Mueller testifies

Mueller seems old.

The Republicans are behaving as though they have him on the ropes, and it looks like they do.

On the other hand, Steve Chabot, the fourth Republican interrogator, keeps asking about the Steele Dossier, which Mueller keeps telling him is "oustide my purview" and that other investigators are handling it.  He spends his entire five minutes on the subject, which never get any other answer, during which Chabot keeps butchering Natalia Veselnitskaya's name. 

Dem Rep Hank Johnson follows Chabot and gets Mueller back on the subject of obstruction of justice, listing specific charges from the report.

The following Republican, Louie Gohmert, went on the attack, personally.  Mueller denies that he and Comey were "good friends":  "We were business associates....we were friends."  Gohmert attacks Mueller's "credibility".  Mueller says he didn't meet with Trump the day before he was appointed "as a candidate" for the FBI directorship.  This is Trump's claim: Mueller interviewed for the job and didn't get it.  After being attacked about Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, Mueller finally shows some disgust by his facial expression, but he recovers and doesn't respond in kind.

Ted Deutch (D) asks about obstruction, which the Dems are, reasonably, focused on Volume 2, about obstruction.  Most of Mueller's answers to them are, "I refer you to the report."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Speaking of sealed indictments

Continue reading.

That's great, but it's not really the indictment I was looking for.  And it's not for Trump-related shit.  It's for a money laundering case United States v. Prevezon Holdings.  And she may be in Russia anyway.

The case stems from legal work Veselnitskaya was doing for Prevezon Holdings. Prosecutors allege the company received and laundered millions of dollars of proceeds as part of a complex Russian tax refund scheme that defrauded Russian taxpayers out of more than $200 million. The U.S. government was seeking to recover millions of dollars' worth of property, much of it tied up in New York real estate, on the ground that it was connected to the scheme.

The 19-page indictment against Veselnitskaya alleges that while representing Prevezon, she submitted "false and deceptive declarations" to a federal judge in New York City.

[...]

[P]rosecutors allege that she helped draft the supposed independent findings "in secret cooperation with a senior Russian prosecutor."

  NPR

It is interesting that suddenly we are made aware of Russians infiltrating our country in big and criminal ways.

Russia...if you're listening: a little help from his friends

A new court filing submitted on Wednesday by Special Counsel Robert Mueller revealed that a Russian troll farm currently locked in a legal battle over its alleged interference in the 2016 election appeared to wage yet another disinformation campaign late last year—this time targeting Mueller himself.

According to the filing, the special counsel’s office turned over 1 million pages of evidence to lawyers for Concord Management and Consulting as part of the discovery process. The firm is accused of funding the troll farm, known as the Internet Research Agency. But someone connected to Concord allegedly manipulated the documents and leaked them to reporters, hoping the documents would make people think that Mueller’s evidence against the troll farm and its owners was flimsy. The tactic didn’t seem to convince anyone, but it appeared to mark yet another example of Russia exploiting the U.S. justice system to undercut its rivals abroad.

[...]

More than 1,000 files on the website that hosted the leaked documents “match those produced in discovery,” the special counsel said. The documents were published from a computer with a Russian IP address, according to Mueller, and whoever released them clearly “had access to at least some of the non-sensitive discovery produced by the government.” But forged documents were mixed into the trove, too, apparently in an attempt to accuse Mueller of characterizing American websites and Facebook pages such as Occupy Democrats as Russian disinformation operations.

[...]

When Mueller indicted Concord in February 2018, along with two other corporate entities and 13 Russian nationals allegedly connected to the Internet Research Agency, it seemed highly unlikely that the indictment would result in a trial, because Russians cannot be extradited to the United States. But Concord unexpectedly hired the well-connected American law firm Reed Smith to fight Mueller, arguing that the charges should be dropped because the special counsel was illegally appointed. The judge in the case, Dabney Friedrich, has twice refused to dismiss the case.

[...]

In a statement issued on Thursday, Reed Smith denied responsibility for the breach, claiming that the data at issue were hosted by a third-party vendor working for Concord and were never stored on Reed Smith’s internal computer systems.

[...]

Experts say Kremlin proxies have targeted their rivals and other disfavored individuals by exploiting U.S. courts to pursue bogus claims via “superficially legitimate lawsuits,” Anders Aslund, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said in a recent report. He worked as an economic adviser to the Russian government from 1991 to 1994. The Kremlin proxies have done so not only to perpetuate global harassment campaigns against their perceived enemies, Aslund argued, but also to “enrich themselves through bad faith claims made possible by the Russian state’s abuse of disfavored individuals and their businesses.”

