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Donald Trump Jr.’s deposition is filled with his inability to “recall” whether or not he was involved at all in the deals and moves being made to bring together Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration. One might say he pleads ignorance to most questions asked of him by attorneys. And even though the words “ignorance” and “Donald Trump Jr.,” go together like peanut butter and chocolate, Junior possibly being a liar is more believable.
In documents and video obtained by Mother Jones, Donald Trump Jr. seems to have lied or at the very least mislead, prosecutors when he was asked about knowing close Melania Trump friend, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who raised concerns about the price-gouging the Trump organization was participating in when the Trump hotel was charging the Inaugural Committee “twice the market rate for event space.” According to Racine, the committee’s deal with the hotel ended up being well above market rates.
During his deposition, Trump Jr. was asked about Winston Wolkoff: “Do you know her?” He replied, “I know of her. I think I’ve met her, but I don’t know her. If she was in this room I’m not sure I would recognize her.” He added, “I had no involvement with her.”
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, you might remember, is the former senior adviser to Melania Trump. She’s the lady who wrote the tell-all memoir about her time with the former first lady. Mother Jones has video from inauguration night of Junior telling a camera how great Winston Wolkoff is, and they also have text exchanges showing that Winston Wolkoff and Junior likely spoke on the phone a bit, and emails from Trump Jr. to Winston Wolkoff asking about helping out with inauguration festivities. Winston Wolkoff didn’t comment on Junior’s testimony but she told Mother Jones that: “I did not think it was right for the Trump Family or the Trump Family’s businesses to be financially profiting from the presidential inauguration. It was a gross mismanagement of funds and an abuse of authority, and I made it very clear to people in the Trump Family and the inauguration committee how I felt.”
The video where Trump Jr. is praising Winston Wolkoff also happens to be at an inauguration event that Junior also didn’t recall attending. Video evidence says he definitely attended it. Most of Junior’s testimony is evasive. Many of the questions directed at him were about private Trump organization events that seem to have likely been paid for, or in part funded by, the Trump Inauguration Committee—something that would be the definition of self-dealing. Prosecutors have receipts for all of these expenditures and whether or not it matters if Junior is lying or simply an ignoramus, will be a legal question decided by the courts (hopefully).
To be clear, the Republican Party is fully complicit in self-dealing under the guise of self-promotion. And both the Trumps and the GOP use made-up cultural changes to try and obfuscate the real issues of their corruption and impotence as leaders. But lawyers don’t care about your incitements to overthrow the government on Fox News when they are investigating whether or not you stole money.
Here’s Trump Jr. talking about how great a person he told lawyers he didn’t really know was, at an event he couldn’t recall attending.
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