John Podesta Slams Trump Jr.’s Russia Meeting: “Starting To Smell More And More Like Collusion”

Former Clinton campaign chair John Podesta slammed the reported meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russia-linked lawyer, saying it’s starting to look like the Trump campaign was actively working with the Russians to take down Hillary Clinton in last year’s presidential election.

“It’s drip, drip, drip. We keep learning more information. The story keeps changing,” Podesta said. “Now it is clear that they had a specific meeting to gather dirt on Hillary with a Russian lawyer with close ties to the Kremlin.”

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Podesta said:

The story, again, keeps changing. We never knew about that meeting that Mr. Kushner attended earlier. Donald Trump Jr. said that he specifically went to the meeting with the hopes of soliciting negative information about Hillary. It’s starting to smell more and more like collusion to, I think, the public. But most importantly, we really need to get the facts straight on this.

The former Clinton campaign chairman also responded to the latest Republican talking point that the meeting between Trump’s son and the Kremlin-connected lawyer was simply an attempt to gain opposition research on Clinton.

Podesta laughed off the suggestion that this was politics as usual:

When a foreign national is coming in with that kind of information, you have to ask your lawyers. And I think one of the things they would say to you is that you cannot receive something of value from a foreign national. … I wonder why Donald Trump Jr. thought it was perfectly okay to go ahead and take this meeting with someone who’s been operating on behalf of Russian interests. 

The former Clinton campaign chairman’s reaction to the news of Trump Jr.’s meeting comes days after Donald Trump posted an unhinged tweet attacking Podesta when he should’ve been preparing for his high-stakes meeting with Vladimir Putin:

Not willing to let the president’s nonsense go unanswered, Podesta – who had nothing to do with the DNC at that time – took to his own Twitter page to post a series of posts. Among them was one in which Podesta told Trump to “get a grip.”

As Podesta said on Monday, each day brings another “drip” of information that pushes the Trump campaign and the Russians closer together and increases the likelihood that there was some level of collusion between the president’s campaign and Moscow.

From Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner to Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, among others, it appears that nearly everybody in Trump’s inner circle – even members of the president’s family – were meeting with the Russians during the campaign.

Instead of attacking Hillary Clinton and members of her campaign, perhaps the president’s team can get their story straight.

Sean Colarossi

Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.