people were open to a soft pitch, you have jared kushner leaving the meeting after 7 minutes. paul manafort work away on his blackberry. the meeting ending inconclusively. if it were an fsb operation be it obviously failed. as a government official and private citizen, over the years i talked to cia, fbi counter-intelligence people on any number of occasions when they asked me about people who contacted me. it comes in all different shapes and sizes. the meeting shouldn t have taken place. when they got the email it should have been sent to the campaign counsel. i think that would have stopped it right there. but for god s sake. at some point you have to ask what precisely is it they have done so far that we know of that they have done wrong? have they mishandled the communications strategy dealing with it? sure.
could it potentially fit that strategy or not? john: i think the russians and chinese will try anything they can think of to gain access to key decision makers for all kinds of purposes. that s why this debate, those who say this was fits the pattern of a classic fsb operation. others say it looks like a bunch of much clowns trying to organize a clown convention. this is the world of counter intelligence. this is why people develop paranoia trying to determine whether somebody is a double agent or a mole. we don t know enough about any of this to come to a conclusion. the real issue is what exactly this lawyer, the lady who came to talk about had in mind.