I think this will seem big if the other stuff turns out to be small and vice versa. There were so many meetings. Each of them could have its own scandal. Time will tell if this will be a key part of the case. Right now it seems pretty big, but we know so little about other evidence in this investigation. I kinda expect some jaw-droppers on the day when Mueller announces the results of his probe.

To play devils advocate in reverse...

1) taking a meeting while knowing a hostile foreign poweris trying to meddle and influence our election is treason i think. Not sure, but how does information matter, is this not direct intent?

2)manafort was campaign manager and kushner is super super assistant to the president and purveyor of world peace. No way trump doesnt know of this meeting.



3)it sounds like there is proof in the form of an email, how coule one claim fake news?

https://twitter.com/brianstelter/sta...69280020447232

Wow, NY Times is playing the release of this masterfully.

It's funny Don Jr. is such a dip**** but no it's not treason despite what that Painter guy says. It might be a violation of some federal law but pretty sure this is still in the yuks territory, although who knows the depths of how dumb the Trump kids are, maybe the NYT plans to drip this until they release video of Don Jr. pledging an oath to Putin in his coming war against NATO or something.

There has been a parade of smoking guns for months. Tommorrow there will be a parade of republican surrogates on the talk shows talking about how this is a nothingburger nad we should be concentrating on health care. Trump's base likes that he colluded with Russia to help deport the immigrants.

sources

It's a good snark answer. You can't actually say it during the debate.

This is good technique. Get their denials on record before cross examining them with the documents.

It won't be.

Start from a baseline of, we're not at war with Russia, so it's definitely not treason. In a sane universe it would be political death, but we no longer live in that universe.

Wouldn't the treason part have more to do with the consideration provided in exchange for Russian assistance? Maybe getting dirt on Hillary isn't treasonous by itself, but lifting sanctions, changing platforms and essentially manipulating the U.S. government to align with Russian interests seems kinda shady.

Yeah, I'm expecting this.

I'm REALLY hoping that the NYT is planning for this response, and then they release the next story that says "actually....Donald Trump (Sr.) was there too".

Article III defines treason pretty tightly. Like I said, the published reports debatably describe violation(s) of federal law but I don't see how even promising to remove sanctions is formally treason. Most of the story as I see it is having a nice hearty laugh at moron Trumps, might be intriguing to Mueller, but otherwise doesn't get us anywhere in the short term.

Don't forget Jane Sanders!

When I read the wiki on treason, almost all of the cases were either cooperating with states we were in armed conflict against or waging armed insurrection against the government. There were no cases where cooperating with states we dislike was deemed treason. It seems that cooperating with foreign powers to win an an election isn't illegal, maybe a campaign finance violation with the hacked emails and trolls constituting unreported in kind donations.

Fox News on top of the breaking news.

I think we should just accept that when people say treason they are using it the common meaning of the term, not literal constitutionally defined treason.

So they say daddy didn't know about this meeting. Have they said when he found out about it? He just now read about it in WaPo and NYT? LoL, come on man.

Vince Foster

Dear diary: Someone wants to meet to discuss Russian adoptions. I need to make sure Manafort and Kushner are there.

Yeah. I mean the link is there but it's still a long, weak chain. As far as we know, Trump can still claim he didn't know about any of this and there's no proof that shows otherwise. Trump Jr can claim yeah there was some mention that the lawyer had Russian govt intel but he took the meeting for other reasons, he wasn't interested in that part of it, maybe he would respectfully decline the Russians help because he knew it would be improper, and the fact that he didn't actually get anything from the meeting makes that a reasonable enough defense (if there's a part 4 waiting to drop about how they did actually get something then you have a real smoking gun). All this part 3 story really does its strengthen the link from the lawyer to the Russian government. And it's still not clear if we can consider the lawyer an official representative of the government or just someone with enough connections to have some intel.

Ultimately I don't know what all that means legally. And if there's no legal case it's not going to be a major political problem either. If I wake up tomorrow to news that DJT or the others are in federal custody with some kind of charges pending then we have something. Until that happens I don't think there's enough here to get our hopes up.

Wishful fan fiction: It would be epic if Mueller's team set this multipart story up with the NYT in order to get DJT on record lying about the meeting and now he's ready to start making arrests and flipping people.

After Donnie Jr. gets pardoned he won't even be kept off the re-election campaign.*

*assuming the Alzheimer's doesn't kill Trump before then