We begin today’s roundup with The Washington Post and its editorial on the bombshell NYT report that Donald Trump Jr. accepted a meeting to obtain Russian oppo research on Hillary Clinton:
It will be up to federal prosecutors to determine whether federal conspiracy laws or election laws barring campaigns from soliciting help from foreigners have been implicated. What we already can say is that the plausibility of the Trump camp’s narrative, in which any underhanded Russian assistance came without the campaign’s witting participation, is eroding. The president’s associates must now explain interactions with Russians that they previously insisted never took place.
David Faris at The Week notes that Don Jr. has made some pretty incriminating public statements as he has tried to deny any wrongdoing:
Because the Times story was sourced to three White House advisers, there was little sense in denying the meeting took place. Trump the Junior immediately copped to it when the first story broke on Saturday, but claimed it was "a short introductory meeting" where they talked about the complicated issue of adoptions.
Mmmhmm.
A proper criminal would have left it at that. The Trumps are not proper criminals. Donald Trump Jr. had this eloquent piece of sarcasm to relate on Twitter Monday morning: "Obviously I'm the first person on a campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent... went nowhere but had to listen." The genuinely amusing thing about Donald Trump Jr. is that he thought this to be some kind of exculpatory statement, when in fact he may have admitted to committing a crime. Former President George W. Bush's ethics lawyer, Richard Painter, argued that the meeting "borders on treason." Others have noted that Trump's admission to taking the meeting with the express intent of obtaining salacious material about Clinton from a foreign national constitutes a violation of federal election law.
Here is The New York Times on the matter:
Mr. Trump has deflected and sought to discredit his own intelligence agencies’ finding that Moscow, at Mr. Putin’s direction, tried to disrupt the election to help him win. Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, said after the American and Russian presidents met in Hamburg that they “had a very robust and lengthy exchange on the subject” and that Mr. Trump had “pressed” Mr. Putin on the issue. Later, Mr. Trump made much the same claim on Twitter. The Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, had quite a different version of the facts, suggesting that Mr. Trump had characterized the hacking controversy as a “campaign” against Russia in which “not a single fact has been produced.” So whom should Americans believe? In a more credible administration, who would ever ask?
On Monday, Donald Trump Jr. hired a lawyer, while maintaining on Twitter that he’d been forthright in answering questions about the meeting last year. Meanwhile, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, deputy press secretary, blew more smoke: The “only thing I see inappropriate” about the meeting, she said, is that it was leaked to the media.
Justin Miller at The Daily Beast makes a really important point:
In other words, Donald Trump Jr. knew what it took the U.S. intelligence community months to publicly declare: Vladimir Putin’s government sought to elect Donald Trump.
Beast. “The offer is after the [DNC] hack itself. They [the Russians] already had the stuff and were figuring out how to use it."
That means many of the denials by the Trump family and top campaign aides about Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign now have to be seen as deliberate untruths. They knew the Kremlin wanted to give them a hand. They knew before just about anyone.
Matt Ford at The Atlantic on the president’s reaction:
President Trump, for his part, has stayed uncharacteristically quiet on the growing scandal surrounding his eldest son. In a curt, one-sentence statement Monday night after the Times published its story, Trump spokesman Mark Curello said, “The President was not aware of and did not attend the meeting.”
Ruth Marcus on another major Don Jr. lie:
Asked by the New York Times in March whether he had ever discussed “government policies related to Russia,” Trump Jr. replied, “a hundred percent no.” Then, confronted by the Times about the Veselnitskaya meeting, he first said the participants “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children,” before acknowledging, the next day, that in fact it concerned opposition research on Clinton.
Trump Jr. asserted in a tweet Monday that there was “no inconsistency in statements, meeting ended up being primarily about adoptions. In response to further Q’s I simply provided more details.” Right, he was just being helpful in omitting that pesky and barely relevant Clinton part. Happy to clarify.
Bob Dryfuss at Rolling Stone:
Of course, it is neither shocking nor surprising that three of Trump's most intimate advisers would take the bait the Russians were dangling. After all, throughout 2016 and up until Trump's inauguration in January, a veritable who's who of the Trump machine held a dizzying array of tête-à-têtes with Russian officials and intermediaries, mostly neglecting or refusing to disclose those contacts until media reports forced them to admit them. That list includes, just for starters, former National Security Adviser General Michael T. Flynn's unreported conversations with the Russian ambassador in Washington, now Attorney General Jeff Sessions' September sit-down with that same ambassador and Kushner's hush-hush request that the Russians set up a covert, back-channel communications system between Trump's transition team and the Kremlin – again, through Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
But Trump's not always articulate PR team could dismiss or explain away all of that by saying Trump's people were just, you know, talking foreign policy with a key nation. No longer. What the June 6th, 2016, meeting tells us is the Trump-Russia connection was about politics, too. As damaging as that might be, or perhaps because of it, both the White House and the Kremlin have issued denials saying they knew anything about the meeting.
Paul Waldman at The Week:
We don't yet know for sure whether President Trump, his family, or his advisers actively cooperated with the Russian government's effort in 2016 to undermine Hillary Clinton and boost Trump's chances of winning the presidency. But boy, oh boy are they acting like they're guilty of something.
These geniuses may not have constructed an intricate conspiracy, but it's as if they desperately want everyone to believe they did. [...]
Meanwhile, the president can't bring himself to utter a discouraging word about Vladimir Putin, and continues to cast doubt on the question of Russia's interference in our election. Trump even emerged from his recent meeting with Putin saying they had discussed forming "an impenetrable Cyber Security unit" to protect our election system from hacking, which, as former Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said, "is like the guy who robbed your house proposing a working group on burglary." And the administration is trying to weaken a bill moving through Congress to impose sanctions on Russia for its meddling in our election.
And we end today’s roundup with Eugene Robinson’s analysis at The Washington Post:
From now on, ignore the conventional wisdom about how the Russia scandal is not “resonating” with President Trump’s still-loyal base. The question at this point is what strikes a chord with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III — and what kind of legal jeopardy Trump’s closest associates, including his eldest son and son-in-law, might eventually face.