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Contradicting repeated denials from Donald Trump and his team, Newsmax reported on May 14, 2016 that Trump met Russian Ambassador Kislyak at a VIP reception in Washington.
Trump and his aides have repeatedly denied that anyone on Trump’s team, including Trump himself, had any contacts with Russian officials during the presidential campaign.
But according to Newsmax, in an article titled “Putin ‘Pleased’ With Trump,” Kislyak didn’t simply attend Trump’s big foreign policy speech, the Russian ambassador also attended a VIP reception in which he met Trump.
But Trump, after Putin praised him, called the Russian leader “very bright” and a “strong leader.”
“I believe an easing of tensions, and improved relations with Russia — from a position of strength only — is possible, absolutely possible,” Trump said at his foreign-policy speech, in April. “Some say the Russians won’t be reasonable. I intend to find out.”
But on that same day, Trump met with Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, at a VIP reception along with three other foreign ambassadors.
This obscure Newsmax piece was first identified last night by Sarah Kogan.
Keep in mind that Trump is very close to the Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy. So if anybody were to get this story right, it should be Newsmax.
Here are a few of the previous denials from Team Trump:
Nov. 11, 2016: Spokesperson Hope Hicks says “There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.”
Feb. 15, 2017: White House spokesman Sean Spicer says no one on the campaign had any contacts with Russia.
Spicer, during the daily press briefing, was asked whether he could “say definitively that nobody on the Trump campaign, not even General Flynn, had any contact with the Russians before the election?” Spicer replied: “My understanding is that what General Flynn has now expressed is that during the transition period — well, we were very clear that during the transition period, he did speak with the ambassador.” A reporter, following up, reiterated to clarify that the question was about “during the campaign.” Spicer said, “I don’t have any … there’s nothing that would conclude me … that anything different has changed with respect to that time period.”
Feb. 16, 2017: Trump denies any contacts with Russia.
During a wide-ranging press conference at the White House, President Trump said in response to one of many questions about Russia: “Russia is a ruse. I have nothing to do with Russia. Haven’t made a phone call to Russia in years. Don’t speak to people from Russia. Not that I wouldn’t. I just have nobody to speak to. I spoke to Putin twice. He called me on the election. I told you this. And he called me on the inauguration, a few days ago. We had a very good talk, especially the second one, lasted for a pretty long period of time. I’m sure you probably get it because it was classified. So I’m sure everybody in this room perhaps has it. But we had a very, very good talk. I have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge no person that I deal with does. Now, Manafort has totally denied it. He denied it. Now people knew that he was a consultant over in that part of the world for a while, but not for Russia. I think he represented Ukraine or people having to do with Ukraine, or people that — whoever. But people knew that. Everybody knew that.”
Feb. 19, 2017: White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus denies any connections between Trump team and the Russians.
Reince Priebus, White House chief of staff, gave a blanket “no” when asked by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday whether the Trump team had any connections with Moscow. Priebus went on later in the interview to add: “Let me give you an example. First of all, The New York Times put out an article with no direct sources that said that the Trump campaign had constant contacts with Russian spies, basically, you know, some treasonous type of accusations. We have now all kinds of people looking into this. I can assure you and I have been approved to say this — that the top levels of the intelligence community have assured me that that story is not only inaccurate, but it’s grossly overstated and it was wrong. And there’s nothing to it.”
Feb. 20, 2017: White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders issues a blanket denial — no contacts between Team Trump and the Russians.
Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Sanders repeated the denial during a press briefing that the Trump campaign had no contacts with Russian officials during the campaign. “This is a non-story because to the best of our knowledge, no contacts took place, so it’s hard to make a comment on something that never happened.”
And now we find out via Newsmax that not only did Jeff Sessions, Gen. Flynn, Carter Page, Jared Kushner and JD Gordon have contacts with the ubiquitous Russian ambassador, but so did Donald Trump himself.
We know that there are multiple ongoing investigations of the Russia issue. Have any investigators ever spoken to anyone on Team Trump? And if so, did they lie about these contacts? Because that would open them up to obstruction of justice charges.
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