 13, 2017 at 7:51 AM
“Trump crafting plan to slash legal immigration”: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/12/trump-legal-immigration-cuts-240478
“Kelly won’t commit to defending DACA in court”: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/12/john-kelly-daca-legal-challenge-240470
IHTG
July 13, 2017 at 5:44 AM
The Fusion GPS connection is curious, but I just cannot imagine that the DNC would be so far sighted as to plant a long term time bomb like this Russian lawyer meeting just in the event that Trump won the Presidency and they wanted to cloud his legitimacy. I mean who in the DNC thought Trump had a snowballs chance at the time of this meeting?
Mike Street Station
July 13, 2017 at 6:24 AM
I’ve said many times that Obama is an evil genius. The DNC not so much, but it was Obama’s DOJ which let the lawyer into the U.S. and not the DNC.
Lion of the Blogosphere
July 13, 2017 at 6:53 AM
Lion,
How much do you think Trump knows? He seems to be pretty confident that he is going to get Obama.
JerseyGuy
July 13, 2017 at 7:30 AM
Don’t overlook Obama’s further craftiness!
First that scheming Kenyan had to pass a sanctions bill targeting Natalia’s clients so she’d have an excuse to come over in the first place!
Then that liberal mom jean wearing Muslim instructed the DOJ to file a 200 million plus forfeiture suit against Natalia’s client but instructed them, just in case Hilary lost (so devious!) to get the U.S. Attorney prosecuting the case fired by Trump and settle for 6 million two days before trial.
I hate Obama so much.
Heyoka
July 13, 2017 at 9:40 AM
It would be more like Obama took advantage of an existing situation rather than he manufactured the entire situation.
Lion of the Blogosphere
July 13, 2017 at 9:44 AM
A great man once said: “Intelligence is required for logical thinking, but most intelligent people don’t habitually use their intelligence to think logically, or rationally. Instead, they do stuff with their emotions, and then after the fact they use their intelligence to rationalize it.”
Heyoka
July 13, 2017 at 9:58 AM
If Obama was that foresighted he wouldn’t have given assurances that the election wasn’t rigged.
Mike Street Station
July 13, 2017 at 10:03 AM
” it was Obama’s DOJ which let the lawyer into the U.S.” Katsyv had a right to be represented in court. Under what grounds would DOJ have refused his lawyer entry? Both the rabid Trump haters and Trump supporters are overthinking this whole thing.
Peter Akuleyev
July 13, 2017 at 10:35 AM
The Deep State has wanted a war with Russia very badly. Hillary was going to win. What better way to get rid of this Trump guy for good than to plant various links with Russia so that when the inevitable war gets underway with Hillary as POTUS, they can throw Trump and his entire family/circle in the gulag and destroy any and all nascent populist uprisings.
Andrew E.
July 13, 2017 at 9:11 AM
Trumps ties to Russia were well known before he was nominated, as were his ties to criminal elements in New York. Maybe the Deep State engineered Trump’s victory precisely because of his links to Russia. It is working pretty well – any decision Trump makes about Russia comes under incredible scrutiny, he now has less freedom of movement than Hilary would in regards to lifting sanctions or peace overtures. If you believe in conspiracies, the most logical one is that Trump is an unwitting patsy of the Deep State. He is involved in enough controversy to make him ineffective but there are never sufficient grounds to actually impeach him. He is savvy and charismatic enough to seem in charge, but politically inexperienced enough to be manipulated and dig himself into holes. Trump now seems to have very little control over the military and he has somehow made the CIA seem like the good guys to the same elite crowd that used to want to expel the CIA from Ivy League campuses. The “spectre” of Trump is also being used as a stick in Europe to bash the right in France and Germany to the benefit of Macron and Merkel. Who whom indeed?
Peter Akuleyev
July 13, 2017 at 10:46 AM
Russia is, by a lot, the largest remaining holdout from the CFR/Atlanticists’ liberal, democratic global order they’ve been constructing for the last 100 years since the League of Nations. This is why the globalists are so hell bent on pushing NATO into the Baltics and Ukraine, why they’re so insane about Syria and Iran. They’ve been trying for a century to completely encircle Rus and installing Hillary in 2016 was going to be final piece to the puzzle. Trump had to be destroyed and still does more than ever after his miraculous election.
