"Making Sense of the Big Wapo Story and the False Statement" : Josh Marshall

[Stuart G]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/making-sense-of-the-big-wapo-story-and-the-false-statement

Talking Points Memo
By Josh Marshall Published August 1, 2017 12:13 pm

Straight news reporters have to work within many important conventions. These both limit the scope of their work but are equally critical to doing that work properly and effectively. I was reminded of this when reading last night’s blockbuster report in The Washington Post.

The kernel of the Post report is a much more total and dramatic report of something we knew more tenuously in near contemporaneous reports a month ago: that President Trump had himself been involved in crafting the original statement that his son Don Jr. released in response to the original New York Times report about his June 2016 meeting with that Russia lawyer. That alone represented a stunning failure on the part of his aides. Since they implicated the President in both the knowledge of those events and whatever misstatements were included in the response to them – something with possibly severe legal implications. What the Post now reports is that not only was Trump the apparently sole author of the false statement – he apparently dictated the copy – but that he overruled his top aides and advisors to construct that false statement.

This is a fact of immense consequence.

Based around that central nugget of news are several other points which become clear on reading. One is the Kushner team’s interest in transparency. This is not credible, to put it mildly. That doesn’t mean the factual account is untrue in its narrow particulars. It may have been Kushner lawyer Abbe Lowell’s strategy with the particular evidence of this meeting or in conversations with the Post for this story. But the global message is hardly credible.

[Nitram]

1. I suspect Kushner has little to lose and a lot to gain by some "selective" transparency.

Kushner was present at the meeting for a relatively short time. He is referring all questions about the meeting to Don Jr's legal team. I think Kushner believes he has grounds for a credible denial that he was deeply involved, and is counting on Don Jr. to take the blame.