THREAD: Last night’s big bombshell—that, according to Michael Cohen, Trump knew about and approved the June 9 meeting before it happened—is just more confirmation of something we already suspected. (1/13) cnn.com/2018/07/26/pol…
Since almost as soon as the June 9 meeting was disclosed, it’s been obvious that Trump knew, and not just because he, y’know, ran his campaign and signed off on all of its big decisions. (2/13) themoscowproject.org/dispatch/trump…
On June 7, hours after his son set a date for the meeting, Trump made an announcement: He was “going to give a major speech on probably Monday”—that is, June 11—about “all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons.” (3/13) newsweek.com/did-president-…
That speech never materialized—perhaps because, as Don Jr. said in his congressional testimony, the Trump team’s attendees didn’t feel the dirt they received was immediately actionable. (4/13) documentcloud.org/documents/4464…
In Don Jr.’s testimony, we also learned that, between calls to Emin Agalarov setting up the meeting, Don Jr. also had a call with a blocked number. (5/13) cnn.com/2018/05/17/pol…
Don Jr. said he didn’t remember who it was, and congressional Republicans refused to follow up with a subpoena. Why? Maybe because, as many people have noted, Trump uses a blocked number. (6/13) washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-lin…
Trump wasn’t in the meeting himself, but, according to CNN, he was in Trump Tower that afternoon when it was happening. (7/13) cnn.com/2017/07/11/pol…
When news about the meeting eventually came out, Trump reportedly personally dictated his son’s first, completely misleading statement, which said the meeting was just about “adoptions.” (8/13) washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…
That's an odd move for somebody who didn’t know anything about the meeting until it began to come out in the news, as Trump initially claimed. (9/13) reuters.com/article/us-usa…
By the way, Cohen’s not the first one to come forward saying Trump knew about the meeting: Sam Nunberg said back in March that he believed Trump knew about it, even citing Trump’s remarks from June 7. (10/13) cnn.com/videos/politic…
So did Steve Bannon, who said that “the chance that Don Jr. did not walk these jumos up to his father’s office on the twenty-sixth floor is zero.” (11/13) theguardian.com/us-news/2018/j…
Heck, it’s not even the first time Cohen’s suggested Trump knew—he’s been hinting for a while that he knew something important about June 9. (12/13)
We’re still waiting to find out how Cohen backs up his claims. But the basic fact—that Trump knew about the June 9 meeting before it happened—has been evident almost as long as we’ve known about the meeting itself. (13/13) cnn.com/2018/07/26/pol…
