Aaaaand done. The NYT
reported last night that Trump Jr. had been told in an email - before taking the meeting with the Russian attorney offering dirt on Clinton - that the dirt was the product of a Russian government hacking operation. And he still went. And he took his brother-in-law and Trump campaign manager with him.
Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.
That, right there, is a smoking gun.
Let's not forget that the Trump campaign has denied and denied and denied, in the press, in security disclosures and under oath, that any meetings took place between the campaign and Russian officials. That still-ongoing lie has been systematically torn apart over time, and as each layer of this stinking onion is peeled back, they admit to just that, and deny anything further. Until the next layer is peeled back, and then they admit to just that. Rinse. Repeat.
Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort are three of the highest ranking members of the Trump campaign. As of yesterday, they had corroborated not only that this meeting took place, but also that it was taken with the expectation of being given some dirt on their general election opponent. But now the Times has layered on the fact that they knew going in to that meeting that the dirt was the work product of a foreign government's hack attack. That puts a whole nother sinister spin on it entirely. They heard that the Russian government has been hacking into - perhaps - Secretary of State Clinton's infamous private email server, and their reaction was to immediately take a meeting to see if they could get their hands on it.
Today's spin from TrumpWorld is "where's the crime?" Well, there's the violation of the election statute prohibiting receiving or soliciting "things of value" from foreign nationals - which they have already copped to by confirming they took the meeting specifically to get dirt on Clinton. But the fact that they knew in advance that it was the Russian government dangling the carrots, I think this rises to the level of a criminal conspiracy. All the hacking was illegal, and the Trumps got involved after the fact. No wonder Mueller has added experts in RICO prosecutions to his team, because that is what this is now - a criminal enterprise.
Ranking Member Schiff added some chronological context to this last night. The Russian hacks were mostly complete prior to the June meeting in question. After the June meeting:
(1) Trump tweets - for the first time - about the 33,000 deleted emails;
(b) Trump openly calls for Russia to find and release those emails at a campaign rally;
(iii) The Trump campaign demands (and gets) only one change to the GOP platform - the removal of language supporting sanctions against Russia over their invasion of Ukraine; and
(4) Russia starts drip-feeding damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
I mean, it's almost as if they planned it or something.
