Natalia Veselnitskaya redux

[One Bad Pig]

You may recall a vigorous discussion here regarding a meeting Trump Jr. had with Natalia Veselnitskaya last year.

It turns out that this wasn't the only significant meeting she had that day:

Source: Thomas Gallatin

We now know that Glenn Simpson, head of Fusion GPS, met with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya on the same day she had the infamous meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner. An innocent coincidence? Why won’t the Leftmedia, which has been so concerned with Russian election meddling, bother to dig into this interesting piece of information? Given that Fusion GPS was the firm responsible for the phony dossier, this meeting was most certainly not an “unrelated coincidence.”

On another note, it’s now being reported that there is evidence of a second dossier — and this one alleges financial misconduct by major donors to the Clinton Foundation. It would seem that this second dossier, also created by Fusion GPS, may have been the pretext of dirt on Clinton that Veselnitskaya used to set up the meeting with Trump Jr. National Review’s Andrew McCarthy writes:

My conjecture is that there are three explanations for what happened here, none of which excludes the others: (a) The Russians do not understand American political campaigns well enough to appreciate that alleged misconduct by a donor does not hurt a candidate if the candidate is not complicit in the misconduct; (b) the Putin regime attempted (unsuccessfully) to lure the Trump campaign into its anti–Magnitsky Act [adoption law] effort by convincing Don Trump Jr. and other campaign officials that there was a useful anti-Clinton angle to be exploited; and (c) the Putin regime calculated that, simply by taking a meeting with a Kremlin emissary on the promise of damaging information about Clinton, the Trump campaign would foolishly expose itself to blackmail by Putin.

As we have stated repeatedly, Putin couldn’t care less who won the election. Russia’s aim was to sow distrust in the American electoral system, and Fusion GPS evidently played a key role.

© Copyright Original Source

This would have been at the same time Hillary (and the DNC, but I repeat myself) was busily funding Fusion GPS.

It appears that, unlike Team Hillary, Trump Jr. didn't swallow the proffered bait.

[Zymologist]

[Cow Poke]

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the country will never learn of this.

[Sparko]

My thinking is that the Russian government had nothing to do with any of this. It was all Clinton, the DNC and some Russian civilians they used. The whole Russian thing on the internet (facebook, etc) was just Russian civilian scammers trying to make a buck off of advertizing by writing phony news stories.

[Mountain Man]

"As we have stated repeatedly, Putin couldn’t care less who won the election. Russia’s aim was to sow distrust in the American electoral system..."

That's what I've been saying for a while.

But I still suspect that if Putin had a choice, he would have gone with the one who had demonstrated a willingness to sell out her country to Russia for the right price.

[One Bad Pig]

I'm shocked, shocked, that our liberal friends aren't jumping all over this.

[One Bad Pig]

I guess Fusion GPS only mattered when it could be tied to Trump.

[Cow Poke]

Yeah, and as I posted elsewhere....

And it continues....

Some of the journalists covering the alleged Russian connection were prostituting journalism....

Fusion GPS paid journalists, court papers confirm

Newly filed court documents confirm that Fusion GPS, the company mostly responsible for the controversial “Trump dossier” on presidential candidate Donald Trump, made payments to three journalists between June 2016 until February 2017.

The revelation could be a breakthrough for House Republicans, who are exploring whether Fusion GPS used the dossier, which was later criticized for having inaccurate information on Trump, to feed anti-Trump stories to the press during and after the presidential campaign. The three journalists who were paid by Fusion GPS are known to have reported on "Russia issues relevant to [the committee's] investigation," the House Intelligence Committee said in a court filing.

[One Bad Pig]

My thinking is that the Russian government had nothing to do with any of this. It was all Clinton, the DNC and some Russian civilians they used. The whole Russian thing on the internet (facebook, etc) was just Russian civilian scammers trying to make a buck off of advertizing by writing phony news stories.

Well, well, well, we have an update on this.

Source: RealClear Investigations

A growing body of evidence, however, indicates that the meeting may have been a setup -- part of a broad effort to tarnish the Trump campaign involving Hillary Clinton operatives employed by Kremlin-linked figures and Department of Justice officials. This view, that the real collusion may have taken place among those who arranged the meeting rather than the Trump officials who agreed to attend it, is supported by two disparate lines of evidence pulled together for the first time here: newly released records and a pattern of efforts to connect the Trump campaign to Russia.
<...>
Accompanying Veselnitskaya to the meeting was Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, who had served in the Soviet Union’s military counterintelligence service. His role remains unclear, but evidence suggests he may have been the source Simpson was alluding to in December 2016 when Ohr recorded that Simpson told him, “Much of the collection about the Trump campaign ties to Russia comes from a former Russian intelligence officer (? not entirely clear) who lives in the U.S.”

Veselnitskaya hired Simpson in spring 2014 for work that lasted, according to Simpson’s Senate testimony, until “mid to late 2016.”

Fusion GPS assisted Veselnitskaya -- representing Pyotr Katsyv and his son Denis, both Kremlin-tied businessmen -- in her campaign to repeal U.S. legislation sanctioning Russian officials under the 2012 Magnitsky Act, which was named for Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian corruption whistleblower who died in police custody.

© Copyright Original Source

So the Russian government may have been involved after all - but the collusion was with the Clinton campaign.

Gee, wonder why this isn't getting wall-to-wall coverage?

[Littlejoe]

Well, well, well, we have an update on this.

Source: RealClear Investigations

A growing body of evidence, however, indicates that the meeting may have been a setup -- part of a broad effort to tarnish the Trump campaign involving Hillary Clinton operatives employed by Kremlin-linked figures and Department of Justice officials. This view, that the real collusion may have taken place among those who arranged the meeting rather than the Trump officials who agreed to attend it, is supported by two disparate lines of evidence pulled together for the first time here: newly released records and a pattern of efforts to connect the Trump campaign to Russia.
<...>
Accompanying Veselnitskaya to the meeting was Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, who had served in the Soviet Union’s military counterintelligence service. His role remains unclear, but evidence suggests he may have been the source Simpson was alluding to in December 2016 when Ohr recorded that Simpson told him, “Much of the collection about the Trump campaign ties to Russia comes from a former Russian intelligence officer (? not entirely clear) who lives in the U.S.”

Veselnitskaya hired Simpson in spring 2014 for work that lasted, according to Simpson’s Senate testimony, until “mid to late 2016.”

Fusion GPS assisted Veselnitskaya -- representing Pyotr Katsyv and his son Denis, both Kremlin-tied businessmen -- in her campaign to repeal U.S. legislation sanctioning Russian officials under the 2012 Magnitsky Act, which was named for Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian corruption whistleblower who died in police custody.

© Copyright Original Source

So the Russian government may have been involved after all - but the collusion was with the Clinton campaign.

Gee, wonder why this isn't getting wall-to-wall coverage?

I wonder how long before the DNC starts using Trumps "Fake News" screed as an answer. Of course when it gets no play in the MSM, it's not even necessary.

[Mountain Man]

Gee, wonder why this isn't getting wall-to-wall coverage?

Do I get more than one guess?