The New York Times reported — and Donald Trump Jr. appeared to confirm — that he agreed to a meeting with a Russian lawyer who had damaging information on Hillary Clinton after getting an email that the Russian government was trying to help his father win the election.
“It’s as close as you can get to a smoking gun” of whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, said Jeffrey Jacobovitz, a white collar lawyer who represented officials in the Clinton White House and now is with Arnall Golden Gregory LLP. And it could mean Trump Jr. crossed the legal line on collusion with Russia.
First, a reframing of the way we think of collusion. Collusion actually is a political term; there’s no line in the criminal code that says you go to jail for colluding with a foreign adversary.
But you can go to jail for conspiring with a foreign adversary to influence or undermine an election, and Jacobovitz thinks what Trump Jr. did, as documented by emails he himself shared on Twitter, could rise to that level.
“Absolutely,” Jacobovitz replied when asked if these emails firm up evidence Trump Jr. had intent to commit a crime by conspiring with the Russians. “You may have crossed the line on conspiracy to commit election fraud or conspiracy to obtain information from a foreign adversary,” he said. “You cannot benefit from a foreign adversary in this kind of scenario.”
In the email, Trump Jr. associate Rob Goldstone tells Trump Jr. that Russian officials “offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and 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.”
What special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of a dozen or so practiced investigators are likely looking for is evidence that the Trump campaign intended to illegally conspire with Russia to help their campaign/hurt Clinton’s. (Russia is also known for tricking people into doing their bidding.)
The fact that Trump Jr. took this meeting while being told what the Russians were up to is as clear as intent can get, Jacobovitz said.
“If he received an email in advance saying ‘This is coming from the Russian government,’ he’s certainly knowledgeable about where the information is coming from,” Jacobovitz said. “And he attempts to attend a meeting with the hope and intent to obtain inside dirt on Hillary Clinton. That would go a long way in trying to determine whether it’s conspiracy. … It’s not as if he walks into the meeting and he’s surprised by what he’s hearing.”
Another piece of evidence to stack up in the “intent” column: Why were two of Trump’s top campaign aides also invited to the meeting? Trump Jr. said Trump’s then-campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also would be there to meet with the Russian lawyer. It suggests that the Trump campaign put a very high premium on the meeting.
And it raises the question of what President Trump himself knew about the meeting. (The White House says the president wasn’t aware of this meeting and denies any collusion by anyone in his campaign.)
More legal questions: Was anything agreed to in this meeting by either side? We know from both sides that in addition to sitting down to talk dirt on Clinton, there was a discussion about American adoptions of Russian children and sanctions the Russian government opposes against suspects of human rights abuses.
A month after the June 2016 meeting, thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee were leaked on the eve of Democrats’ convention which led the DNC’s chairwoman to resign. Members of Congress with access to intelligence said Russians had already hacked into those emails by the time Trump Jr. met with the Russian lawyer.
Jacobovitz said Mueller and his team will certainly be investigating whether there was some kind of quid pro quo between the Trump campaign and Russia on sanctions vs. damaging emails to Clinton.
The emails also appear to confirm the version of events as told by the Russian lawyer in the meeting, who has ties to the Russian government, and is referred by Trump’s associate as a Russian government attorney.