[...]

In 2017, the Russian state-owned Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA) filed two applications for judicial assistance from the federal courts in New York and Massachusetts to obtain discovery on two former shareholders of the privately owned Probusinessbank, Sergey Leontiev and Alexander Zheleznyak. Leontiev and Zheleznyak had fled to the United States by that point, but that didn’t stop the DIA from pursuing them through the U.S. courts. Leontiev had run afoul of Vladimir Putin when one of the bank’s subsidiaries attempted to launch the “Navalny card”—a debit card that would donate a percentage of transactions to an anti-corruption organization led by the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.

[...]

When Leontiev moved to quash a federal-court subpoena against him in 2017—arguing that it had been orchestrated by two Russian agents sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act, Andrey Pavlov and Victor Grin—the court denied his motion. The court wrote that it was “not blind to Leontiev’s claims that the discovery sought here is intended for other proceedings or impermissible purposes” and had its own concerns “about the legitimacy of these requests,” which were “heightened by the involvement of two sanctioned individuals.” Despite all of those reservations, the court ruled against Leontiev on the narrow grounds that it was only helping provide discovery in “underlying litigation … before a foreign tribunal.” [...] “The same cast of Russian operatives sanctioned by the U.S. government for their participation in the Magnitsky Affair now attempt to exploit Western institutions, including the U.S. judicial system and Interpol, to further their corrupt pursuit of Mr. Leontiev and others using the cover of legitimate courts and institutions,” Bob Weigel, Leontiev’s lead outside counsel in the case, said in a statement.

[...]

The issue arose again just last month, when the Southern District of New York unsealed an indictment against the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. According to prosecutors, Veselnitskaya had tried to obstruct an investigation into her client Prevezon, a company founded by a Kremlin ally that was accused of laundering millions of stolen Russian taxpayer dollars through Manhattan real estate. Veselnitskaya had secretly worked with the Russian government to draft a document purporting to be an independent assessment made by Russian prosecutors saying that Prevezon was innocent of laundering funds, the indictment said. That document was then filed in federal court in an attempt “to affect the outcome” of a lawsuit filed against Prevezon by federal prosecutors, according to Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. The scheme threatened “the ability of our courts and our government to ensure that justice is done,” he said. And it worked: The court decided to deny the U.S. government’s motion for summary judgment against Prevezon based on the fraudulent document, according to the indictment.

  The Atlantic

We're being had.

Mueller, for his part, appears to have foreseen how the Russians connected to Concord (it is owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is often referred to as “Putin’s chef”) might try to exploit the legal process: In June 2018, he asked Friedrich, the judge, for a protective order that would prevent Concord’s lawyers from sharing any discovery documents with the Russians named in the troll-farm indictment, as well as with other foreigners, such as lawyers outside the United States. If the data were to be distributed outside of American law firms, Mueller said, “foreign individuals may try to use that avenue as a way to obtain sensitive materials as part of an intelligence collection effort.” The hoax website aimed at discrediting his investigation largely failed, but seemed to prove Mueller’s prescience, beyond any doubt.

That man has got a ton of shit on his plate.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Understanding Putin, the Magnitsky Act, and Trump Junior's tower meeting

This is the harrowing story intertwined with the Russian support of Donald Trump's campaign.

His own worst enemy

And his lawyer's nightmare.  Or would be if he had a competent lawyer.

Veselnitskaya fesses up

Apparently, some of her personal documents were leaked.

The Russian lawyer who met with Trump campaign officials in Trump Tower in June 2016 on the premise that she would deliver damaging information about Hillary Clinton has long insisted she is a private attorney, not a Kremlin operative trying to meddle in the presidential election.

[...]

Ms. Veselnitskaya [...] appears to have recanted her earlier denials of Russian government ties. During an interview to be broadcast Friday by NBC News, she acknowledged that she was not merely a private lawyer but a source of information for a top Kremlin official, Yuri Y. Chaika, the prosecutor general.

“I am a lawyer, and I am an informant,” she said. “Since 2013, I have been actively communicating with the office of the Russian prosecutor general.”

[...]

She told the Russian news agency Interfax on Wednesday that her email accounts were hacked this year by people determined to discredit her, and that she would report the hack to Russian authorities.

