A 7-Month-Old Story that Still Needs Follow-Up — The Trump Tower Meeting was A Deep State Set-Up that Empowered British Intelligence to Surveil the Trump Associates Who Attended the Meeting

Originally published Apr 28, 2018

We have just learned that Robert Mueller has never bothered to interview the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, who attended the Trump Tower meeting with Trump Jr. and associates.

The Russian Lawyer Who Met With Donald Trump Jr. Says the Special Counsel Hasn’t Contacted Her
http://time.com/5249926/russia-natalia-veselnitskaya-robert-mueller/

A very peculiar fact, given that Mueller’s alleged mission is to investigate “Russian interference” (and Trump collusion therein), and that this meeting has been painted by the MSM as borderline treasonous.

Nor have we had an explanation as to why Preet Bharara, on orders from the DOJ, gave Veselnistkaya an entry visa just days before the meeting — even though she was considered a security risk and had been denied such a visa earlier that year.

Confirmed: Obama WH Issued Visa to Russian Lawyer Days Before Trump Meeting
http://conservativefighters.com/news/confirmed-obama-wh-issued-visa-russ...

And why did British music producer, Rob Goldstone, an associate of Fusion GPS, entice Trump Jr. to the meeting by lying that Veselnitskaya had dirt on Hillary which she could share? Veselnitskaya says that she had no such dirt, and that her purpose was to lobby Trump Jr. for repeal of the Magnitsky Act; Trump Jr. does not contradict her.

The phrasing of Goldstone’s first email to Trump Jr. is intriguing:

Emin [Agalarov, a Russian pop star represented by Goldstone] just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting.

The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras [a Moscow-based developer who tried to partner with Trump in a hotel project] this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary [Clinton] and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.

This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump — helped along by Aras and Emin.

Subsequent inquiry revealed that Goldstone had had no such contact with Emin — he was making this up out of whole cloth. It’s notable that Goldstone echoes the claim in the Steele dossier that the Russian government was attempting to assist Trump’s election by trashing Hillary. And — as Steve McGrath has noted in his response to the initial draft of this essay — Goldstone employs some key phrases that would make this communication likely to be flagged by the NSA for investigation.

One innocuous interpretation of Goldstone’s emails is that he was just BSing Trump Jr. in order to get him to listen to Veselnitskaya’s pitch regarding the Magnitsky Act. But if that is the case, why was Goldstone’s email written to create the impression that, by responding positively, Trump Jr. appeared to be accepting an offer to “collude” with the Russian government during the election? This definitely has the appearance of a Deep State set up. And note that the date of the first Goldstone email, June 3rd, pre-dates any public knowledge of the Steele dossier and even the Wikileaks release of the DNC emails. It is reasonable to suspect that Goldstone was coached by GCHQ when drafting this email.

Yet the story of the Trump Jr./Veselnitskaya meeting did not go public until after the election. Was some deeper purpose served by this meeting?

7 months ago, in an article said to be based on “inside sources” within the intelligence community, True Pundit alleged that the Trump Tower meeting was a Deep State setup that would provide a legal excuse for GCHQ (British intelligence) to put all Trump associates who attended the meeting under continuing surveillance — the results of which could then be passed along to their US colleagues:

EXCLUSIVE: Six U.S Agencies Conspired to Illegally Wiretap Trump; British Intel Used as NSA Front to Spy on Campaign
https://truepundit.com/exclusive-six-u-s-agencies-conspired-to-illegally...

I currently have no way to determine whether this story is true. What I can say is that it does tend to make logical sense of a situation that otherwise makes little sense at all. And this scenario would be consistent with the evident determination of the Obama Deep State to put the Trump campaign under surveillance, using any excuse, in the hope of digging up something incriminating.

Also, it appears that it was the GCHQ that kicked off the Trump “collusion” witch hunt by reporting to John Brennan, back in 2015, that Trump associates had been in touch with Russian spies.

British spies were first to spot Trump team’s links with Russia
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/13/british-spies-first-to-s...

(James Comey later testified to Congress that these tips were bogus — the Russians involved were not spies.)

