We begin today’s roundup with The Washington Post and its editorial on the bombshell NYT report that Donald Trump Jr. accepted a meeting to obtain Russian oppo research on Hillary Clinton:
It will be up to federal prosecutors to determine whether federal conspiracy laws or election laws barring campaigns from soliciting help from foreigners have been implicated. What we already can say is that the plausibility of the Trump camp’s narrative, in which any underhanded Russian assistance came without the campaign’s witting participation, is eroding. The president’s associates must now explain interactions with Russians that they previously insisted never took place.
David Faris at The Week notes that Don Jr. has made some pretty incriminating public statements as he has tried to deny any wrongdoing:
Because the Times story was sourced to three White House advisers, there was little sense in denying the meeting took place. Trump the Junior immediately copped to it when the first story broke on Saturday, but claimed it was "a short introductory meeting" where they talked about the complicated issue of adoptions.
Mmmhmm.
A proper criminal would have left it at that. The Trumps are not proper criminals. Donald Trump Jr. had this eloquent piece of sarcasm to relate on Twitter Monday morning: "Obviously I'm the first person on a campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent... went nowhere but had to listen." The genuinely amusing thing about Donald Trump Jr. is that he thought this to be some kind of exculpatory statement, when in fact he may have admitted to committing a crime. Former President George W. Bush's ethics lawyer, Richard Painter, argued that the meeting "borders on treason." Others have noted that Trump's admission to taking the meeting with the express intent of obtaining salacious material about Clinton from a foreign national constitutes a violation of federal election law.