The Russian prosecutor general’s office did not respond to requests for comment. In an email, Ms. Veselnitskaya said she would respond in two weeks.

  NYT

What happens in two weeks?

Ms. Veselnitskaya’s involvement in the official communications with the Russian government “raises serious questions about obstruction of justice and false statements,” said Jaimie Nawaday, a former assistant United States attorney in Manhattan who was a prosecutor on [a money laundering/tax fraud case (uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky) in which Veselnitskaya was involved].

She said Ms. Veselnitskaya’s actions should be referred to the United States attorney’s office for investigation, including whether she misrepresented herself to the court. “It’s completely outrageous,” Ms. Nawaday said.

Please. The woman is a Russian agent. What's "completely outrageous" is the action of the Trump cabal.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ooops, posted too soon

Not just Fox interviewing Veselnitskaya, but this:

I'm beginning to think they're just trying to keep this investigation going until Trump is finally out of office.

WTF?

He doesn't care.  They have a hit list.

And... WHAT STATE DEPARTMENT?!   We no longer have one.  All that snipping and undermining of Tillerson didn't run him out, so they're going to hit him with something "big".  This is how they're driving out everybody who isn't sufficiently loyal to Trump.  Firing them got to look too suspicious.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

They just never fucking stop

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ooops.  I posted too soon...

Veselnitskaya at the inauguration

According to the Post, the [Trump inauguration] attendees included Viktor Vekselberg, a businessman who is friendly with Russian President Vladimir Putin; Boris Titov, a politician running for president of Russia and Natalia Veselnitskaya, a lawyer who attended a June 2016 meeting with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower.

Veselnitskaya, who Trump Jr. said claimed to have damaging information on Hillary Clinton, attended a party hosted by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), the newspaper reported.

  The Hill

That's funny. Junior, and subsequently, Senior, et al., talked about Veselnitskaya as though she were simply somebody who came to the Trump Tower meeting to talk about adoptions, and then was simply forgotten.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Junior's Meeting

It does look very much like the Russians came to the meeting at Trump Tower with the intention to lobby for getting the Magnitsky Act rescinded (tied to the "adoption" issue) -at least in part. But, they got their meeting by pretending to (if not acutally having - which they may have) dirt on Hillary. And that's the important piece, which the Trump Cabal would like us to think doesn't matter if they didn't actually get the dirt.

What makes it seem as though they did get their dirt is the changing lies Junior has been telling about the meeting, and the attempt at hiding who all attended and knew about it, especially Rinat Akhmetshin, who was once sued for hacking into the computer system of a Dutch mining firm to steal corporate secrets for a competitor.

At any rate, these same players are all tied to Russian gangsgters. Oh, excuse me - businessmen.

Stick around.  I'm sure there'll be an enormous amount of paper trails and both professional and amateur sleuths digging into this sordid affair.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Jaysus, This Story Grows Like Audrey II

The alleged former Soviet intelligence officer who attended the now-infamous meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and other top campaign officials last June was previously accused in federal and state courts of orchestrating an international hacking conspiracy.

[...]

The U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. was told in July 2015 that Akhmetshin had arranged the hacking of a mining company’s private records—stealing internal documents and then disseminating them.

[...]

Akhmetshin had been hired by Veselnitskaya to help with pro-Russian lobbying efforts in Washington. He also met and lobbied Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee for Europe, in Berlin in April.

  Daily Beast

Is Dana Rohrabacher going to get caught in this shitstorm?  There could be a good legal reason those GOP asshats are still defending Trump.

Hacking could be part of a pro-Russian lobbying effort. Getting Trump into the White House could certainly be part of a pro-Russian lobbying effort.

I wonder why Junior left this guy's involvement in the meeting out of the various statements, email releases and defenses he's been proffering.

Akhmetshin denied the accusation, but admitted passing around a “hard drive” filled with data on IMR’s owners. He said the information was all open-source material that he’d gotten from the former prime minister of Kazakhstan, Akezhan Kazhegeldin. The private investigator, though, said he recovered a copy of the data on a thumb drive provided by an anonymous source, and found it consisted of gigabytes of private files stolen in the computer intrusion. A computer-forensics expert examined the thumb drive and found metadata indicating some of the files had last been opened by a user with the initials “RA.”

Hmmmmmm....RA....RA....?

Lawyers acting for Akhmetshin deny that he allegedly confessed to hacking. They did not deny that he had bragged about his investigatory techniques in a public place, but claimed that his methods did not involve computer intrusion.

