An attempt at collusion or just a willingness to collude?
It’s Robert Mueller’s job to make something of this, but pretty damning stuff in the New York Times today.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, the Republican nominee’s son, son-in-law, and campaign chairman met with a Russian lawyer. All of them were part of the Trump campaign at the time. They knew that the lawyer had connections to the Kremlin. They knew that she claimed to have dirt on Hillary Clinton and that she was interested in sharing it with them.

They went to the meeting. It turned out that the woman didn’t have any information that they were interested in, and they went on to discuss lifting American sanctions against Russia. (Sanctions stemming from human rights abuses that were put in place after a different Russian lawyer was murdered for trying to help an American businessman who was profiting a bit too much in Russia for the oligarchs’ tastes.)
Donald Trump Jr. lied about the meeting when first asked about it by the New York Times, then changed up his take on things when the story below was about to go to press. Jared Kushner lied about the meeting when applying for security clearance. Paul Manafort never had to lie about it, because he was bounced from the campaign before it came to light.
Trump Jr. denies no aspect of the story, other than to say that the Russian lawyer’s information about Clinton was “vague, ambiguous, and made no sense.” His response to the Times story even includes an admission that he knew in advance that the lawyer was going to provide information about Clinton for use as oppo in the campaign.
I’ll repeat that. The Trump campaign knowingly met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer in order to get information for use against Hillary Clinton in the campaign. They didn’t alert the FBI when approached. They didn’t worry over it and then later tell authorities “Hey, the Russians are shopping supposed evidence of illegal DNC contributions from overseas.” They didn’t disclose it during subsequent security checks when explicitly asked about meetings with foreign representatives.
They just took the meeting and, bummer, didn’t get anything good from it, by Trump Jr.’s account.
Does that meet the legal definition of collusion? I doubt it. Do campaigns get contacted by crackpots? Daily. (But it’s rare that they’re foreign agents who want to torpedo the other candidate, I bet.) Does it have to do with election hacking in particular? Nope.
But it’s bound to be either A) a pretty good indication that the Trump campaign was willing to collude with Russian representatives against Hillary Clinton or B) a dim-witted, failed attempt at collusion.
Long story short, it’s further evidence that the Trump administration has no scruples or interests beyond themselves. And it’s yet another reason why Kushner and all the other administration officials who have admitted to lying during their security checks should be sacked and prosecuted.

