The ranking Democratic on the House Intelligence Committee said Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer last year on the premises of getting information that would be helpful to his father’s campaign could be considered “a potential form of collusion.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that the meeting “obviously” warrants a “very thorough investigation.” Schiff said if the facts add up that Trump Jr. met with a foreign government to get help with the campaign, it makes “all the denials we’ve seen since that much more unbelievably suspect.”
“First there was, ‘We never had any kind of meetings like that, and then there was, ‘OK, we did have a meeting, but it was about adoptions.’ Then, of course, Paul Manafort, the campaign manager is there. Why would he come to a meeting about adoptions?” Schiff said. “Then it’s about the Magnitsky Act, that’s a sanctions legislation that sanctions Russians who are committing human rights abuses.”
“Then, we learn that, well, actually they went hoping to get damaging information from the Russians about Hillary Clinton. So, the investigation continues to shift, of course not just for Don Jr. , but for many in the Trump world and all of it raises a lot of alarm for us,” he said.
If it ends up being true that the Trump campaign went to the meeting to enlist help from Russia, that would be a “potential form of collusion,” he said.
“If they were soliciting or receiving essentially in-kind contributions from a foreign government in a U.S. election, that would violate, I think, any number of laws,” he said.
Merely circumstantial evidence. You know, like judges tell jurors to explain circumstantial evidence, “If someone comes into the courtroom and her coat is wet, you might deduce from that that it’s raining outside.”
“All campaigns talk to any ‘drop in’ foreign nationals with oppo research” is now the excuse they are trying to sell on TV.
So are they admitting to breaking campaign laws? Pretty much.
Gooper from Florida just ran that one past an incredulous Jon Berman. Also “Jr. is inexperienced in these matters and wouldn’t do it now.”