Meeting was amid Russian efforts to get links with Trump campaign


Developments on Day 305 of the Trump Administration:

Another High-Level Trump-Russia Contact Confirmed

Donald Trump Jr. met Alexander Torshin — deputy governor of the Russian Central Bank, a former MP, and an official with close ties to the Kremlin — at a National Rifle Association event in May 2016.

The encounter came as Russia was trying to establish connections with the Trump campaign, following the initiative of a Trump “foreign policy advisor”, George Papadopoulos, to set up a meeting between Donald Trump Sr. and Vladimir Putin.

Last week it was revealed that Donald Trump Sr.’s son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner withheld an e-mail from a Congressional committee of Torshin’s own proposal of a Trump-Putin meeting. The e-mail, with the subject line “Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite”, was circulated to top campaign officials before the proposal of the meeting at the NRA event in Kentucky was turned out.

Trump’s camp did not say if Trump Jr., who was at the event, saw Torshin; however, “a source familiar with the meeting” says the two men were introduced to each other by a third party and had a conversation for a few minutes about their mutual interest in firearms. The source said there was no discussion of the campaign.

Trump Jr.’s attorney Alan Futerfas said his client “was attending an NRA convention and having dinner when an acquaintance asked him to say hello to Torshin and made an introduction. They made small talk for a few minutes and went back to their separate meals.”

The encounter in Kentucky was just over a month after Trump advisor Papadopoulos told a campaign meeting of his idea for a Trump-Putin meeting, following his contact with a London-based academic, Joseph Mifsud, with links to Russian officials. In mid-April, Mifsud offered “thousands of e-mails” damaging to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Soon after the Trump Jr.-Torshin contact, Russia offered the damaging material through intermediaries including an Azerbaijani-Russian billionaire, Aras Agalarov, with business ties to Trump Sr. The channel led to a meeting between Trump Jr., Kushner, and campaign manager Paul Manafort with three Kremlin-linked envoys in June 2016.

See Timeline: Trump-Russia Connections and Clinton’s E-mails


Report: McMaster Says Trump is an “Idiot” and a “Dope”

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster derided Donald Trump’s intelligence at a private dinner with a leading technology CEO, according to “five sources with knowledge of the conversation”.

At a July dinner with Oracle CEO Safra Catz, McMaster said Trump is an “idiot” and a “dope” with the intelligence of a “kindergartner”.

Separately, another source said McMaster had made similarly derogatory comments in private, including that the Trump lacked the necessary brainpower to understand the matters before the National Security Council.

Both Oracle and the Trump administration denied the characterization of the Catz encounter.

“Actual participants in the dinner deny that General McMaster made any of the comments attributed to him by anonymous sources. Those false comments represent the diametric opposite of General McMaster’s actual views,” said Michael Anton, an NSC spokesman.

Oracle Senior Vice President Ken Glueck, who attended the dinner, said the conversation was about China and “none of the statements attributed to General McMaster were said”.

In July, following discontent with Trump’s comments at high-level meetings about Afghanistan and nuclear weapons, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called him “a fucking moron”.

See Upset Over “Moron” Remark, Trump Challenges Tillerson to IQ Contest