The Facts Behind The Trump Tower Meeting Are Incriminating, But Not For Trump

Federalist ^ | July 30, 2018 | Willis L. Krumholz

[kabar]

For those who belong to the religious cult of Trump-Russia collusion, this meeting is prima facie evidence of the Trump campaign colluding with Russia to rig the 2016 election. One of the sacraments of this cult is that its adherents wake up every morning and hope that on this day, just maybe, Trump will finally be done away with. CNN is of course central to this practice.

CNN’s Chris Cillizza called the anonymously sourced report a “collusion bombshell,” and said it was maybe the “most important [event] of Donald Trump’s presidency.” One wonders how many times CNN and its employees have said similar things, only to see their hopes dashed?

The truth is that it doesn’t matter whether Trump knew of this meeting or not, or whether Mueller can ever prove that he did. Don Jr. and his associates did nothing wrong in setting up this meeting. But the events surrounding the meeting are damning for the intelligence agencies, the media, and the Democrat Party.

[kabar]

One key observation: Fusion’s Glenn Simpson met with Veselnitskaya and Akhmetshin both before and after that Trump Tower meeting. Simpson told Congress he had no idea that the two Russians were meeting with the Trump team, but Fusion GPS even provided the materials and handouts for the meeting in question.

Three days after the June 9 Trump Tower meeting, the public learned the DNC had been breached. Around this same time, Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele, a former British spook, specifically to tie Trump to Russia. Steele oversaw the creation of the still-unverified and salacious “dossier.” But Steele farmed out the responsibility for the dossier to Edward Baumgartner, a British national with ties to the Kremlin, who used Russians as sources who were likely current and former Russian intelligence officials.

[richardtavor]

“Wolf, wolf.” Who cares.

[Ann Archy]

One of the Russians Attorney was Edward Lieberman who was married to Hilliary;s confidant, Evelyn Lieberman!!!~

[kabar]

For us Americans, we care that the Dems with the assistance of the Intel community framed the President of the United States. Obama tried to take down Bibi. Should we care?

[Az Joe]

Call it what it was: Opposition research.

Opposition research is just that, it is not “collusion” or “conspiracy” and every campaign does it.

Don’t let the Left define the terms

“OPPOSITION RESEARCH”

[Verginius Rufus]

The Trump Tower meeting shows that the Obama administration, despite their spying on the Trump campaign, had found no evidence of Russian collusion up to that time, so they tried to lure them into something that might look like collusion (using a Russian lawyer allied to the Democrats). That Trump’s son and son-in-law immediately rejected the Russian offer shows their honesty (although it would have been better to have avoided the meeting altogether—that was a rookie mistake on their part).

[Fedora]

Good post. The article also briefly mentions Nellie Ohr, who may have had previous ties to Baumgartner in addition to being a Soviet sympathizer: "Even Christopher Steele may have tried to keep Nellie Ohr 'under cover.' Steele, put forth as the 'dossier' author ever since its January 2017 publication in BuzzFeed, does not appear to have let on to his many media and political contacts that he had 'dossier'-assistance from at least two fellow Fusion GPS Russian experts, Nellie Ohr and Edward Baumgartner. Baumgartner, interestingly, was a Russian history major at Vassar in the 1990s when Nellie Ohr taught Russian history there. . .Nellie Ohr has a paper trail.This paper trail is comprised of a Stanford Ph.D. thesis and a series of academic book reviews, all published between 1990 and 2004 when Nellie Ohr, Harvard Class of 1983, was probably between the ages of 29 and 43. I mention her seasoned age because in the course of my own detailed analysis of Ohr and her writings here, here and here, I discovered something shocking that cannot be put down to or dismissed today as youthful inexperience: Nellie Ohr follows in the academic tradition of 1970s and 1980s 'revisionism.'. ..Did I mention Nellie Ohr’s Ph.D. thesis is titled 'Collective farms and Russian peasant society, 1933-1937: the stabilization of the kolkhoz order”?. .. 'Speaking “revisionist” lingo, Nellie Ohr turns the millions killed by Stalin into “excesses,” which, in Ohr’s words, “sometimes represented desperate measures taken by a government that had little real control over the country.” (Poor Stalin.) She depicts purges as representing 'to some degree a center-periphery conflict in which the "state-building" central government tried to bring headstrong local satraps under control.'. . .: Nellie Ohr: Woman in the Middle

[buffaloguy]

I think this is a another bag job by Cohen and PDJT to get information into the public’s hands that couldn’t be released independantly. The whole op was way too ez.

[Fedora]

More of interest on Baumgartner and Ohr in this series by Diana West: Does a Red Thread Run Through the Anti-Trump "Coup?" Part 4

[Parley Baer]

I think the whole thing was a setup to try and trap someone in the Trump campaign. This was put on by Fusion GPS and the people who paid them.