I welcome feedback from anyone who has further insight on this issue. Whatever the merit of the True Pundit article may be, the role that GCHQ played in surveillance of the Trump campaign demands much further clarification. In light of the so-far inexplicable Skripal poisoning — how did everyone involved survive attack with a potent nerve agent, unless their docs (currently gagged by the British government) were given a tip to treat the victims with atropine immediately? — as well as Russian claims that British intelligence contacted the White Helmets in Douma to demand that they hurry up with their their provocation — the possibility that GCHQ has been up to its neck in Deep State skullduggery intended to demonize Russia seems rather high. Taking down Trump, who avowedly was sympathetic to “getting along” with Russia, fits this pattern perfectly.

If the fallout from the Douma fiasco manages to bring down May’s government, perhaps Prime Minister Corbyn can put a leash on these malevolent spooks — one can always dream!

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Roy Blakeley's picture

is that it was a setup to provide a pretense for the US security agencies to go to the FISA court and get a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. It seems abundantly clear to me that it was a setup. Veselnitskaya, for example, met with Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS, which was hired by the DNC and Clinton campaign and which produced the pee pee dossier, before and after the Trump tower meeting (and then denied that the meetings took place, but they were confirmed by her lawyer). The mysterious granting of a visa to Veselnitskaya just in time for the meeting suggests that State Department officials were involved. My guess that this was a US deep state setup (John Brennan, State Department, DNC and Clinton campaign and possibly additional actors). I think MI6 was used by Brennan to spy on the Trump campaign, but I think this is a semi-separate effort.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@Roy Blakeley

...and I believe it was expedited there by request from an intelligence agency group that reported directly to the President. It could have been Brennan. Trump's offices and home were already wired as early as March 2016. It is likely that in the CIA and FBI, those involved were operating rogue in the sense that ordinary protocol was not followed. Paper trails were not there. Facilitating the necessary travel VISA for Natalia Veselnitskaya part of that inside investigation. They were throwing anyone they could at the Trump campaign to volunteer their services or work their way inside some other way.

June 2016 was a busy and eventful month in this case. It was also the month that George Popadopolous got himself in so much trouble — although no one ever talked to him until he received a surprise subpoena in April 2017, after Mueller came into the show. Although the FBI did tell the NYT that Popadopolous triggered their entire investigation into Donald Trump, the FBI had never spoken to him. When George bounced in for his Mueller interview without a lawyer, was charged with a felony for lying about some detail, and sentenced to prison.

In June 2016, the Dirty Dossier had not been written and Christopher Steele had not yet joined signed on to the Fusion GPS group. Fusion GPS had recently finished a opposition work on Donald Trump for Republican Party special interests. That June, they were working with a Russian Business, Prevezon Holdings, which sought to gain influence with the next US President to convince him or her to lift certain questionable sanctions against them. These were put into place after congress was bamboozled into passing the questionable Magnitsky Act on behalf of a foreign hedge fund operator. Fusion GPS also brought in Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer/consultant who had experience lobbying in DC. She had high-level connections in both Washington DC and Moscow.

Fusion GPS leaned on Goldstone to set up introductions with Trump for a meeting with Veselnitskaya. Goldstone knew both Trump the father and Trump the son. Fusion GPS was perhaps hoping for a meeting with Donald Trump, Sr. on behalf of their client, Prevezon Holdings. They had a good story to tell him about the corruption surrounding congress and the Magnitsky Act. The best they could do, however, was a starter appointment with Don Jr. It was Goldstone who came up with "dirt on Hillary" promise as an "inspired" way to align himself with Don Jr. In Don's world during June 2016, Hillary was trending, Magnitsky not so much.

Beyond a preliminary list of contacts for Fusion GPS, Steele produced the dossier in September and October 2016. It was rewritten and edited at Fusion GPS. Steele also contacted the FBI independently in order to pass on information he thought they might be interested in, but the FBI seemed indifferent and the information languished. Only after he started meeting with Bruce Ohr, husband of another GPS contractor Nellie Ohr, did the FBI appear to be engaged. Steele also gave the dossier to David Corn, who published an exposé about it in Mother Jones shortly before the election. By late August, Hillary's victory no longer seemed assured and the FBI was hustling to put together a FISA warrant. They may have used advanced copies of David Corn's article to confirm the veracity of their informant, Christopher Steele, who had produced the damning evidence about Carter Page and his contacts with Russian intelligence. That initial evidence proved to be wrong and Page was never even interviewed by Mueller.

