Donald Trump Jr. was quick to dismiss his recently uncovered quest last summer to find dirt on Hillary Clinton as much ado about nothing. "Obviously, I'm the first person to take a meeting to hear info about an opponent," he facetiously wrote Monday, "went nowhere but had to listen."
Too bad that meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was premised on getting opposition research that could have proven valuable to the Trump campaign. Federal criminal statutes bar political campaigns from either soliciting or accepting anything of value from foreign agents, and in this case, gleaning intel that damaged Clinton clearly would have benefitted the Trump campaign. It doesn't matter one bit whether Trump Jr. did or didn't succeed, trying is enough.
But first and foremost, this latest revelation puts to rest all previous White House denials (and there were many, including from Trump himself) that contacts between Russians and campaign officials did indeed take place. Additionally, the email Trump Jr. received in advance of the meeting means he knew Russia was attempting to “aid his father’s candidacy,” despite his father’s refusal to accept that fact.
The entire scenario could put Don Jr. and potentially the other attendees—Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort—in legal jeopardy, according to a former White House counsel under President Obama and the Democrat’s 2008 campaign attorney, Robert Bauer.
“If they accept the meeting on the understanding that they will be offered something of value — the opposition research — they are sending a clear signal that they would like to have it.”
Bauer added that accepting a meeting where there’s an understanding of purpose “raises a question under the federal campaign finance law” for which Trump Jr. could be held accountable.
In that sense, the meeting also establishes a mindset of criminal intent, writes white-collar criminal law professor Randall D. Eliason.
Proving a defendant’s state of mind is key in any criminal case. This meeting provides critical evidence about the state of mind of Trump representatives: They were willing to hear what a Russian individual had to offer about their opponent. [...]
A prosecutor investigating a potential conspiracy also would be intrigued by the way information about meetings between Russians and the Trump campaign has been trickling out. [...] Lies or conflicting explanations can be important circumstantial evidence of criminal intent.
Even Don Jr. seems to realize he's got a problem. After a weekend of shifting explanations for the meeting, he hired a lawyer Monday afternoon and said he'd be "happy" to work with lawmakers who want to interview him. Certainly Sen. Susan Collins and Rep. Adam Schiff will be "happy" to hear that since both the Senate and House Intelligence Committees they sit on respectively now want to speak with Trump Jr.
Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, agrees, calling it "remarkable" Monday on MSNBC that the meeting had not been previously reported.
“This is again the first time the public has seen clear evidence of at least an attempt by the Trump campaign to obtain information—and again, in this case from a possible foreign agent—that would interfere with the Hillary Clinton campaign efforts. This is the underlying premise that has been raised throughout this whole investigation.”
A conservative ethics watchdog and former Bush administration official offered a more blunt assessment.
“This is treason,” Richard Painter, a former George W. Bush White House ethics lawyer, wrote Sunday night on Twitter. “He must have known that the only way Russia would get such information was by spying.”
Painter added in another message: “In the Bush administration we could have had him in custody for questioning by now.”