Andrew E.
July 13, 2017 at 11:39 AM
…less freedom of movement than Hilary would in regards to lifting sanctions or peace overtures.
Peace overtures? He’s blocked WWIII with Russia. He’s already wildly succeeded in the most pressing matter of the day. Under Hillary we’d have been at DefCon 1 by March.
Trumps ties to Russia were well known before he was nominated…
A Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.
… as were his ties to criminal elements in New York
If you need to pour concrete in NY or NJ you have to do business with mob-connected people. Thanks Ellis Island immigration!!
Andrew E.
July 13, 2017 at 12:10 PM
“…plant a long term time bomb like this Russian meeting….”
ZeroHedge, in the link in the main post, says within a week after the meeting the Obama DOJ used that meeting “as a pretense to get a FISA warrant on the Trump campaign” after the FISA court had denied two previous requests.
I see over and over in the media that Rob Goldstone is “associated with,” “linked to,” “connected with” Fusion GPS. The specific nature of the alleged connection is never provided.
Mark Caplan
July 13, 2017 at 9:26 AM
To understand the pb between Trump and elites, there is this amusing New Yorker editing of a Trump speech, and it is not intented to be a joke !
http://video.newyorker.com/watch/andrew-boynton-copy-edits-recent-remarks-by-donald-trump
Bruno
July 13, 2017 at 6:35 AM
Good God, that goes on for 54 minutes. How many people could have actually watched it through?
Richard
July 13, 2017 at 10:55 AM
Otis is right. I don’t know about any of this and I don’t care. The words Trump and Russia are enough to make MEGO.
gothamette
July 13, 2017 at 10:46 AM
Even though the media went apeshit, this got much less of a public reaction than I expected. Twitter activity was very tepid despite prior Trump/Russia stories making quite a splash without being nearly as well-founded.
Public fatigue with the whole thing is clearly real, plus if you’re not a wonk the story is actually quite boring: a meeting was held at which no information or money was exchanged. Goldstone’s email does have some juicy quotes to get the most fired up anti-Trump people hot and bothered, but they’re a niche.
Richard
July 13, 2017 at 12:29 PM
“Otis is right. I don’t know about any of this and I don’t care. The words Trump and Russia are enough to make MEGO.”
Just about all of Trump’s supporters agree with you. The Trump candidacy and presidency have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the media are criminals. It’s 100% negativity 24/7. While this nonstop negative coverage has fired up the Democratic base, it has simultaneously led to millions of people tuning out the msm and finding other sources of information and opinion online.
Lewis Medlock
July 13, 2017 at 12:35 PM
CNN et al. need their broadcast licenses revoked.
Panther of the Blogocube
July 13, 2017 at 9:18 PM
MEGO: my eyes glaze over
gothamette
July 13, 2017 at 10:47 AM
Thanks for the clarification there. I was wondering what that stood for.
Panther of the Blogocube
July 13, 2017 at 7:59 PM
This blog post does not seem credible to me.
Rob Goldstone is a former tabloid journalist.
Fusion GPS is commercial research company.
It is possible that as a tabloid journalist Goldstone used Fusion GPS or Fusion GPS contact Goldstone for further information about an article he had written.
This blog claims there is a connection between Goldstone and Fusion GPS, but never explains what the connection is.
Fusion GPS was originally hired by some other Republican presidential candidates to do opposition research on Trump. When Trump won the nomination, Fusion GPS got funding from a unnamed Democratic donor to continue their research. Fusion GPS then hired Christopher Steele after the DNC email hack was announced to investigate links between the Trump campaign and Russia. The Russian hack of the DNC was first reported in the Washington Post on June 14, 2016. It is likely Steele was not hired by Fusion GPS until after the June 9th meeting.
Fusion GPS does not do covert ops.
If the Clinton campaign had done this as a covert op to entrap the Trump campaign, why didn’t this become public before the election?
If the Obama admin or the so called deep state did this as a covert op, why did they wait this long to make it public?
This blog post makes no sense.
The mainstream media is reporting that it is Jared Kushner who is responsible for this being leaked to the NYT now. Apparently Kushner’s lawyers have been going through all of his papers and emails searching for Russia connections that were not disclosed. They found this email and Kushner updated his security clearance request to include this meeting sometime maybe as far back as April. The suggestion is that it was Kushner who decided to leak this meeting to the NYT through some of his aids as a way of deflecting media attention away from Kushner and getting the media to focus on Trump Jr.
