Here’s the problem with Trump’s latest spin
WASHINGTON — The Trump camp’s spin in response to the latest revelations about Donald Trump, Jr., is roughly as follows: Yes, Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort did meet with a Kremlin-connected lawyer, in the expectation that the lawyer would provide them with information that would damage Hillary Clinton. But this is OK, because they didn’t know the identity of the lawyer beforehand, and at any rate, the promise of damaging info went nowhere, so no “collusion” happened.
The problem with the claim that they didn’t know whom they were meeting with is not simply that it strains credulity in the extreme, though it certainly does. Rather, it’s that this assertion will now be subjected to very intense investigative scrutiny, as Bob Bauer, a top campaign finance lawyer with Perkins Coie, explained to me in an interview.
The big revelation of the moment, reported late Sunday by the New York Times, is that Trump Jr. met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya to discuss information she was supposed to have that would be damaging to Clinton. Veselnitskaya represents business executives close to the Russian government and is a leading opponent of sanctions imposed against Russian human rights abuses, which are also opposed by Vladimir Putin. At the meeting were Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Manafort, then Trump’s campaign chair. The Post reported that the meeting was arranged by a music publicist friendly with Trump Jr., who said he’d done this at the request of a Russian client.
On Monday morning, senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway sparred extensively with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos about the revelations. Her spin echoed key elements of a careful statement from Trump Jr. that was issued as the Times story was coming together. That statement allowed that he had met with “an individual who I was told might have information helpful to the campaign,” but that he “was not told her name prior to the meeting.” Trump Jr. added that it “quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information,” and that she changed the subject to other topics.
Conway, pressed on the fact that Trump Jr. had held this meeting with the express purpose of getting damaging information about Clinton, admitted that “he was told that there would be information that may be helpful to the campaign,” but added: “He didn’t even know her name.” The careful focus on the fact that he didn’t know her name — both Trump Jr. and Conway put it that way — is notable.
But beyond this, the broader question of whether Trump Jr., Kushner, and Manafort understood the general identity of the person he was meeting with in order to receive damaging information about Clinton will likely now be subject to intense scrutiny.
The question of what Trump Jr. really knew about her is “an investigable issue,” Bauer, who was also White House counsel under Barack Obama, told me. “It’s very difficult to believe that the son of a presidential candidate and the senior members of his campaign would go into a meeting with someone whose identity is unknown to them. Investigators will certainly not take that at face value.”
Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has already said the committee’s probe will seek to interview all attendees at the meeting, presumably in part to establish what was known about Veselnitskaya before Trump Jr. and the others met with her. Bauer told me that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation will likely try to establish the same. “It’s going to be an uphill battle for them to say they routinely took meetings with people who suggested they had useful information without checking their identities,” Bauer said.
The legal relevance of this will turn on several questions, Bauer noted. There is the precise nature of what was known about Veselnitskaya before the meeting. And there is also the precise nature of Veselnitskaya’s ties to the Russian government.
“It does not help their case that you have a very specific operational instance where the campaign decided it was prepared to welcome assistance from a Russian source,” said Bauer, who has previously argued in a series of posts that the law prohibits co-operation with foreign nationals to influence a U.S. election. “You are not permitted to solicit or accept anything of value from a foreign national to influence an election. You cannot enter into a conspiracy with a foreign national to influence an election.”
“What was precisely her connection to the Russian government?” Bauer said. “Investigators are going to try to dig as deeply as possible here.” But Bauer added that it might not even have to be established that she did “report back to Moscow” for this to rise to the level of accepting help from a foreign national in influencing an election. Bauer concluded: “This should draw an awful lot of investigative energy.”