https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Tower_meeting
So to me "part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump" might be a slight tip off that it was official and the Russian government. Indeed, it appears to meet all three of the criteria you gave.
I just did a read-through of the Wiki page, at any rate, don't have time to do more thorough research. So yes on its face that one email to Don Jr looks like it says exactly what you're claiming: the Russian government is supporting Trump's campaign. It's hard to argue with the interpretation of that line. What's missing is the broader context: why is a music publicist writing such a thing, and in a semi-casual tone as if to imply passing messages along from the Kremlin to a presidential candidate is just another Wednesday for him? Who is this guy, anyhow? His *music client* has well-positioned family in Russia (is a crown prosecutor "part of the Russian government" in the sense that he takes orders from Putin and the KGB?)...so what does that make him in all this? Is he some kind of information broker and his 'music business' is a front for information clearing? Who the heck knows, but it kind of matters. Because if he really is just a music publicist then I wouldn't put stock in how he frames things. Especially since it would appear that the message wasn't legit, from what Don Jr finally had to admit. It looks like the real reason the meeting was arranged was to get Trump on board with reversing the Magnitsky Act, or something to that effect. They apparently came in only having that as their agenda. And the "they" in question are a couple of political hit-men who by the looks of it sell their services to the highest bidder, based on their employment track record. Here is a bit on the "Russian lawyer" supposedly working for the Russian government according to this argument:
Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer best known in the United States for lobbying against the Magnitsky Act. According to The New York Times, in Moscow she is regarded as a "trusted insider" who has argued cases for government agencies and high-profile clients including Pyotr Katsyv, an official in the state-owned Russian Railways, and his son Denis, whom she defended against a money laundering charge in New York.[28][29] She has also been an informant in active communication with Yury Chaika, the Russian prosecutor general, since 2013.[21] Starting in 2014, she had worked with Fusion GPS, the firm that was later hired to do opposition research on Trump, to investigate an unrelated money-laundering case involving Prevezon Holding, and the "dirt" she brought with her to the meeting stemmed from that work.
[bold is mine]
So she was working with groups like Fusion GPS prior to this. Just a reminder for those who don't know:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_GPSFusion GPS was hired in 2012 to do opposition research on U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
[...]
In August 2015, Planned Parenthood retained Fusion GPS to defensively investigate the veracity of a series of undercover videos released by anti-abortion activists David Daleiden[...]
[...]
In September 2015, Fusion GPS was hired by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative political website, to do opposition research on Trump and other Republican presidential candidates[...]
It's unclear exactly whether Fusion GPS is strictly an anti-Republican hit group, since potentially they're just for-hire mercenaries who will do opposition research on whoever. And it's very likely anyone working with them is likewise a 'for the highest bidder' free agent. So this is who came to Trump with information, but in reality was trying to do the dirty work of a bunch of rich Russians who got screwed over. Now does this mean she "works for the Russian government"? But that's not how these things work. She's a contractor, doing a job and trying to get something done. Most likely Russians of various stripes, including government, including industrialists, employ people like her, just as American political groups and private parties make use of her skills as well. In old fashioned terms you could call her a double or triple agent, but in reality she's just a business person getting paid by whoever is offering.
The other person present has a case I could present like this one, but I think you get the idea.
Now you could ask who put them up to this: was it Putin himself? The rich Russians? Can a neat line separate these anyhow? Things are not so simple as that. LR, considering the email you quoted was, in fact, almost entirely a ruse, I'm not sure how any claims made in it could be evidence of anything. Now I'll give you this: it may be evidence that Jon Jr did in fact think he was getting information courtesy of the Russian government. But he was neither actually doing that, nor was there information to be had.
Morally I'd put this up there with any type of opposition research (which truthfully it was): they want dirt to smear on their opponent, and aren't too concerned where it comes from. If the email said it was coming from Finland I doubt he'd have been any less interested. So I'm not thrilled that
anyone engages in this type of smearing in the first place, or pays for it, etc. But legally it looks like trying to bust someone for buying cocaine when in fact it was sugar in bags, which as far as I understand it is not prosecutable or criminal. In other words,
thinking you're committing a crime is not in fact a crime if you're not actually doing anything wrong (even though it has full moral implications). So wouldn't you agree that Don Jr being suckered into
thinking he was getting Russian goodies is not in fact illegal if he was not getting any such goodies and if they did not in fact exist (or at least weren't at that meeting)? Now you could call him a shady character and I'd back you up on that. Then again we're talking about people in big real estate who do business in casinos and in Russia, so it's hard to imagine those kinds of people as being nice and upstanding. But more to the point, accepting some dirt on a political opponent from a third party (who may or may not have gotten it from a source connected with Russian government) seems sort of like what politicians do all the time. In fact it seems to have likewise been what they did to try to snag Trump after he was elected. It's all the same game, no? Get the goods on your enemy and bring them down? It's standard procedure. I don't like it, and would like to see this whole dirty game come to a halt. But nothing I read here seems to indicate some kind of special "Russian collusion" and partnership to help Trump win. Quite the contrary, this meeting was most decidedly *not* a collusion since the parties involved were ultimately at cross purposes.
