Vladimir Putin may be trying to motivate Donald Trump on sanctions by taking down Donald Trump Jr.

| 5:24 pm EDT July 10, 2017
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Throughout all the sheer mayhem of the past forty-eight hours, which has seen Donald Trump Jr. confessing a treasonous meeting with the Kremlin and his own father trying to distance himself from the mess, one key question still stands out to me: how did the New York Times get its hands on this story in the first place? That answer might help inform us of what’s really going on in terms of how Vladimir Putin is continuing to try to manipulate the United States.

The Times says that its story was confirmed by five White House advisers, which goes to show just how eager Trump’s panicked team members are to throw each other under the bus to try to save themselves in the fallout from this bombshell. But the Times doesn’t say where it got the original lead for the story to begin with. And that’s the way it goes; some sources can’t be revealed. But if you look at the circumstances of the meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and the Kremlin, the whole thing feels like a setup by the Kremlin from the start.

Consider this: the Kremlin lured Donald Trump Jr. to this meeting by telling him it had damaging information on Hillary Clinton. But once Junior was at the meeting, the Kremlin rep didn’t give him anything useful, and instead spent the whole time talking about other topics. The only reason for the Kremlin to have initiated this process was so it would have blackmail material on Trump Junior.

Now consider why Vladimir Putin really went to all the trouble of getting his puppet Donald Trump elected: it was to get Russian sanctions lifted, period. Everything else is a sideshow. Putin personally has billions of dollars riding on it, yet after nearly six months of Trump being in office, those sanctions are still in place. Their G20 meeting confirmed that Trump just can’t get it done. So did Russia leak the damaging story about Donald Trump Jr. as a way of motivating Donald Trump Sr. to try harder on those sanctions? That’s the question we need to be examining. If you’re a regular reader, feel free to support Palmer Report