Whatever.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 7/19: More information concerning Rohrabacher.

UPDATE 8/29:  And more

Oh, He Knew

If the Trumps are good at anything, it's incriminating themselves.

Who Can't Guess the Answer to This One?

Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday asking why the Department of Justice settled a major money-laundering case involving a real-estate company owned by the son of a powerful Russian government official whose lawyer met with Donald Trump Jr. last year.

[...]

That attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya, represents the family of Pyotr Katsyv, the former vice governor of the Moscow region, whose son, Denis, owns the real-estate company Prevezon. The DOJ had been investigating whether Prevezon laundered millions of dollars through New York City real estate when the case was unexpectedly settled two days before going to trial in May.

[...]

"It was a surprise," John Dillard, a spokesman for Prevezon's attorneys, told Business Insider at the time. "We were getting ready for opening statements and fully expected to try the case. In fact, we were looking forward to it.

"We reluctantly agreed to accept the government's offer when it became clear that the fine proposed was no more than we would have spent fully litigating the case, and that no admission of guilt, forfeiture, or continued seizure of any assets was required," Dillard added. "Essentially, the offer was too good to refuse."

[...]

"We write with some concern that the two events may be connected — and that the Department may have settled the case at a loss for the United States in order to obscure the underlying facts."

  Business Insider

You think? Also, no doubt, why New York attorney Preet Bharara was fired.

These people need to be stopped.

Ex-CIA Robert Baer Calls Veselnitskaya an "Access Agent"

Let him explain:

h/t Lauren Werner


P.S. I'd be very surprised if the Trumps were charged with treason.  That word gets thrown around pretty loosely these days.

Junior's Defense on Fox

Depending on how he said it, this could be a literally true statement.  It does not mean his father did not know about it.

In retrospect, maybe he would have done things differently.

That's the message from Donald Trump Jr. following revelations that he met with a Russian lawyer with hopes of obtaining compromising information on his Hillary Clinton.

  AP

Assuming he knew then what he knows now, there's no "maybe" to it.

The president's oldest son is responding to the news in an interview with Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity.

[...]

Donald Trump Jr. says he never told his father about a meeting he had with a Russian lawyer who promised him compromising information on rival Hillary Clinton.

The president's oldest son tells Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity that, "It was just a nothing. There was nothing to tell."

He still thinks it matters if he didn't get the information he was hoping for. And we don't know that he didn't. We do know that  two days before the meeting, but after the exchange of emails setting up the meeting, Trump Sr promised on the campaign trail something juicy and interesting about Hillary Clinton.

The person who arranged the meeting had told Trump Jr. that the lawyer had compromising information that was "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."

Trump Jr. tells Hannity that he thought the information could prove useful.

[...]

He says that no useful information was shared and that the meeting ended up being a waste of time.

Sounds like he's a dumb as he looks and just admitted again that he was looking for something from the Russians that would help Trump's campaign.

He says: "Someone sent me an email. I can't help what someone sends me," adding: "I read it, I responded accordingly."

Yep. Plain stupid.

Jesus. I thought this fool hired a lawyer. Either his lawyer is also a fool, or Junior is a chip off the old block when it comes to taking advice.  Or both.

Did Fox News turn on him? Could Sean Hannity not control the fool's running at the mouth? Is the Trump cabal hanging him out to dry and Fox News has been enlisted to help?

Looks like Kushner and Manafort would be eager to shut him up, since they were also there. Is the Trump cabal turning out to be Trump, Stone and Bannon and they're willing to cut Kushner, Manafort and Junior all loose? Is this serious palace intrigue?

It's hard to make any sense of this without concluding that the whole lot of them are as dumb as a bag of rocks. But maybe Kushner and Manafort simply can't do anything about Junior.

"It was just a nothing. There was nothing to tell," he told Hannity. " I wouldn’t have even remembered it until you started scouring through this stuff."

  Time

I would say "nice try, Junior" except it's not.  It's actually a very lame, completely unbelievable, one.

In a campaign where things were going "a million miles per hour," Trump Jr. said he did not think about the ramifications of possibly dealing with a foreign government about a domestic election.
  USA Today

Now, that would be a better try, except it doesn't jibe with the fact that he lied twice in response to the series of New York Times articles, until he was trapped with the fact that by their third story, he found out they were going to publish the damning emails.  I don't see how, "Gee I wasn't thinking" is going to help him.  When he forwarded the emails to Kushner and Manafort, were things going so fast for them that they didn't think about the ramifications, too?  Then why did they both fail to report their presence at this meeting on official forms asking if they'd ever met with foreign agents? Both were recently forced to correct that omission.

