On Tuesday, Donald Trump Jr. had caught wind that the New York Times planned to publish an email thread between Robert Goldstone, a British former tabloid writer and entertainment publicist, and Trump Jr. regarding a meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. Within two hours of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange warning Trump Jr. to publish the emails with a statement, Trump Jr. tweeted out the emails with a statement.
Here's my statement and the full email chain pic.twitter.com/x050r5n5LQ
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 11, 2017
The emails giveth and taketh away
To quote the "Daily Show" host: "The emails giveth the presidency, and the emails taketh away." The trump administration has not been having much luck regarding emails ever since the election ended.
Mike Pence was caught also using a private server and a suspicious email server located outside Lancaster, PA. However, Trump Jr.'s statement seems to deny that the meeting was useful at all, in fact, it was in regard to policy set in place to punish Russian officials that took part in the death of a Russian lawyer named Sergei Magnitsky.
Are these emails now a clear indicator that that the Trump Administration has clear ties with the Kremlin? Veselnitskays denies working for the Kremlin and has not been linked to the hacking of Hillary Clinton's campaign chair's emails or the "fake news" push into certain US districts. It has been noted that she may in fact be an insider with top secret information, or a connected individual that somehow got into a room with the upper-tier of the Trump administration.
Trump Jr. also denied that his father knew about the meeting. The New York Times reported that Trump signed off on a statement issued during the meeting by his son. Did Trump involve himself in a cover-up?
Assange's advice
Julian Assange tweeted out why he gave advice about releasing the emails before the Times published them.
(1/3) I argued that his enemies have it--so why not the public? His enemies will just milk isolated phrases for weeks or months...
— Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) July 11, 2017
(2/3) with their own context, spin and according to their own strategic timetable. Better to be transparent and have the full context..
— Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) July 11, 2017
(3/3) but would have been safer for us to publish it anonymously sourced. By publishing it himself it is easier to submit as evidence.
— Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) July 11, 2017
Assange's advice included that the emails would have been best published via an anonymous source, however, the transparency with the statement prevents news sources from isolating statements to use as leverage against him.
With Trump Jr. publishing them himself, he now puts himself at risk in terms of providing evidence in any sort of lawsuit, especially with the emails indicating the Trump administration's enthusiasm and knowledge of Russia's support, which they continue to deny.
With evidence like this surfacing, questions of President Trump's support in Congress are now rising. Will Trump lose Republican support?