This also makes no sense to me. If Kushner is leaking this now, then he is crazy. Kushner’s father went to jail for doing something crazy like this. You would think Kushner would have learned something from that.
[For those that do not know, Kushner’s father was accused of illegal campaign contributions. One of the witnesses accusing him was his bother-in-law. Kushner’s father hired a prostitute to have sex with his bother-in-law and video taped it. He then sent the tape to his bother-in-laws wife, his sister. He was convicted of attempted witness tampering for this stunt and spent time in jail.]
mikeca
July 13, 2017 at 12:18 PM
Kushner and Ivanka are the only two I trust NOT to be the leakers.
Lion of the Blogosphere
July 13, 2017 at 1:46 PM
Well apparently the leak came through Kushner’s lawyers, so whether intended or not it WAS (essentially) Kushner wot did it, no? In their haste to CYA for Kushner they forgot to CYA for Trump Jr. and the POTUS?
gda
July 13, 2017 at 7:18 PM
Where is that reported?
If true, the lawyer who leaked it should be disbarred for violating attorney-client privilege.
Lion of the Blogosphere
July 13, 2017 at 8:56 PM
Kushner does not say anything in public, which means he never says anything that makes himself look bad. I think this has improved his image, perhaps more than deserved.
It is claimed that Kushner was pushing Trump to fire Comey. Bannon was suppose to have been opposed arguing it would blow up and make things worse.
Kushner seems like he may be way over his head. He seems to know he is in some trouble because he did not disclose all the meetings with Russians before getting a security clearance, but his working theory seems to be if he can just buy enough time to negotiate a Middle East Peace plan, then all will be forgiven.
mikeca
July 13, 2017 at 9:33 PM
Trump needs Kushner and Ivanka. Without them, he’s lost.
Some Trump-hating liberals understand that, which is why they want to destroy them, even though they are the most liberal members of Trump’s staff.
Lion of the Blogosphere
July 13, 2017 at 10:01 PM
These 2 stories certainly suggest it. There are others….
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/jared-kushner-team-may-have-uncovered-donald-trump-jrs-emails-report/article/2628453
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/12/15958638/white-house-juciest-leaks-trump-jr-kushner-priebus
gda
July 14, 2017 at 9:50 AM
If you bet on politics then the very anti-Trump European media is doing you a favor, because the odds being offered for a Trump impeachment are way out of line with reality. 33% chance he’s impeached by December, says one!
http://fortune.com/2017/07/12/donald-trump-impeachment-odds/
Richard
July 13, 2017 at 1:02 PM
There has been some research on the claims in this article. Apparently this is the kind of bad research which is typical of alt-right trolls.
The article claims that Natalia Veselnitskaya is anti-Trump. The evidence to support this is some pictures of a anti-Trump rally on her FB page. People claim she attended the anti-Trump rally and took the pictures. If you read the Russian comments she wrote on these pictures, it is clear that she did not attended the rally, did not take the pictures and was posting the pictures in order to criticize the people who did attend the anti-Trump rally for supporting abortion and homosexuality.
There is a claim that she is linked to John McCain because she posted a picture on her FB page that was taken in John McCain’s office. The picture is of John McCain and Mark Feygin, a Russian lawyer who has defended people opposed to Putin. The Russia language comments on the photo indicate that Veselnitskaya took the photo from Mark Feygin’s FB page and accuses Mark Feygin of an unethical proposal to drop a case in the USA. There is no evidence Veselnitskaya has ever met John McCain.
Fusion GPS has flatly denied having any relationship with Veselnitskaya. Veselnitskaya was a lawyer for the Russian holding company Prevezon which is based in Cyprus. She was in the USA on June 9, 2016 to help in the defense of Prevezon on US charges of money laundering. Prevezon also had US lawyers from the firm BakerHostetler and Fusion GPS has done work for BakerHostetler in connection with this case. Fusion GPS denies having ever heard of Veselnitskaya before these stories came out.
This story is just the typical badly researched conspiracy theory generated to keep the Trump useful idiots busy.
mikeca
July 14, 2017 at 11:47 AM