According to a transcript of a Senate Judiciary Committee interview released this week, notes taken by former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort during the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting refer to “Russian adoptions by American families.”
The notes provide proof that Russia’s adoption policy was discussed during that June 9, 2016 meeting, which members of the Trump campaign attended along with a Russian government lawyer and Russian-American lobbyist.
Portions of notes, which were revealed to Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson during his Aug. 22 Senate Judiciary Committee interview, show no reference to anything resembling collusion.
The DC reports:
Many of the meeting attendees — including Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya — have previously claimed that adoption policy was discussed in the meeting, but no evidence had been made public.
Business Insider first flagged a portion of the transcript which shows Simpson reviewing Manafort’s notes, which he reportedly took on an iPhone.
Simpson, whose firm commissioned the infamous Trump dossier, was showed the notes because at the time of the Trump Tower meeting, he was working with Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist who also attended the meeting.
Simpson’s work with the two Russians dealt directly with the topics that they allegedly discussed with the Trump team.
According to the Senate transcript, Simpson read off several items in the notes, including “Active sponsors of RNC,” “Value in Cyprus as inter,” and “Illici.”
He also identified the phrase “Russian adoptions by American families.”
Trump Jr. and the White House have been under intense scrutiny over the Trump Tower meeting as well as a statement issued to The New York Times back in July for its initial report about the meeting.
In a statement to The Times, the White House called the Trump Tower session “a short introductory meeting.”
“We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up,” the initial statement read.
The statement left out other issues reportedly discussed in the meeting as well as the offer that prompted Trump Jr. to accept it.
After the initial White House statement was released, Trump Jr. acknowledged that the meeting also touched on the issue of the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 sanctions law that blacklists Russian human rights abusers.
Read the full story here.
