BOMBSHELL: Trump Campaign Emails Show Repeated Efforts To Set Up Russia Meetings
Drip…drip… drip…
Trump campaign emails, according to a bombshell new report by The Washington Post, reveal repeated attempts by campaign staffers to set up meetings with Russians.
For example, just “three days after Donald Trump named his campaign foreign policy team in March 2016, the youngest of the new advisers sent an email to seven campaign officials with the subject line: ‘Meeting with Russian Leadership – Including Putin.'”
That adviser, whose name is George Papadopoulos, offered to set up “a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss US-Russia ties under President Trump” the emails reveal.
Papadopoulos also told his colleague on the Trump campaign that his Russian contacts welcomed the opportunity to meet and discuss how Trump would change U.S. – Russia relations.
In fact, the details of the report suggest that Papadopoulos could have been a Russian plant in the Trump campaign.
One email sent on April 27 said, “Putin wants to host the Trump team when the time is right.”
However, the emails also reveal that not all Trump campaign staffers were supportive of setting up meetings with the Russians. In fact, they warned of the dangers of such communications.
According to The Washington Post, “The proposal sent a ripple of concern through campaign headquarters in Trump Tower. Campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis wrote that he thought NATO allies should be consulted before any plans were made. Another Trump adviser, retired Navy Rear Adm. Charles Kubic, cited legal concerns, including a possible violation of U.S. sanctions against Russia and of the Logan Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from unauthorized negotiation with foreign governments.”
The emails were part of over 20,000 pages of documents that the Trump campaign handed over to the congressional committees that are investigating the Russia case.
Papadopoulos made at least half a dozen similar attempts throughout the campaign to set up meetings with Rusian officials and the Trump campaign.
As The Washington Post notes, “Papadopoulos emerges from the sample of emails as a new and puzzling figure in the examination of the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian officials and their proxies during the 2016 election, now the subject of a special-counsel investigation. Less than a decade out of college, Papadopoulos appeared to hold little sway within the campaign, and it is unclear whether he was acting as an intermediary for the Russian government, although he told campaign officials he was.”
Read the full Washington Post report here.
