Donald Trump Jr. may have just given Robert Mueller smoking gun evidence signaling his fathers presidential campaign colluded with the Russian government to win the 2016 election, according to veteran prosecutors and white-collar defense attorneys experienced in Washington scandals.
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A source close to Manafort told POLITICO on Tuesday that the campaign manager hadnt read all the way to the bottom of the email exchanges on his phone and that he didnt even know who he was meeting with when he attended the 20 to 30-minute session. Kushners attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
Zeidenberg, who served on the DOJ special prosecution team during the George W. Bush-era Valerie Plame Wilson CIA leak investigation, said he had his doubts the two Trump campaign officials wouldnt do their due diligence before attending the meeting.
Theyre busy. Theyre not going to go to a meeting without reading down and seeing who its with.
I think any prosecutor would say these guys knew exactly what the purpose of the meeting was and why they took the meeting, Zeidenberg said.
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Its an awfully senior group of people for the president to be ignorant. The implications for Don Jr. are obvious. But this is also pregnant with implications for the president, said the attorney with a client involved in the Russia probe.
Legally, what matters most next is what Trump campaign officials and others pulled into the probe say under oath to Congress or Mueller and where perjury and making false statements carry legal consequences that dont exist when engaging with reporters or on social media.