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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
snoopydawg's picture

@Pluto's Republic

state department? This should be the goose that cooks everyone involved with trying to entrap Trump.

the fact that “his research was political and facing an Election Day deadline”, with the overall purpose of the dossier being to “frame” the future president with fictitious Russia collusion allegations.

Former British spy Christopher Steele made a stunning admission during an October 11, 2016 meeting with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec, just 10 days before the FBI used his now-discredited dossier to justify securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page and the campaign’s ties to Russia, according to The Hill‘s John Solomon.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec’s written account of her Oct. 11, 2016, meeting with FBI informant Christopher Steele shows the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded British intelligence operative admitted that his research was political and facing an Election Day deadline. –The Hill

We've discussed how others in the Obama administration did some things that were both illegal and unconstitutional. The unmasking people who were under surveillance etc.

But this shows that the whole FBI investigation into Trump was politically motivated. Shouldn't that be against the hatch act? Hillary used her party's intelligence agencies to spy on her opponent. I'd think that might be something like what Nixon tried to do. And now Barr has opened an investigation into the whole kaboodle. We'll see where it goes and how high up it goes.

According a typed summary of the meeting – which sat buried for over 2 1/2 years until an open-records litigation by Citizens United – Steele said that his client “is keen to see this information come to light prior to November 8,” the date of the 2016 US election. Also attending the meeting was an employee of Steele’s Orbis Security firm, Tatyana Duran.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Pluto's Republic's picture

@snoopydawg

I've haven't gotten into it yet. The contradiction in the story blurred my attention.

I think Steele should have been completely political in his research. He was working for Hillary and the Democrats, private citizens, to help them win an important election. That was the job he was paid to do. He let his bias show — like everybody else working on the campaign. He was supposed to be passionate about the candidate he was working for.

He wasn't working for the US government for any other government. He just made things worse when he started mingling with the partisan dregs of our IC, who were tainted with corruption. They're the Deep State tools and Neocon authorities who run the place.

I'm starting to think that Steele believed that crap. That seems impossible. Was he blinded by his bias? The spy crimes collusion he described looked amateurish and stereotyped. The evidence for election meddling has proved to be as flimsy and ridiculous as it sounded the first time we heard it.

Good grief. The Russian agents and assorted losers he bought that bunk from must be laughing their asses off.

(As an aside, John Solomon has been doing a lot of the heavy lifting journalistically. It's admirable that so little of his bias shows and his work is seldom larded with lies and accusations that were disproven long ago. I've developed profound contempt for reporters who do that.)

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snoopydawg's picture

@Pluto's Republic

And then when they used it to get FISA warrants on Trump was when the hatch act came into play. I'm pretty sure that it's a crime to lie to judges. Wonder what the penalty would be for us little people if we did that?

The evidence for election meddling has proved to be as flimsy and ridiculous as it sounded the first time we heard it.

"Wah! Russia made me lose my election." - Hillary That anyone believed that after she got 3 million more votes but lost because of the electoral college is beyond comprehension.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Pluto's Republic's picture

@snoopydawg

I've found more than one reference to the FBI paying. But I don't recall who they paid. Was it Fusion or Steele?

These conspirators, from Brennan and Clapper to Susan Rice and select leaders at the FBI and CIA and certain members of congress — they were freaking out about Trump. I don't care about their motive or objective. I don't care about the election. I care about making geopolitical enemies and provoking mutually assured destruction. I care about the relentless misinformation, the fake democracy, and the brainwashing.

That anyone believed that after she got 3 million more votes but lost because of the electoral college is beyond comprehension.

Yes it is. I do wonder about manipulated vote counts that were meant to secure the win. This failure left behind a distortion that I've seen discussed in mathematics groups. There's a specific wrongness in the distribution of the numbers that is immediately obvious to some.

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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato