Experts weigh possible consequences of U.S. president’s son’s campaign-season meeting with Russian lawyer

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

This past week, experts from the United States and abroad have commented on the revelation that Donald Trump Jr., son of current U.S. President Donald Trump, met with a Russian lawyer in 2016 the hopes of collecting opposition research against his father’s then-rival for the Oval Office, Democrat Hillary Clinton. The general consensus seems to be that, while not treasonous, Trump Jr.’s accepting an offer of political help from a foreign government may have violated U.S. campaign finance law, though there are differences in opinion regarding what the consequences may be.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump, Jr., son of current United States President Donald Trump, released copies of the emails in which he established communication between a Russian lawyer and himself during last year’s U.S. presidential election. These emails contradict the assertions of some parties in the Trump administration that they did not encourage the Kremlin’s involvement in any attempts to discredit Clinton or sway the election Trump’s way. In those emails, British publicist Rob Goldstone wrote to Donald Trump Jr. on June 3, 2016, offering to put him in touch with Russian pop musician Emin Agalarov, son of real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, who has connections to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting,” wrote Goldstone. “The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father. […] This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

Donald Trump Jr. replied: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.” A few days later, Trump Jr. met with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a lawyer for the Russian government. Trump Jr. had written that he planned to invite his brother-in-law Jared Kushner and campaign manager Paul Manafort, and both have conceded the meeting took place.

Of the meeting itself, Trump Jr. told the media Veselnitskaya told him some organizations in Russia were funding the Democratic National Convention and Clinton’s campaign but did not provide any useful details and quickly changed the subject to the adoption of Russian children by Americans, which Putin had blocked, and a U.S. law allowing the seizure of assets of Russians guilty of human rights abuses. According to Trump Jr., “It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting.” Veselnitskaya herself would tell The Times she had not discussed the presidential campaign at all and claim she had not spoken to anyone in the Russian government about the meeting. The emails do not list what was said at this meeting, and it is not clear whether Veselnitskaya’s information had been gleaned via the hacking of the Democratic National Convention.

Regardless of whether the meeting provided Trump Jr. with anything that actually furthered the campaign, he may have broken U.S. law just by accepting the meeting.

Some, including Clinton’s vice-presidential candidate, Tim Kaine have accused Trump Jr. of treason “QUOTE FROM KAINE HERE,” which is historically very difficult to prosecute. Even Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of selling U.S. nuclear secrets to the Soviets in the mid-twentieth-century, were technically charged with espionage instead.

Regardless of whether any information useful to the campaign changed hands, Trump Jr. may have violated U.S. campaign finance law just by accepting the offered meeting. Legally, campaigners running for U.S. office are explicitly forbidden from asking for money from anyone outside the United States, but accepting help in other forms may also be illegal if said help constitutes a “thing of value.” Paul S. Ryan of the watchdog group Common Cause told reporters: “If these e-mails are not a hoax, they are the smoking gun showing Donald Trump Jr. illegally solicited a contribution from a foreign national – in the form of opposition research against Hillary Clinton.”

Richard Painter, who served as one of President George W. Bush’s ethics lawyers, told NPR Donald Trump Jr. was unlikely to be charged with treason but could be charged with perjury: “[Trump and family] over and over again, have said, ‘We did not collude with the Russians,’ and they did not collude with the Russians, I guess, like President Clinton did not have sex with that woman.” Painter noted the difference between the current concerns about Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and the 1998 allegations that then-President Bill Clinton had had an affair with a White House intern: “this is a lie we care about. This is about our national security.”

According to Fordham University law professor Jed Shugerman, “[T]he bigger concern is that courts are going to be very cautious about applying this statute to the sharing of information because of free speech concerns. So even though one could make the argument that in these emails there’s evidence of conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws, there’s no precedent that suggests that those laws would be applied as broadly.”

Last year, parties traced to Russia hacked both the Democratic and Republican party databases, but only negative information about the Democratic candidate was released to the public. At first, it was not clear whether the hacks had been ordered by the Russian government or were merely performed by people who happened to be in Russia, but U.S. intelligence agencies have since concluded the Kremlin organized these events with the goal of swaying the U.S. election toward Trump.

Trump Jr. has echoed official word from the White House stating President Trump had no knowledge of the meeting and only learned of it this past week.

President Trump posted to Twitter in response to his son’s decision to make the emails public: “My son Donald did a good job last night. He was open, transparent and innocent. This is the greatest Witch Hunt in political history. Sad!”

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