https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2017/07/12/donald-jr-s-russian-honey-pot-meeting-was-completely-within-the-law/Donald Jr.’s Russian Honey Pot Meeting Was Completely within the Law
Jul 12, 2017
RUSH: I have a couple pieces here from people who have written about this episode, this latest episode, which, again, I’m sorry if this appears redundant, but I feel a compulsion here to say a couple things I believe to be key over and over again to drive the point home.
The reaction, coupled with a column today in the Washington Post by Dan Balz, tells me this is it; they’ve got nothing but this. All that’s preceded this — all the bombshells, all the blockbusters, all of the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN stories — nothing. They’ve got it all. This is it, folks. This is the story. And Dan Balz’s piece, “A Revelation Unlike Any Other in the Russia Investigation.”
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the media sees this as their last-gasp chance, because they’re not going to stop. I think this is the one of all in the past nine months that they think might stick. None of the others have. And so they’re giddy. They’re not able to help themselves.
Here is Robert Barnes at a website called LawNewz on: “Why Donald Trump Jr. is Innocent. Period.” A pull quote: “Hence, legally, Donald Trump Jr. taking a meeting at the request of a family friend, to hear someone wanting to volunteer information about your Dad’s adversary, can legally be no crime. He did what a loyal son, honorable friend, and smart advocate would do — hear them out. Anyone who thinks that’s a crime is the one who needs to have their values checked.
“Donald Trump Jr. took a meeting from someone claiming evidence of foreign corruption by Hillary Clinton.” By the way, that’s important to point out. What Donald Trump Jr. was told was not that the Russians wanted to help Trump win. They had high-level indicting kind of news on Hillary.
It wasn’t, “Hey, the Russians want to help your dad win. The Russians want to conspire and collude with you.” It was, “You know, I got a friend who’s the son of a powerful oligarch who says somebody’s got some really damning information on Hillary that you ought to hear about. It comes from the highest levels of the Russian government.”
“Well, okay. We’ll hear what this is.” We don’t know what Donald Trump Jr. would have done with it because it was never given! There wasn’t any high-level information. Can you say “setup”?
“Donald Trump Jr. took a meeting from someone claiming evidence of foreign corruption by Hillary Clinton. The meeting proved useless. Donald Trump Jr. released the emails leading to the meeting. It is clear from the documents and statements of all involved that Donald Trump Jr. did nothing wrong. He broke no law.
“This isn’t like Hillary Clinton’s husband soliciting donations disguised as speech payments, travel costs, and charity work, while Hillary was Secretary of State. Based solely on the fact the source of the information was a Yeltsin-era prosecutor from Russia, a few anti-Trump lawyers falsely accuse Trump Jr. of a crime.
“American law imposed no restrictions on foreign donations for almost all of its history until that ethical icon Lyndon Baines Johnson was President.” Did you know that? Foreigners could donate to presidential campaigns, they could, until LBJ. And why do you think that is? Well, ’cause LBJ was so ethical. (laughing)
“Then, after Watergate, those restrictions on foreign funding of American elections was mostly enacted through incorporation of Watergate-era reforms. Exceptions always existed: only cash donations, or the like, were prohibited and green card holders exempt. … The Code of Federal Regulations makes the law immunizing Trump Jr.’s actions precisely clear: any foreign national individual may volunteer personal services to a federal candidate or federal political committee without making a contribution. The law provides this volunteer ‘exemption’ as long as the individual performing the service is not compensated by anyone on the campaign.”
Here we are back to the quid pro quo. Nobody has ever found one! In any of this, there has never been a quid pro quo. You can find them all over the place with Hillary Clinton and uranium and Ukraine. You can find quid pro quos with Hillary Clinton, 250 grand for a 20-minute speech to Goldman Sachs and every other banker on earth. Ditto, Bill Clinton.
