The Golden Email

The Candy Man’s Email:  Trump spent Monday deflecting attention from Don Jr, Kushner and Manafort’s meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.  He tweet smacked Chelsea Clinton and retweeted an erroneous Fox and Friends report that former FBI Director Comey’s “leaked” meeting notes contained classified materials.  He sent Kelly Anne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders out to say that the meeting was no biggie and had them attack Hillary’s campaign for meeting with Ukrainian officials. As Trump tweeted, more and more details about the meeting with Natalia emerged. The meeting was set up by a cast of characters very familiar to both Trump and Don Jr.  It was brokered by Rob Goldstone, a publicist and friend of Don Jr, who approached Don Jr on behalf of Emin Agalarov, a Russian rock star, whose father Aras is a Russian real estate oligarch, who like all Russian oligarchs owes his wealth to Putin.  Aras Agalarov hosted Trump’s 2013 Moscow Miss Universe Contest. Before the election he had  licensed the rights to build the now on hold Trump Tower Moscow.  Last night citing three sources the New York Times revealed the most SCRUMDIDILYUMPTIOUS detail and the likely reason that Trump spent his day frenetically tweeting and deflecting.  Before organizing the now infamous meeting, Goldstone sent Don Jr an email saying that Natalia had compromising information about Hillary Clinton that was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy.  Don Jr took the bait.  The meeting took place.  Don Jr says they only discussed adoptions. Trump says he only learned about the meeting over the weekend.  Putin of course denies knowing Natalia, and Natalia denies everything else. One month after the meeting WikiLeaks started releasing the DNC emails.  And the rest is history.         

The Golden Ticket:  Don Jr now has a golden ticket, it doesn’t get him a life time supply of Wonka bars but it does get him an invitation to join the other Trumpa-loompas testifying in front of various and sundry Senate and House committees and spending some quality time with Special Counsel Mueller.  Today, like almost everyone else who worked on the Trump campaign, he lawyered up by hiring Alan Futerfas,  a New York based criminal  attorney specializing in white collar crime.  Futerfas has represented a number of interesting characters including a few mobsters, a woman who trafficked cocaine out of her Queens Pizzeria and, my favorite, a Russian man who created computer malware to steal millions of dollars from bank accounts. Like his father, Don Jr spent the day tweet smacking,  Futerfas has his hands full.       

More Fizzy Lifting Drinks:  The Senators are back from holiday and ready to take another stab at passing Trumpcare.  Majority Leader McConnell has a new draft but doesn’t plan to release it until Thursday morning.  He’s hoping to get a new scoring report after the weekend in order to push forward with a vote by the end of next week.  The newest version is expected to include the Senator Cruz amendment allowing states to sell stripped down policies, health savings accounts, more money for opioid treatment and probably a few chocolate eggs for recalcitrant Senators.  As of now the chasm between conservatives and the so-called moderates appears insurmountable with up to ten Senators expressing serious reservations but McConnell isn’t done yet, Trump is desperately tweeting for everyone to jump onboard the really beautiful plan and Pence is calling around threatening to ask for a straight repeal of Obamacare if Trumpcare doesn’t get enough votes.  The success of that strategy is even more unlikely.  

The clock is ticking.