Members of congressional committees that are investigating possible links between the Trump campaign and Russians who hacked into the 2016 election say they want to talk to Trump Jr. about the Veselnitskaya meeting. The president's namesake may also be pulled into the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller.

Oh, I'd say there's about a 100% chance of that.

At last, Hannity asked what Trump Jr would have done if the meeting had produced any illegal or compromising information, anything amounting to collusion. He answered: “100% I would bring it to the proper authorities. There’s nothing that I would do to ever endanger this country.”
  Guardian

Right.  If he'd gotten the information he thought he was getting (and would "love" - especially if it came out in late summer), he'd have brought it to the "proper authorites".

"It was literally just a wasted 20 minutes, which was a shame," Trump Jr. said.

  Business Insider

"A shame." He was really looking forward to getting something from the Russians. Boy's got a mouth way too big for his own good.

So Where Does Junior's Blunder Leave Them?

The President stated publicly that he would like to have the Russians locate the stolen emails. Mr. Smith, indicating in various ways association with General Flynn, launches an initiative focused on finding these communications. A Russian national with government connections is able to schedule a meeting with the most senior circle of the campaign by pledging that she had negative information about Mrs. Clinton. In various ways, public and private, the campaign is making its interest clear, and, at a minimum, it is “assenting” to Russian plans to unearth information that constitutes a clear “thing of value” from a foreign source to influence an election.

[...]

It is also illegal to solicit a contribution or expenditure–any “thing of value”–from a foreign national.

[...]

[A] solicitation may be implied as well as express.

[...]

Donald Trump can’t very well sustain his position that in calling for the Russians to find the missing [Clinton] email [during the campaign], he was merely joking. His campaign was furthering behind closed doors the objective that the candidate was “jokingly” professing. If confirmed and further developed in the Mueller investigation, these facts also bolster the campaign’s exposure to “aiding and abetting” liability for a campaign finance violation.

[...]

A question clearly raised by the new information is whether the Trump campaign’s communications about the hacked emails–through both public statements and private contacts–constituted in effect, for legal purposes, a request or suggestion that funds be spent to acquire the stolen emails. The candidate certainly requested this assistance in his public remarks. Now, in a meeting scheduled with a Russian national with ties to the Putin regime, the campaign made clear that it was actively interested in having this kind of information.

Investigators will presumably explore whether the campaign was interested specifically in the stolen emails. Press reporting suggests that a) the campaign was interested in the emails, because the candidate had said so, and supporters like Mr. Smith was engaged in a concerted effort to find them; and b) both the campaign and Mr. Smith were dealing with Russian nationals in the search for negative information on Mrs. Clinton. At any rate, any support coordinated with the Russians constitutes an illegal contribution from a foreign source.

[...]

It would have been hard for the Russians to mistake the intensity of the campaign’s interest. The very scheduling of the meeting–and the status of the attendees–was sufficient to get the campaign’s point across about what it highly valued and was prepared to take from a foreign source.

[...]

It also bears emphasis that a solicitation need not be successful in order to be illegal.

  Just Security

So that shoots down Junior's defense that they got nothing from the meeting with Veselnitskaya quite nicely.

Burying Junior - Part 6

Trump Senior's representatives are saying that he didn't have any knowledge of that infamous Junior-Russian lawyer meeting. We all know that's a bald faced lie, but here's a video that appears to indicate that he did in fact know.

Philip Bump at the Post just flagged this Trump speech from June 7th, four days after Don Goldstone’s first contact with Don Jr and two days before the meeting at Trump Tower on June 9th.

Trump promises big news about Hillary Clinton’s crimes in a speech on “probably” June 13th.”

  TPM

Take a look.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Dem Co-chair of Senate Intel Investigation Is Convinced

Whatever lie they think will buy them some time, I have no doubt.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Dem Excitement Over Junior's Blunder

I don't mind seeing ANYbody in the Trump cabal landing in the hot seat, and even though I personally think there was indeed collusion to help Trump win the presidency, I don't think there will be any charge of treason for any of them. Although, that charge would be far and away more appropriate for the Trumps than it is for Edward Snowden, who was honestly trying to help his countrymen.

