Somebody Has a Helluva Vendetta Going Against Donald Trump Jr.

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Clara Jeffery,
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"You guys were one of the outlets who got singled out to balance the ledger": That's what a former Facebook employee said as we dug into recent news that the platform was throttling traffic to certain publishers, including Mother Jones. It's enraging, and since it happened during our fall fundraising drive, we hope the Mother Jones community will stand up for our fearless journalism and send a message with a donation to support it today.

Albin Lohr-Jones/CNP via ZUMA

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Let’s review:

Days 1-1000: Donald Trump Jr. says he’s never had any contacts with Russians and is offended at the very suggestion.

Day 1001: Faced with evidence of a meeting, Don Jr. admits that he met with a Russian lawyer but says it was about adoptions.

Day 1002: Faced with evidence of what the meeting was really about, Don Jr. admits that the Russian lawyer said she had some great dirt on Hillary Clinton, but says he didn’t know that before the meeting.

Day 1003 (today): Email evidence indicates that he knew exactly what the meeting was about beforehand. Don Jr. lawyers up.

Here’s the latest from the New York Times:

Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.

Don Jr. is no longer responding to these stories via Facebook or Twitter. His attorney’s statement is here.

There’s something crazy going on here, and not just the fact that Don Jr. met with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer. Let’s face it: he’s plenty dumb enough to do something like that. The crazy thing is that someone—or multiple someones—really has it in for Junior. They’ve been releasing information to the New York Times in very, very carefully staged tidbits designed to (a) get Don Jr. to lie on the record, and (b) keep the story going. At this point, Don Jr. has no idea what evidence these folks have, so he has no idea what it’s safe to lie about.

But why? Why is someone going after Don Jr.? He’s not involved with politics and Don Sr. doesn’t seem to rely on him for anything. So why destroy him? Is it just a way of going after Don Sr.? If so, who’s doing it?

POSTSCRIPT: The email was from Rob Goldstone, a music publicist who worked with Donald Trump Sr. to bring the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow. David Corn has the whole story here.