You can find quid pro quos with Mrs. Clinton and that foundation selling influence to the White House before she even got there. But you don’t have any quid pro quos with Donald Trump, and you don’t have any with Donald Trump Jr. What would have made something like this a crime under current law would have required money some way, shape, manner, form. There wasn’t any here.
This is James Robins, USA Today: “Donald Trump Jr. Was Within His Rights to Meet With Russian Lawyer — What if there had been truly damaging information about Hillary Clinton?” What if there had been some of that and what if it had been imparted. Let’s stop and think about that for a second. Let’s play a hypothetical.
Let’s say that the honey pot turned out to actually be a lawyer like she was reputed to be and let’s say the honey pot did have a message from the highest levels of the Russian government. And let’s say the honey pot showed up at the meeting and told Donald Trump Jr. what that information was. And let’s say that that information was very damaging to Hillary Clinton. Do you think a journalist would invoke the public’s right to know, to be entitled to what it is? You don’t?
Okay. Let’s turn it around. Let’s see. Chelsea Clinton, after a few hours of courageous tweeting, gets a phone call from a music producer in the U.K., gets an email, claiming that somebody has damaging information on Donald Trump from the highest levels of the Russian government. And they want to send a lawyer from Russia, from Moscow to meet with Chelsea to impart the information. And let’s say Chelsea takes the meeting, and let’s say the lawyer does have some damaging news about Donald Trump.
Let’s say that they’ve got video of prostitutes urinating on Obama’s bed in Moscow. Do you think journalists would invoke the public’s right to know about that? Damn straight they would. They wouldn’t be talking about Chelsea Clinton committing treason, would they? No, no, no. Chelsea Clinton, make her vice president, this woman is showing how classy and how qualified she is. She was able to dig up dirt on Trump, they would say. And they would be praising her to smithereens.
“The saying in the Watergate days was that ‘it’s not the crime but the cover-up.’ These days, you don’t need a crime or a cover-up to trigger outsized political outrage, just a heavy dose of bad optics.” Which is what this is.
James Robbins at USA Today says: “This story is hardly as inane as the collective furor that has been generated around the Russia issue writ large. Although four intelligence agencies concluded the Russian government attempted to influence the 2016 election, there is no evidence that any of these attempts succeeded.”
And that’s my point. You know, everybody’s running around and saying, as though it is common knowledge and inarguable that everybody knows the Russians attempted to affect the election. The Russians interfered. The Russians did. And then when you ask ’em, what did they do? You know what the answer you get is? No, no. They have an answer for you. The answer, “The Russians got Podesta’s emails and gave ’em to WikiLeaks.” That’s it.
Now, Julian Assange at WikiLeaks has denied from the get-go that it was the Russians that gave him Podesta’s emails. But that’s it. That’s it. We know that somebody hacked the DNC computers, and they won’t let any forensics analysis of those computers take place. We know that the Democrats rigged the election against Crazy Bernie. (interruption) What do you mean, what could have happened? Oh, you mean Seth Rich? I didn’t say that. Don’t lump me in that crowd. I know they went nuts when people started to go — we don’t even have to go there. Everybody thinks the Russians succeeded! Everybody thinks the Russians succeeded!
This is what gets me. It galls me. And I still don’t really know how they did it. What I know is they didn’t affect votes in any way, shape, manner or form. I don’t care if they tried, they try all the time, everyone does, but they did not succeed at that. The election was not illegitimate. The election was not fraudulent. The outcome was not the result of cheating or fraud. Well, the Democrats might have voter fraud, but not the Russians.
There’s never been anything to this story, as far as I’m concerned. That’s why these bombshells don’t affect me. We have a Trump loyalist on the staff here who was really worried on Monday over this Donald Trump Jr. story. “This worries me,” the loyalist said.
Why? How is this any different? There’s still nothing here. What’s being alleged didn’t happen. “Yeah, but he looked like he was prepared to take the meeting” But it didn’t happen. Yeah, he took the meeting under pretext, but it’s so much ado about nothing. The fact that they’re trying to make this into something so big is quite telling.
