"It looks like clear proof of collusion," says Watergate
prosecutor
Following the latest explosive
details about Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with
a Kremlin-connected lawyer during last year's campaign, in which he hoped to
receive damaging information about Hillary Clinton, legal experts are saying
the encounter could be proof that "collusion"—or even
"treason"—took place.
Trump Jr. confirmed the New York Times'
initial reports that he attended the meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya
(infamous for challenging the Magnitsky Act, which blacklists suspected Russian
human rights abusers) at Trump Tower, along with then-campaign chairman Paul J.
Manafort, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law.
However, Trump Jr. and Manafort have since lawyered up, with the Times reporting Monday
that Jr. "was informed in an email" that Veselnitskaya's promised
dirt on Clinton "was part of a Russian government effort to aid his
father’s candidacy."
In the wake of the Monday's report, the government ethics
watchdogs at CREW said it would be "hard to overstate
how huge this is."
Legally significant because this is
(1) written evidence
(2) before the meeting
(3) stating Russian gov involvement https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/us/politics/donald-trump-jr-russia-email-candidacy.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share …
Washington
Post columnist Eugene Robinson called the
latest revelations a "legal game-changer" because it shows top
members of the Trump campaign—in this case the president's own son—willing to
accept information believed to be coming from a foreign government.
"Despite what Trump apologists may say, it is not normal
practice for a campaign to welcome information undermining an opponent,
regardless of the source," explained Robinson.
"In 2000, the Al Gore campaign was anonymously sent
briefing books and a video that George W. Bush had used to prepare for an
upcoming debate. Gore campaign officials immediately turned the material over
to the FBI—which opened a criminal investigation."
Trump Jr.'s lawyer claims the
reports are "much ado about nothing," but former assistant Watergate
special prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks disagrees.
"It is collusion with a foreign adversary if they were
working together to get the information from the Russian government," she said Monday
night on MSNBC. "And
that's what this looks like, it looks like clear proof of collusion."
But even before Monday's revelations, there was talk of treason
among legal experts.
"This was an effort to get opposition research on an
opponent in an American political campaign from the Russians, who were known to
be engaged in spying inside the United States," said Richard
Painter, an ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush, on Sunday.
"We do not get our opposition research from spies, we do
not collaborate with Russian spies, unless we want to be accused of
treason."
"This is unacceptable," he added. "This borders
on treason, if it is not itself treason."