[nesnah]

My opinion is that they weren’t explicitly trying to entrap anyone. The Russian collusion is a convenient excuse for putting the campaign under surveillance just so they could keep tabs and respond accordingly. It was about winning.

[Islander2]

[I think this is a another bag job by Cohen and PDJT to get information into the public’s hands that couldn’t be released independantly. The whole op was way too ez.]

I sure hope you are right.

[PGalt]

Thanks for posting.

[MAGAthon]

great links.

then there’s this odd one, written by a Scot, but still unusual given it’s published by Fair:

27 Jul: Fair: The Utility of the RussiaGate Conspiracy
New McCarthyism allows corporate media to tighten grip, Democrats to ignore their own failings
by Alan MacLeod
Indeed, Hillary Clinton and her team actively attempted to secure a Trump primary victory, assured that he would be the easiest candidate to beat. The Podesta emails show (LINK TO PODESTA EMAIL THREAD BELOW) that her team considered even before the primaries that associating Trump with Vladimir Putin and Russia would be a winning strategy and employed the tactic throughout 2016 and beyond.
https://fair.org/home/the-utility-of-the-russiagate-conspiracy/

Wikileaks Podesta emails: Re: HRC, Obama and ISIS
From: Brent Budowsky To: John Podesta Date: 2015-12-21
p.s. On the UN last week, support it yes, but be careful. I love Kerry like a bro’ and support him always as HRC should and does. But be careful about the U.N., support but don’t go too far. Putin did not agree to anything about removing Assad and continues to bomb the people we support. We pushed the same position in 2012 (Geneva 1, which HRC knows all about) and Geneva 2 in 2014. Odds that Putin agrees to remove Assad are only slightly better than the odds the College of Cardinals chooses me to someday succeed Pope Francis.

***Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin, but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria. Brent
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/25651

Budowsky has been churning out anti-Trump, fake Russia collusion stuff for The Hill and the Observer, with praise for the likes of McCain, George Will, etc., for the past two years. go through a few pages here:

Muckrack Articles by Brent Budowsky
https://muckrack.com/brent-budowsky/articles

[richardtavor]

Boy who cried wolf. Controversy of the day. No one cares anymore because it is all fake, every day. That is my point. No one listens anymore. No one cares what they say anymore about Russia or collusion. If anyone does, they are giving energy to the darkness of the deep state. The best way to deal with it personally is to give it no weight. Otherwise, one will be upset at the next contrived controversary, which will be when more positive news is released by the Trump Administration.

[MAGAthon]

what a guy!

Twitter Edward Baumgartner
https://twitter.com/ebaumgar73

Apelbaum - seems to be a NY tech guy - analyses the dossier’s writing styles, authors, etc etc. VERY long, but fascinating stuff all the way through:

17 March 2018: Yaacov Apelbaum blog: Edward Baumgartner: The Mechanics of Deception
https://apelbaum.wordpress.com/tag/edward-baumgartner/

[richardtavor]

Thanks for the link to Baumgartner. Never heard of him but he is right on target.

[MAGAthon]

Sperry was on to him in Jan - this was a good piece:

18 Jan: NY Post: Paul Sperry: Did Putin’s pawns help assemble the Trump-smearing dossier?
Simpson said that, while he farmed out the dossier to his old pal Steele, he also contributed to the dossier along with a mysterious Russian translator who worked directly with his other client, a Putin crony.
In 2016, Simpson hired Edward Baumgartner, an ex-journalist who shares his disdain for Trump, to work on the Hillary contract. Baumgartner says he has a masters degree in Russian and specializes in consulting “in the former Soviet Union,” where he has offices.
Baumgartner had been working alongside Simpson as a Russian translator for a New York law firm defending a Russian holding company, Prevezon...
“He speaks Russian,” Simpson said of Baumgartner, after Senate Judiciary Committee staff asked about “subcontractors” he’d hired...

Simpson admitted dining with (Veselnitskaya) before and after the meeting and sitting in the Manhattan courthouse with her the morning of the meeting, but he claims he was in the dark about her Trump Tower meeting. He says they didn’t discuss her plans because of a language barrier — even though his pal Baumgartner, the Russian translator, was in the room with them...
https://nypost.com/2018/01/18/did-putins-pawns-help-assemble-the-trump-smearing-dossier/

[kabar]

Opposition research is just that, it is not “collusion” or “conspiracy” and every campaign does it.

I have never heard of unverified opposition research being used by the FBI and DOJ to spy on an opposing political party during a Presidential campaign, transition team, and a sitting President using the resources of the intel community.

[lodi90]

Mueller still hasn’t even bothered to interview the Russian lawyer from the Trump Jnr. meeting. She was working for FusionFSB and the Hillary campaign. No doubt.