Going back a few days, Michael Isikoff at Yahoo News reported that the Donald Trump, Jr. emails were first discovered by Jared Kushner's legal team during the third week in June as they went through his records to correct the omissions on his contacts with foreign agents in his security clearance application. According to Isikoff, Jared's lawyers met with the FBI on June 21 to provide the omitted foreign contacts information.

The FBI were told the fact that Kushner met the Russians on June 21 when he updated his SF-86 security clearance form to disclose that and many other meetings.

The FBI interviewed Jared personally on June 23. As the June 9, information was new, and involved a meeting with a Russian lawyer, I think it's fair to assume he was questioned about the meeting. But, how did he answer? Since he is presumably still under investigation, perhaps not satisfactorily, but that's my speculation.

Moving forward to a few days ago, Trump told the media not once but twice he just learned about the Russian meeting with his son, son-in-law, Manafort, Russian lawyer and Russian lobbyist a "few days ago" after the media published it.

Trump told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that he learned just “a couple of days ago” that Donald Jr. had met with the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, hoping to receive information that “would incriminate Hillary” and was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

Trump repeated that assertion in a talk with reporters on Air Force One on his way to Paris Wednesday night. “I only heard about it two or three days ago,” he said, according to a transcript of his talk.

But stepping back in time to June 7, 2016, the New York Times reported last week:

At 6:14 p.m. on June 7, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. clicked the send button on an email to confirm a meeting with a woman described as a “Russian government attorney” who would give him “information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia.”

Three hours later, his father, Donald J. Trump, claimed victory in the final primary races propelling him to the Republican presidential nomination and a general election contest against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In his victory speech, Mr. Trump promised to deliver a major address detailing Mrs. Clinton’s “corrupt dealings” to give “favorable treatment” to foreign governments, including “the Russians.”

Donald Trump Jr., said this past week he never told his father about the meeting. According to the New York Times article, the White House said the timing was a coincidence.

This is a coincidence? (At 7 minutes in.)

More from the Times article:

[Trump, Jr.] said Mr. Kushner left the meeting within 10 minutes, while Mr. Manafort spent most of the time looking at his phone. Mr. Trump said he did not mention the meeting to his father. “There was nothing to tell,” he said. “It was literally just a wasted 20 minutes, which was a shame.”

Isikoff reports Trump's personal lawyer and the lawyer for the Trump Org., Marc Kasowitz and Alan Garten, were both told quickly.

But the sources told Yahoo News that Marc Kasowitz, the president’s chief lawyer in the Russia investigation, and Alan Garten, executive vice president and chief legal officer of the Trump Organization, were both informed about the emails in the third week of June, after they were discovered by lawyers for Kushner, who is now a senior White House official.

Donald Jr. lawyered up on June 27th, when the Trump campaign paid NYC attorney Alan Futerfas $50,000., according to an FEC campaign report filed this weekend. This was just six days after Kushner's legal team found and turned over the details of the meeting to the FBI, via the amended security form, four days after Kushner was interviewed by the FBI (for the second time) and a week before the New York Times broke the story on July 8th.

On Monday, June 13, Trump made no speech about Hillary. On Wednesday, June 15, the hacked DNC emails were released by someone identifying himself as Gucifer. Later in the summer, Wikileaks joined the publishing party. Did Goldstone get played by the Russians? I wouldn't doubt it. He was so excited about the meeting he posted his time of arrival at Trump Tower on Facebook -- Thursday, June 9 at 3:12 p.m. Who does that for a secret meeting with someone he believes is a Russian government lawyer providing dirt on an election rival?

Still, it seems likely to me the ultimate source of the whole Russia story meeting was Jared's legal team, and intentionally or not, they threw a whole lot of people under the investigation bus, including Donald Trump, Sr. and Donald Trump, Jr. It seems they timely warned the other lawyers, but how do you unring that bell? No wonder Jamie Gorelick, who represents Kushner in his conflicts of interest and security clearance matters, has recused herself from representing him in the Russia criminal investigation, turning it over to the highly experienced, top criminal defense lawyer Abbe Lowell (whom I last followed extensively during his representation of John Edwards in his criminal trial.) Gorelick says she informed Kushner there could be a conflict because Bob Mueller, who had been a partner at her firm, took some firm lawyers with him when he was appointed to lead the Russia investigation, but I'm not buying that's the whole reason.

I hope Abbe makes a zillion dollars from Kushner (so long as it's Kushner, the Trump Campaign and its donors who pay, not the federal government or the taxpayers.) As for why the campaign can pay legal fees, I've read that it's because Trump filed his notice of intent to seek re-election a day or so after the November 9, election, which allows the campaign to continue its existence, and campaigns are allowed to pay legal fees for campaign workers/employees investigated for misconduct during the course of the campaign. I have no idea if that's true, but it makes some sense to me.

