REPORT: EMAIL REVEALED MEETING WAS PART OF RUSSIAN MEDDLING
President Trump’s son was warned in an email that dirt being peddled by a Russian lawyer about then-presidential rival Hillary Clinton was all part of a Kremlin ploy to aid the Republican’s candidacy, the New York Times reported last night.
Donald Trump Jr., the paper said citing three sources, was sent the email by a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped broker the meeting.
The message, as described to the Times, indicates that the Russian government was the source of the potentially damaging information, but it does not address the Kremlin’s wider effort to help Trump.
The latest news comes as legal experts say Trump Jr. and other members of the president’s inner circle may soon face legal problems over the meeting last year with the Russian lawyer, who’s been linked to the Kremlin.
“They’re in trouble potentially,” said Andrew Wright, a professor at Savannah Law School. “It would be illegal for the Russian lawyer to try to influence an American election. It would be illegal for the Americans involved in the Trump campaign to aid and abet the Russian in trying to influence the election.”
Trump Jr. has expressed willingness to assist a Senate panel over the collusion controversy. On Twitter yesterday, he indicated he’s “happy to work with the committee to pass on what I know.”
Trump Jr. was joined by former campaign manager Paul Manafort and special adviser and son-inlaw Jared Kushner at the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya. Her clients include Russian state-owned businesses and the son of a senior government official whose company the U.S. was investigating at the time, according to the Times.
At first, Trump Jr. said the meeting was about the Magnitsky Act, an anti- corruption U.S. law imposed against Russia that prompted President Vladimir Putin to retaliate by banning American adoptions of Russian children.
But on Sunday, he conceded Veselnitskaya claimed to have dirt on Hillary Clinton — specifically, proof that “individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee” and backing the former secretary of state.
But Trump Jr. insists the lawyer’s statements were “vague, ambiguous and made no sense” and that it “quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”
Still, Wright said merely agreeing to meet with a Russian offering material that might sway the election would be legally problematic and could constitute conspiracy to do something unlawful, regardless of whether the information was meaningful.
“What’s much more damaging than getting information is the fact they were motivated to go to the meeting on the promise of information,” said Wright. “Conspiracy is just an agreement to do something unlawful, so it doesn’t matter whether the unlawful thing happens, because the crime happens the moment an agreement is struck.”
Michael Gerhardt, a professor at the University of North Carolina Law School, said Trump Jr. showed “bad judgment” because he never apparently stopped to consider whether Veselnitskaya was a foreign national, or whether such a meeting would be inappropriate.
“How many other situations were like this, where they were trying to meet with people either in person or through the internet, who had made similar kinds of promises?” Gerhardt said. “I think this meeting will look even worse if it’s part of a pattern, or fits with another meeting like it.”
What is potentially worse for Trump is that the controversy doesn’t involve aides he can easily fire, said Wright.
“It’s really hard to distance yourself from your son and your son-in-law,” he said. “It’s one of the reasons you don’t hire your family.”