In the latest twist to the Russia/Election 2016 saga, Donald Trump Jr. commented that he attended a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer after being promised compromising information on Hillary Clinton. He claims that he had NO IDEA who he would be meeting with prior to the meeting and thought that he was to meet with someone from connected with his father’s Miss Universe pageant. He thought that this person would be offering information that would be “helpful to his father’s campaign”, but then determined soon after the meeting that it was, in fact, a dead end since he said that lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya’s statements were vague and made little sense, mentioning that the Russians were funding the Democratic National Committee and were supporting his father’s opponent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrr27oe8aXU

Evidently, Trump Jr. spoke out yesterday in response to a New York Times piece that stated that he agreed to meet with the lawyer because she offered to share compromising information on Clinton with him. These developments, according to Trump opponents, add to the speculation that the President’s campaign actively colluded with the Kremlin to win the election last fall. Evidently, there were multiple meetings that took place between Trump Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya. According to a piece in the Daily Mail:

“On Sunday, the Times reported that damaging information on Clinton motivated Trump’s son to set it up, though said it was unclear if Veselnitskaya followed through with that promise.

In a statement given to the Times Sunday, Donald Trump Jr. said he had met with the Russian attorney at the request of an acquaintance.

‘I was asked to have a meeting by an acquaintance I knew from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant with an individual who I was told might have information helpful to the campaign,’ the president’s eldest son said in a statement.

‘I was not told her name prior to the meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to attend, but told them nothing of the substance. We had a meeting in June 2016.”

According to Trump Jr. it was obvious to him in the subsequent meetings that she did not have any meaningful information on Clinton. In the later meetings, Veselnitskaya brought up Russian adoption as an issue and Trump Jr. said that he thought that it was obvious that this had been her agenda all along. On Saturday, Veselnitskaya told the New York Times that nothing about the Presidential campaign had been discussed in her meetings with Trump Jr and that she had never “acted on behalf of the Russian government”.

Veselnitskaya is the wife of the former deputy transportation minister and is best known for her attacks on American sanctions that are aimed at Russian human rights abusers. Trump Jr. also reportedly asked his brother in law Jared Kushner to stop by during one of his meetings with Veselnitskaya along with former Trump associate Paul Manafort. She is indeed a colorful figure, and she seems to have a stake in the issue of the adoption of Russian children by American parents, which seems to have been the true motive for her meetings with Trump Jr.

For now, I am afraid that this particular Russian association has led to a big, fat, dead end for those who would pillory the Trump family for their association with Russia, right, wrong or indifferent. Sometimes people have their own agendas, and sometimes it doesn’t fit the political narrative.