The Senate Intelligence Committee obtained phone records showing Donald Trump Jr. did not speak with his father from a blocked telephone number in the days before the infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016.
The finding, first reported by CNN, undercuts Democrats’ theory Trump Jr. might have told his father in those phone calls about the Trump Tower meeting, which was held June 9, 2016, with a group of Russians who had offered dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Democrats led by California Rep. Adam Schiff long theorized the phone calls were between father and son and that they could have discussed the meeting.
“We wanted to get the phone records to determine, was Donald Trump talking to his son about this meeting,” Schiff told CNN in November 2018.
“It’s an obvious investigative step, but one the Republicans were unwilling to take because they were afraid of where the evidence might lead.”
Phone records provided to the Senate Intelligence panel shows the calls were between Trump Jr. and two business associates, according to CNN.
The calls were made in the days before the Trump Tower meeting. Another call occurred several hours after the meeting. The identity of the business associates is not clear.
Investigators with both the special counsel’s office and in Congress have been interested in the Trump Tower meeting because Trump Jr. accepted it after being told a Russian attorney wanted to provide information about Hillary Clinton.
The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, showed up to the meeting with several Russian associates, including a Russian-American lobbyist named Rinat Akhmetshin.
Veselnitskaya and Akhmetshin also happened to be working during that same period with Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the Steele dossier. They have claimed the Trump Tower meeting had nothing to do with their work with Fusion GPS.
Jared Kushner and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort also attended the meeting. But all parties involved have said the meeting was a waste of time. They’ve said Veselnitskaya merely used the meeting to discuss the Magnitsky Act, a U.S. sanctions law against Russia that is opposed by the Kremlin. Veselnitskaya provided a four-page memo that made only one small reference to Hillary Clinton.
Democrats have suggested Trump Jr. lied to Congress and that Trump himself has lied publicly about whether Trump knew about the meeting before it happened. Trump has claimed he learned about it only when the press started inquiring about it in 2017, more than a year after the meeting took place.
Ironically given CNN’s role in breaking the new story, the network has been behind other reporting about Trump Jr. and his Trump Tower conversations that have turned out to be false.
So, to summarize, once again Trump was telling the truth and the Democrats and media (oh… same thing) were LYING.
I think, after two years of the same thing over and over and over, I see a pattern developing. It’s a pattern liberals don’t appear to notice.
@Deplorable Me: They had reliable sources, someone close to the Trump team. Would Jr. bother telling his Dad busy winning a campaign hey pops talked today with someone that said they had dirt on Clinton, total wash wasted whole day .
So buggy eyed little Stalinist Adam Schiff got caught lying again as did the Fake News Network. Who would have thought?
They could have simply stated who the calls were made to. Why didn’t they?
@Greg: If it would help make the President look guilty of anything they would have. Maybe just placing an order for a crapload of deplorable Ts, or MAGA hats for the Trump Tower store.
@kitt:
I mean why didn’t Donald Jr. state who the calls were with? Why did this have to come out at as a result of a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation?
@Greg: Maybe he did not remember the calls they were zeroing in on. He was doing business during the campaign, can you imagine those were the only calls he made?
When dealing with these people know they have the information in advance and if you dont have perfect recall bad things happen. Give then basics only, no didnt tell Dad, make them prove anything different.
@Greg: They said it wasn’t Trump. That’s all they needed to know. It’s none of their business WHO he calls. He was a private citizen making a private call.
Why didn’t Hillary provide the State Department the 33,000 emails she blasted out of existence the moment State asked for them? She WAS a public servant and those WERE the people’s emails but you sure took a different view of THAT crime. She deserves privacy; Trump Jr. doesn’t; is that your view?
Rep. Schiff’s whole agenda has been to keep something against Trump alive and in front of the media for as long as humanly possible.
He’s been in on the most secret meetings in the House since the beginning, but he continues to tout one lie to the media after the next.
As soon as his current lie is exposed he just moves to another one, old or new.
In this particular case it wasn’t a “lie” so much as reading the worst case into an innuendo.
Rep. Schiff is pretty good at that, too.
@Nan G: Schiff is the epitome of what a Pelosi lap dog looks like. What a despicable little worm.