Well, contrary to Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s pronouncement, the Case is Not Closed: The Trump Family is Now Attacking GOP Chairman Burr.
Senator Richard Burr’s former colleague, Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, said Thursday morning on Morning Joe that an attack by “someone close” to Donald Trump, Jr would not sit well with Burr.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTSCFK15YMs
Burr is the Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Wednesday he subpoenaed Don Jr. to testify about answers he gave congressional investigators as part of their Russia probe.
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
This is the first time a congressional panel has subpoenaed a member of President Trump’s family, and it’s not sitting well.
Naturally, a person “close to” the Trump family is smearing Burr as subservient to the Democrat Resistance. This has been their tactic throughout the Mueller investigation, which was led by Republicans, not Democrats. Additionally, Bob Mueller himself is a Republican.
A person “close” to Donald Trump Jr. sent a statement out to multiple reporters trying to shame Richard Burr by saying Democrat Mark Warner is his boss, when in reality Warner is a Democrat and thus in the minority in the Senate, and Burr is the actual chairman of the committee.
This “close” person further suggest that this is a “PR stunt” by someone “too cowardly” to stand up to the “resistance Democrats”, but this wild claim is only after they claim that Donald Trump Jr. was “cleared” by the Mueller report.
Burr is hardly part of the resistance. This is the guy who provided the White House back door info about the Russia investigation after a private briefing with Comey.
The Wall Street Journal reported this “someone close” to Don Jr saying:
“When he originally agreed to testify in front of the Senate Intel Committee in 2017, there was an agreement between Don and the Committee that he would only have to come in and testify a single time as long as he was willing to stay for as long as they’d like, which Don did,” a person close to Mr. Trump Jr. said.
“Don continues to cooperate by producing documents and is willing to answer written questions, but no lawyer would ever agree to allow their client to participate in what is an obvious PR stunt from a so-called “Republican” Senator too cowardly to stand up to his boss [Sen.] Mark Warner and the rest of the resistance Democrats on the committee,” this person said.
Person close to @DonaldJTrumpJr on the Senate Intel subooena pic.twitter.com/DayTeYwnKq
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 8, 2019
Burr is hardly subservient to the Democrats- this is the same Senator who reportedly provided back door information to Trump on the Trump Russia investigation, after Burr was briefed privately by then FBI Director James Comey:
Within a week of Comey briefing the “Gang of Eight” congressional leaders about the FBI’s Russia probe in March 2017, Mueller wrote that then-White House Counsel Donald McGahn’s office was in contact with the North Carolina Republican “and appears to have received information about the status of the FBI investigation.”
And then there is the old Trump tactic of using fake names to create media buzz, from John Miller to John Barron. And now, perhaps just “someone close” since the fake names got outed.
“When Donald began using John Baron alias, the joke inside the family was that on the day became the subject of a subpoena, poor Baron would fall ill and die,” Trump biographer wrote in Fortune in 2016.
“He used Baron, and later, Miller, to avoid trouble, float ideas, and even spread gossip about himself. In all these cases he sought to protect and polish the Trump image, or brag in ways that would be unseemly, even for a man who is synonymous with self promotion.”
Trump Jr has already spoken with Senate investigators about Trump business efforts to build a Moscow Trump Tower during the 2016 election and of course, the June Trump Tower 2016 meeting with a Russian agent of the Kremlin, who was acting on behalf of the Russian government, and who promised “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
But during his previous testimony, Donald Trump, Jr claimed he knew very little about Trump Tower Moscow, but former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen said that he briefed Don Jr. and Ivanka on it ten times.
The Trump campaign did not report to authorities any of the 251 contacts they had with Russians during the 2016 election and even the redacted Mueller report established extensive contacts with Russians by the Trump campaign.
Laurence Tribe said the Russia evidence reveals that Donald Trump Jr. committed a crime when he solicited help from the Kremlin, because the law forbids accepting offers or soliciting offers of foreign help.
Burr is not going to run again, so it’s possible that he is free now to actually do the right thing by his country, unlike the rest of his Republican comrades, but it’s also possible this is a stunt, as the Trump family is claiming, but a stunt to investigate the investigators, which is the only investigation into the ongoing attack on our country that Republicans are willing to contemplate.
The Trump family is now attacking a Republican Senator as being a coward for seemingly considering upholding his oath to protect this country. It’s also noted that they consider being a Democrat a slur.
The Trump family is desperate to avoid the truth of their full behavior with the Russians coming out.
Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