The June 3, 2016, email sent to Donald Trump Jr. could hardly have been more explicit: One of his father’s former Russian business partners had been contacted by a senior Russian government official and was offering to provide the Trump campaign with dirt on Hillary Clinton.

  NYT

Before the New York Times or anyone else goes any further into assessing the situation, we need to see that email.  And, lucky for us, Junior once again helps us out.  Here's page 4, which he posted separately "due to space constraints," and is where the meat is:

Junior released his emails, but did he make any "adjustments" to them?  That would be a stupid thing to do, as you have to assume someone will be checking on that.  But then, Junior is a stupid man.

“To everyone, in order to be totally transparent, I am releasing the entire email chain of my emails” about the June 9 meeting, he wrote. “I first wanted to just have a phone call but when that didn’t work out, they said the woman would be in New York and asked if I would meet.”

Does he think a phone call would be less problematic than a meeting?

And why in the world is Twitter now the place to handle serious political and legal issues?

We also now have refutation of Junior's statement that he invited Manafort and Kushner to the meeting without telling them what it was about.  That was a ridiculous claim on its face.  He doesn't seem bothered by the lies he told about this meeting, one after the other, each time he found out The Times knew better.  Reminds me of the Bush administration.

The documents “would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father,” read the email, written by a trusted intermediary, who added, “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

Now the question is, is that simply the "intermediary"'s (Goldstone) assessment of Russia's stance regarding Trump, or is that also the Trump team's understanding of Russia's stance? I think that could make a difference. Either way, is it true that Junior agreed to the meeting because he was expecting to get dirt on Clinton from a Russian government representative?

He replied within minutes: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

So, at least he was hoping it would be what Goldstone said it was. And he sees it as better timed to inflict the most damage to Clinton "later in the summer" when it might be too late for her to recover from it.

Four days later, after a flurry of emails, the intermediary wrote back, proposing a meeting in New York on Thursday with a “Russian government attorney.”

[...]

Donald Trump Jr. agreed, adding that he would most likely bring along “Paul Manafort (campaign boss)” and “my brother-in-law,” Jared Kushner, now one of the president’s closest White House advisers.

[...]

The story has unfolded as The Times has been able to confirm details of the meetings.

So that's how the Times is framing their drip, drip, drip.  I suspect they had all the information from the time they wrote their first story, but I don't mind them dragging it out.  Keeps it a hot item for a longer period of time.  We consumers of media do tend to move on quickly.

[I]n recent days, accounts by some of the central organizers of the meeting, including Donald Trump Jr., have evolved or have been contradicted by the written email records.

At any rate, we also now know what we suspected - that Goldstone was lying in his interview. I bet he's thrilled Junior released the emails.

Mr. Goldstone’s emails contradict statements he made in his interview with The Times on Monday, when he said that he did not know whether the elder Mr. Agalarov had any role in arranging the meeting, and that he had no knowledge of any official Russian government role in the offer to provide the Trump campaign with dirt on Mrs. Clinton. Instead, he said that Ms. Veselnitskaya had contacted Emin directly, and that Emin had asked him to reach out to the Trumps as a favor to her.

[...]

Subsequent efforts to reach Mr. Goldstone, who acknowledged in the interview that he had spoken with someone at the Trump Organization over the weekend in anticipation of news media attention, have been unsuccessful.

He is lawyering up, no doubt.

Ms. Veselnitskaya, for her part, said in an statement to The Times sent this past weekend that “nothing at all about the presidential campaign” had been discussed at the Trump Tower meeting, adding that she had “never acted on behalf of the Russian government” and that she had “never discussed any of these matters with any representative of the Russian government.” She has not responded to requests for comment since.

We can't prove that Ms. Veselnitskaya is lying - until Junior, or somebody else with a tit in the wringer (perhaps Kushner or Manafort) cops to what was actually said at the meeting. We know the meeting occurred, and we know what the Trump cabal was expecting to hear (generally speaking), but we don't have irrefutable proof that is in fact what they talked about.

Back in Washington, both the White House and a spokesman for President Trump’s lawyer have taken pains to distance the president from the meeting, saying that he did he not attend it and that he learned about it only recently.

Sure, whatever.

Do what you want...you will anyway.

Let Fox Take It

They don't mind lying for a living.

Yes, it IS a risk letting Junior talk on TV, but if anybody can keep him safe, it's Sean Hannity. If Junior will just limit his answers to "yes" and "no".

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.