Trump's personal lawyer and TV spokesman told Chuck Todd on Meet The Press that Don Junior did meet with Russians in Trump Tower for the purpose of getting dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Getting something or attempting to get something of value from a foreign government is a crime during an election, folks!
Marcy Wheeler aka emptywheel has the timeline of the hacks and you'll notice what happened a week after the Trump Tower meeting.
After going on and on with the same, ludicrous claim that Mueller is trying to set a perjury trap (Hey Rudy, here's how you avoid that: TELL THE TRUTH), and then saying without proof that Mueller's team leaked the Don McGahn story to The NY Times, Giuliani's big mouth stepped in it big time with this exchange about collusion and the Trump Tower meeting.
CHUCK TODD: What, what, I mean, I mean let’s talk with collusion, I mean the Trump Tower meeting itself is at least evidence of you better investigate --
RUDY GIULIANI: (laughs) It’s not.
CHUCK TODD: -- how is it not?
RUDY GIULIANI: Well, because the meeting was originally for the purpose of getting information about, about Clinton. The meeting turned into a meeting --
CHUCK TODD: Which in itself, it’s attempted collusion. I understand --
RUDY GIULIANI: No, it’s not.
CHUCK TODD: You just said it. The meeting was intended to get dirt on Hillary Clinton from a criminal lawyer.
RUDY GIULIANI: No, it wasn’t. No, no.
CHUCK TODD: That was the intention of the meeting, you just said it.
RUDY GIULIANI: That was the original intention of the meeting. It turned out to be a meeting about another subject and it was not pursued at all. And, of course, any meeting with regard to getting information on your opponent is something any candidate’s staff would take. If someone said, I have information about your opponent, you would take that meeting. If it happens to be a person with a Russian --
I'd say to Trump and Rudy Giuliani, that's a lie.
In the controversial 2000 election, Al Gore didn't act like the Trump campaign.
"Somebody had stolen Bush's debate prep book and mailed it to Gore's friend who was planning on being the Bush stand-in for the former vice president's own debate prep. "We immediately turned it over to the FBI and Tom recused himself from the whole debate process," said Gore, joking that it wasn't sent from Moscow, it was sent from Texas."
Because that's what ethical candidates who care about the rule of law do. But let's go back to Trump.
CHUCK TODD: From the Russian government?
RUDY GIULIANI: She didn’t represent the Russian government, she’s a private citizen. I don’t even know if they knew she was Russian at the time. All they had was her name.
CHUCK TODD: They didn’t know she was Russian, I think they knew she was Russian, but okay...
RUDY GIULIANI: Well, they knew it when they met with her, not when they set up the meeting. You, you told me, you, you asked me, you know, did they show an intention to do anything with Russians? Well, all they knew is that a woman with a Russian name wanted to meet with them. They didn’t know she was a representative of the Russian government and indeed, she’s not a representative of the Russian government. So, this is much ado about nothing. Plus, the President of the United States wasn’t at that meeting. He didn’t know about that meeting. He found out about it after and by the time he found out about it, it was nothing.
After being caught lying to the press and the American people, Donald Trump told the press pretty much the same thing. Everybody looks for dirt on their opponent, it's natural.
Wrong.
The NY Times wrote about the possible legal jeopardy for Junior:
In plain English, “collusion” means working together, usually in secret, to do something illicit. But the word has no defined legal meaning. This is apparently why the president has been declaring that “collusion is not a crime,” as he tweeted last Tuesday.
That is irrelevant, however, because lawyers instead talk about conspiracy: an agreement by two or more people to commit a crime — whether or not they end up doing so. A powerful tool for prosecutors, conspiracy charges allow them to hold each conspirator responsible for illegal acts committed by others in the circle as part of the arrangement. To convict someone of such a conspiracy, prosecutors would need to obtain evidence of an agreement to commit a specific crime.
A provision of the Federal Election Campaign Act, Section 30121 of Title 52, broadly outlaws donations or other contributions or a “thing of value” by any foreigner in connection with an American election — or even an express or implied promise to take such action, directly or indirectly.
Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani's own admissions explain how a crime was committed and now they are attempting to gaslight the people about the campaign's own actions.
