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One of the advantages of having no one in the room, and confiscating the Translators Notes, is that you can talk about anything you want with foreign heads of state, and no one is the wiser.
You can even concoct Cover-stories about your other secret meetings, so that all the ‘players’ can get on the same page with regards to their respective alibis. Something which it now appears the Donald and Vlad ‘conspired’ about in the Hamburg G20 Summit, 18 months ago.
The disturbing timeline of events surrounding the first Trump-Putin meeting
[July 7, 2017] — Secret chat
Then, on the evening of July 7, during a formal dinner in Hamburg, Trump walked up to Putin, and the two talked “privately and animatedly” for almost an hour, Ian Bremmer, the head of political risk consultancy Eurasia, said at the time, citing world leaders who had been present at the dinner.
The content of that conversation, which was kept secret for days, is even more opaque than what was said during the scheduled meeting. Besides the two presidents, the only other person present was Putin’s translator.
[...]
July 8 — Statement to the Times
While flying back to Washington from the Hamburg summit, the president dictated a statement to aides regarding the Trump Tower meeting. He claimed attendees discussed an adoption program of Russian children by American families, and that the presidential campaign didn’t come up, an assertion that was later repeated by Veselnitskaya. Trump’s statement was sent to the Times, signed by Don Jr.
Later it was revealed that the meeting was scheduled because the Russian lawyer wanted to provide the Trump campaign with dirt on Hillary Clinton, as part of Kremlin-backed efforts to help Trump win the election.
[...]
So here are the covert steps: Have a secret chat or two, between adversarial heads of state. Have no witnesses other than a translator. Agree upon what the [Trump Tower] Cover-story should be. And dictate to your respective ‘players’ what their Cover-story is. Have them repeat it before the press, until it becomes ‘common knowledge’.
Easy. Easy as Russian collusion.
Except for one little fly in the ointment — the blabbermouth who can’t keep all his Lies straight ...
Why is everyone talking about Russian adoptions?
Trump has characterized the conversation with Putin, which happened at a G20 dinner without any aides present, as "pleasantries," but he confirmed adoptions came up.
"(Melania) was sitting next to Putin and somebody else, and that's the way it is. So the meal was going, and toward dessert I went down just to say hello to Melania, and while I was there I said hello to Putin," Trump
told The New York Times. "Really, pleasantries more than anything else. It was not a long conversation. ...
Just talked about -- things. Actually, it was very interesting,
we talked about adoption."
“We just talked, we just talked about ‘things’ … We just talked about adoptions.”
Dooh! Enough to make any GRU spy-master want to quit the game …
The game of rolling back Sanctions and getting back to ‘global business’ — unimpeded by human rights and laws, and international standards, and stuff ...
Donald Trump Jr.’s Russia Meeting Was Allegedly About the Magnitsky Act. What the Hell Is the Magnitsky Act?
It’ll be at the heart of much-anticipated congressional testimony on Thursday.
by Hannah Levintova and Dan Friedman, motherjones.com — July 27, 2017
[...]
Two weeks after President Barack Obama signed the Magnitsky Act, Putin retaliated by blocking adoptions of Russian children by US citizens. Between 1999 and 2012, American parents had adopted 46,113 Russian children, according to the State Department.
Since Putin’s move, many Russians advocating for repeal of the Magnitsky Act have described their goal as resolving the adoption impasse.
[...]
In this context, Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer tied to Putin allies, brought up adoptions during a June 2016 meeting with Trump Jr., President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chair Paul Manafort. Trump Jr. originally claimed the parties in the meeting “mostly talked about adoptions,” though he was forced later to admit he took the meeting hoping to receive damaging information on Clinton supplied by the Russian government. Veselnitskaya has denied that she was acting on behalf of the Russian government to collude with the Trump campaign, saying that she simply discussed the Magnitsky Act and adoption.
Putin himself seems to have used a similar rhetorical approach in a conversation with President Trump, not initially disclosed by the White House, at the G-20 Summit earlier this month. Trump described that meeting in an interview with the New York Times. It was unclear from his description if he fully understood the tie between adoptions and sanctions.
“It was very interesting,” Trump said. “We talked about adoption.”
He added, “I always found that interesting. Because, you know, he ended that years ago. And I actually talked about Russian adoption with him, which is interesting because it was a part of the conversation that Don [Jr.] had in that meeting.”
Funny how both Don Jr and Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya, (and others in attendance too), all started chiming-in that the Trump Tower meeting was just about restoring “Russian Adoptions”. Nothing else.
IOW, they all got on the same page — but quick.
One problem though: anybody with half a brain about US-Russian history and diplomacy, knows that “Russian Adoptions” is simply another word for “Lifting the Sanctions”, and for rolling-back the Magnitsky Act.
So much for the best-made plans, done behind closed-doors, beyond prying diplomatic eyes.
And one other recent problem, too:
That Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya, renown for working for Putin allies, was recently charged with Obstruction of US Justice. It appears she is perfectly willing to doctor the evidence, if it means that the company at the heart of the Magnitsky Act story, gets away with their graft and corruption.
And Russian state-sanctioned murder.
Ooops. So much for Russian ‘Player 1’ — no more grandstanding in US Courtrooms for you, Natalya.
It seems that “Russian Adoptions” Cover-story really didn’t put your illicit activities to rest, after all.
Too bad. So SAD.
Onward, to ‘US Player 1’, ‘US Player 2’ and so forth. Let the Justice proceedings begin, in earnest.
The American People deserve to hear the whole story.
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