The Trump Tower meeting is the reference point from which everything associated with the Trump/Russia connection makes sense
Eric LaMont Gregory
Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!
The ever expanding Russian connection to Donald Trump
Donald Trump had a scheduled charity event to attend at approximately 1 pm on the afternoon of the 9th of June 2016. He departed Trump Tower just before one o'clock, hurriedly attended the charity event (to the chagrin of the charity event organizers) and return to his office some 45 minutes later, just after 1:35 pm.
Trump returned to his office, engaged the office-to-office communication system and listened intently to the conversations taking place a floor beneath his own in a conference room adjacent to the office of his son, Donald Trump Jr. Whether Donald Trump was alone in his office is a subject of intense interest. However, it is suggested that the future vice president and a current female White House aide were in attendance.
The existence of the means for Donald Trump to ease drop on meetings in other offices within his corporate headquarters is extremely well documented in a seemingly endless series of depositions associated with court actions Donald Trump has been involved in since 1973, books written about Donald Trump and numerous newspaper and magazine articles. In addition, there are the multiple tape recordings of the June 9th meeting, not the least of which is the recording made by the translator to enable him to produce a transcript of the meeting.
The remaining recordings were made by other attendees for their own purposes. The day will come when those transcripts and recordings and will be available to investigators and inevitably into the public domain.
The reason Donald Trump rushed back to his office was that he understood the content of emails received by his son that those members of his campaign staff and family assembled in his son's office conference room in Trump Tower were to be given potentially damaging information about his presumed opponent in the race for the White House, Hillary Clinton.
In the murky world of espionage one should approach the truthfulness of the information provided under such circumstances with caution. The "I love it" comment by Trump's son indicates that no such caution was being exercised by the Trump entourage.
The current investigation by the Justice Department is to elucidate exactly what the "it" is, in Trump's son's "I love it" statement. Trump had learned from a series of emails between his son and individuals in Russian President Putin's orbit that the Russian Government suggested that it had complied potentially damaging information about Clinton that would assist Donald Trump's election campaign effort.
Investigators are considering the possibility that Donald Trump personally attended, at least, part of the June 9th meeting, and that he had discussions with some (if not all) of the foreign participants, with whom he has long associations, after the meeting.
Soliciting or receiving anything of value from a foreign source by a campaign organization is contrary to the laws of the United States concerning the conduct of elections.