From the New York Times:
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.
The email to the younger Mr. Trump was sent by Rob Goldstone, a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped broker the June 2016 meeting. In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he was interested in receiving damaging information about Mrs. Clinton, but gave no indication that he thought the lawyer might have been a Kremlin proxy.
Mr. Goldstone’s message, as described to The New York Times by the three people, indicates that the Russian government was the source of the potentially damaging information.
The corrupt Trump cabal, naturally, will say (a) they don’t know the information came from the Kremlin; (b) the information received was of no consequence; and (c) Donald Trump Jr. was not a Trump campaign official.
None of those will fly – and they certainly won’t be persuasive with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, because:
(a) There is already lots of evidence, sworn and otherwise, that the Kremlin was helping Trump, via various campaign officials (cf. Messrs. Manafort, Flynn, Kushner, Page, Gordon, Cohen, Sessions et al.). This new email is important, however, because it directly implicates Trump’s family.
(b) If the information received wasn’t important, why did Trump’s own son, his son-in-law, and his top campaign official all drop everything, mid-campaign, to attend? And whether the information was important or not is actually irrelevant – Trump’s family and campaign believed it was from a foreign power bent on defeating Hillary Clinton, and that is enough.
(c) Trump’s inner circle throughout his quixotic campaign comprised less than ten people, half of whom were members of his family. “Diaper” Don Jr. appeared in the media over and over, during that race, to defend his father. He was a Trump campaign surrogate and spokesperson.
This all meets the legal definition of “collusion” under 18 U.S. Code, 953:
Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
As of today, we know that Donald Trump’s most senior officials, and his immediate family, colluded with a hostile power and/or an enemy of the United States.
Nothing will happen about this until, one, Mueller reports and, two, the Democrats win sufficient seats in the mid-terms.
But they’ve got them now.
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