Burying Jr - Part 4

Junior has lawyered up.

A wise decision. Maybe he'll take his lawyer's advice better than his father does.

I assume he's also a lawyer, but it does seem a bit odd. Of course, daddy's personal lawyers are real humdingers, so....??

Donald Trump Jr. is in a legal danger zone following his acknowledgment that he met during the heat of the 2016 presidential campaign with a Russian lawyer with Kremlin ties who offered to deliver damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Democratic and Republican lawyers and political operatives alike say explanations about the June 2016 meeting from President Donald Trump’s oldest son are way out of step with common campaign practices when dealing with offers for opposition research.

But perhaps far more important, his statements put him potentially in legal cross hairs for violating federal criminal statutes prohibiting solicitation or acceptance of anything of value from a foreign national, as well as a conspiracy to defraud the United States.

[...]

[L]egal experts of both political parties say his explanations may not fly if he’s questioned under oath by Congress or Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating potential Trump campaign collusion with Russia — and where perjury and making false statements carry legal consequences that don’t exist when engaging with reporters or on social media.

  Politico

Someothing Jared Kushner has obviously taken note of.

Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, have both said their panels should interview Trump Jr. On Monday afternoon, Trump Jr. said he plans to cooperate with the investigations. "Happy to work with the committee to pass on what I know," he tweeted.

If your lawyer has any sense, he'll probably tell you to stay the hell off Twitter.

“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.” [said Robert Bauer, a former White House counsel under President Barack Obama and the Democrat’s 2008 campaign attorney.]

Oh yes indeedy it does. But that's an Obama lawyer talking. What would a GOP lawyer say?

“This is treason,” Richard Painter, a former George W. Bush White House ethics lawyer, wrote Sunday night on Twitter.

Oh holy shit.

“He must have known that the only way Russia would get such information was by spying.”

Honestly, Kushner and Manafort, the other guys in the room would have known that. I don't know that Junior is playing with a full deck.

Painter added in another message: “In the Bush administration we could have had him in custody for questioning by now.”

Please don't make us wish for the Bush administration again. Here's another Obama ethics attorney, Norm Eisen's input:

“In a normal campaign, this would be the most crimson of red flags and would not be undertaken without counsel and candidate consent, which raises the question of whether Trump himself had any indication of this.”

No matter what comes of this, in my mind there is no question Trump knew and not only consented, but asked for, this type of activity.

“Running @marcorubio camp lots of random people asked to meet to share "secret oppo" I was just never dumb enough to meet w/ them #ButWeLost,” Terry Sullivan, the former campaign manager for Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 GOP primary campaign, posted Monday on Twitter.

Republican strategist Stuart Stevens also posted Sunday night on Twitter about the unusual nature of the Trump Jr. meeting. “When Gore campaign was sent Bush debate brief book, they called FBI. If foreign interests offer you info on former SOS, you call the FBI,” he wrote.

Not if you're a Trump, apparently.

[In an email, former Clinton 2016 campaign manager Robby Mook said, "It] also raises serious questions about whether Kushner and others in the Trump administration should be conducting our foreign policy. Staff who have lied about, or concealed meetings with Russians or who have hidden financial ties to Russian oligarchs should be barred from seeing classified information or participating in policymaking until Congress can determine whether they will act in the public interest."

Indeed. As if we didn't already know whose interests this bunch is concerned with.




...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.