I also think it's likely Jared is viewed as a linchpin if not a principal focus of the criminal investigation. For one thing, it was Jared who hired (and worked with) Brad Parscale, the San Antonio website developer with no prior political campaign experience. Parscale confirmed this week on his Twitter account that he has agreed to be interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee which is investigating Russia's involvement/interference in the election. Here's McClatchy's report on that tie-in. But that's a blog post of its own, and this post is long enough.

Also a blog post of its own: Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer, and Rinat Akhmetshin, the supposed former Russian military official with intelligence links, but I'll elaborate a little here.

Why would Goldstone refer to the Russian lawyer as a "government lawyer" or "crown prosecutor" when emailing with Donald Trump, Jr? Is that how Trump pal and musical performer Emin (the son of a Russian oligarch and P.R. client of Goldstone's) described him? Was it because she's said to be close to the real life Russian "attorney general", named Yury Chaika? No answers yet.

Also somehow figuring into this mess: Republican senator Charles Grassley has been asking for for information on Rinat Ahmetshin and Natalia Veselnitskaya's client Prevezon since at least March 31, 2017. See Grassley's press release and letter and especially scroll down to the sources in the letter's footnotes).

Briefly, as I understand it, Prevezon was a defendant in a $230 million civil fraud lawsuit DOJ brought alleging that a Russian businessman named Denis Katsyv "used some of the Magnitsky funds, after they were laundered through European banks, to buy real estate in Manhattan". The case was headed to trial when DOJ, in May, 2017, mysteriously settled it (shortly after Preet Bahara left) for a paltry sum of $6 million. The second amended complaint is here.

And just days ago, Grassley issued a press release and letter demanding to know why lawyer Veselnitskaya was even in the country in June, 2016 to meet with Donald, Jr. and Kushner and Manafort, when by her own statements, her request to extend her visa in January, 2016 was denied. (I've seen some articles stating she got some kind of secret (i.e.not officially documented) extension so she could remain in the country for the trial of her client, Prevezon, but I would think Grassley would know that, so maybe that's not true.)

Also curious, the Sunday Times UK reports in Rob Goldstone, the UK link in Trump's Russian mire; A flamboyant publicist and the president's son are now at the heart of the Moscow scandal, July 16, 2017, subscription only (Thanks again, Lexis!):

Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer viewed by the CIA as a proxy for President Vladimir Putin. She is reported to have powerful Russian clients and had a role in the Kremlin's unsuccessful efforts to persuade Congress to repeal the Obama-era law penalising top Russian officials blamed for the death in jail of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who had exposed high-level fraud. (my emphasis)

Back to lawyers: I'd like to be a fly on the wall during the conversations between Abbe Lowell and Alan Futerfas.

I think Donald Trump needs to put a muzzle on his personal lawyers and advisors. Jay Sekolow goofed up this weekend. He claimed the Secret Service should have vetted Donald Trump Jr.,'s guests at the Russia meeting. But Trump, Jr. didn't have secret service protection at the time. Corey Lewandowski said said Trump was in Florida the day of the meeting (June 9.) Turns out that's wrong too. He was in Florida on June 7 giving his victory speech promising a speech with new negative Hillary news on Monday or Tuesday, but he was in Trump Tower all day on June 9th, the day of the meeting .... he didn't go to Florida again until June 11.

Oh the tangled web we weave, indeed. This article from Radio Free Europe is very interesting, and if true, bad for Donald Trump, Jr.:

But in an interview with AP on July 14, Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist and former Soviet military officer, said he was present at the meeting when Russian lawyer Natalya Veselnitskaya told Trump Jr. that people tied to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and illegally supporting Clinton's campaign.

Akhmetshin said Veselnitskaya brought with her a plastic folder with printed-out documents that detailed what she believed was the flow of illicit funds to the Democrats.

Veselnitskaya presented the contents of the documents to Trump Jr. and suggested that making the information public could help the campaign, he told AP. "This could be a good issue to expose how the DNC is accepting bad money," Akhmetshin recalled Veselnitskaya saying.

I could be wrong, but I sense the hand of the Russian Government playing the Trump clan like a fiddle. When have any Russians, let alone lawyers, lobbyists acting for or against the Russian government or supposed former intelligence agents, been so free with their comments to so many media outlets about such a serious matter as Russia's potential interference in our election? Someone seems to be telling them what to say, and too many people who didn't follow instructions have ended up dead. As for this just being a case of inexperienced Trump children playing "opposition research", that's most unlikely. Anyone with even a modicum of a moral compass would know they should have picked up the phone to call law enforcement when they got the first message from Goldstone.

My final thought for now: What began during the infamous ride down (rather than up) the Trump Plaza escalator in Manhattan as a cheap imitation of Dynasty may in reality turn out to be more like "The Beverly Hillbillies go to Washington."

Memo to the Trump Clan: Money may buy the support of unhappy, marginalized, under-informed, often bigoted voters living in rural parts of America, but it doesn't buy class, decency, or the respect of anyone else, here or abroad.