Now the honey pot, the honey pot. We got a lot of interesting news about the honey pot out there today. Her name is Natalia Veselnitskaya. It takes a seasoned and highly trained broadcast specialist to pronounce that name with no stuttering and pauses and rehearsals. Natalia Veselnitskaya. And she is pictured — I’ve seen it at two different websites now — pictured with Obama officials in Washington June 14th, 2016.
Does that date — when did she meet with Trump Jr.? June the 9th. Five days later, she’s in the front row at a congressional hearing. She was a guest of former Obama administration Russian ambassador Michael McFaul for a House of Representatives hearing on U.S. policy toward Russia.
She is pictured seated in the front row directly behind the ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul. It was the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It’s June 14th. It’s five days after the reported meeting that she had with Donald Trump Jr.
Ambassador McFaul was publicly discussing the Russia conspiracy narrative in the media. He appeared on a bunch of MSNBC broadcasts during the 2016 campaign. Immediately after the election, Ms. Natalia Veselnitskaya was initially denied an entry visa into the U.S. in 2016. She appealed her situation to the U.S. District Court of New York. She was granted a parole letter allowing her to enter the U.S. on behalf of a client.
So what is the nature, if any — I mean, did she just happen to show up in a congressional hearing where the former Obama ambassador to Russia was under questioning, five days after meeting with Donald Trump Jr.? What’s going on here? What connection is there between Natalia Veselnitskaya and President Obama’s ambassador to Russia? Why would there be any relationship?
She has to get special permission to enter the country for this meeting? Somebody at the U.S. Southern District of New York, the federal court, made this happen. Who was the U.S. attorney then? Why, that would be Preet Bharara. See how we can play the conspiracy game here. That means Chuck Schumer might have been involved. (laughing)
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is Frank in Fresno. Thank you for calling, Frank. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Boy, I better go buy a lottery ticket today ’cause this is my lucky day talking to you, Rush. Twenty year dittos. Let me get right to the point. It’s funny you said Chuck Schumer. I recently saw a photo of Chuck Schumer standing next to Vladimir Putin while Chuck Schumer was holding a drink. This is on a website called Judicial Watch. I find it rather interesting and especially now that you just mention maybe Chuck Schumer might have had something to do with this Russian lawyer.
RUSH: I was trying to illustrate the way conspiracies are put together on the left. But look, it’s an interesting question. This honey pot, Natalia Veselnitskaya, she’s not legally permitted in the country. She has to seek an exception. She gets it from the Feds at the U.S. attorney’s office Southern District of New York. At the time, the U.S. attorney in that district was Preet Bharara, who was a Chuck Schumer aficionado and loyalist.
But this is the woman — we have the British music publicist — have you seen a picture of this guy, by the way, this Rob Goldstone guy? This guy posts selfies of himself all over. He wears Russian general caps with his plaid work shirt. He looks like an absolute goon, one of these crazy people, and he’s obviously seeking fame. The kid involved here is the Michael Buble of Russia. That is the son of the Russian oligarch that this publicist knows. Emin is his name, and Emin was the guy who called Goldstone and says, “Hey, we got somebody that has some really damning information on Hillary. We need to get it to Donald Trump Jr. We got this babe coming over there, and we’d like for Trump Jr. to take a meeting with the babe.”
The babe is the honey pot, this Natalia Veselnitskaya. Well, she can’t legally get into the country at the time. What was she doing in the country anyway? Why was she coming here anyway? She was supposedly banned from the U.S. at the time. So she got a visa or visa extension of some kind from the Obama administration. It seems that she’s connected to Fusion GPS.
There’s a lot to keep track of here. Fusion GPS is intimately involved in the creation of the Trump golden showers dossier, and the honey pot has involvement with those people. That is an interesting side light story to this as well, the Russian dossier and the collusion between Americans and Russians in order for that to happen. And that did not involve collusion with Trump; he was the target of that collusion.
