The preposterous anti-Trump drumbeat from mainstream media is never-ending.
The latest non-news revelation is Donald Trump Jr posts emails from Russia offering material on Clinton: ‘I love it’.
Why should anyone give a rat’s ass?
Donald Trump Jr has been forced to release damning emails that reveal he eagerly embraced what he was told was a Russian government attempt to damage Hillary Clinton’s election campaign.
The stunning disclosure raised questions over whether campaign laws were broken and why senior Trump associates failed to report a hostile act by a foreign power.
The emails show music promoter Rob Goldstone telling the future US president’s son that “the crown prosecutor of Russia” had offered “to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father”.
Full Text
Anyone wishing to see the alleged “stunning disclosure” can do so here: Full text of the emails between Donald Trump Jr and Rob Goldstone
Ho Hum. So what?
Deep Trouble but Not that Deep
Here’s a curious headline from The Guardian: Don’t call it treason: Trump advisers’ legal jeopardy is deep, but not that deep.
Supposedly trouble runs deep but not deep. That’s creative headlining at its finest or worst, whichever you prefer. The answer depends on whether or not any laws were broken.
Has Donald Trump Jr broken the law? And what kind of legal trouble, exactly, might he or other Trumpworld figures be in, culminating with the president himself? Have we just gotten a step closer to impeachment? Or is that state of play basically unchanged?
Whatever you do, don’t call it “treason”, warned Fordham law school professor Jed Shugerman, author of the Shugerblog commentary site.
“As a legal matter, it’s irresponsible for anyone to be calling this ‘treason’,” he said. “These terms not only have legal meaning but they also can be part of overplaying a legal or rhetorical hand.”
“Treason” is unusually narrowly defined in the Constitution as aiding enemies in wartime, Shugerman said, with the framers, having just fought a revolution, working with acute awareness of the potential explosiveness of the charge.
Instead, the strongest case (currently) against Trump Jr appears to fall under federal campaign finance law, which prohibits campaigns from soliciting contributions from foreign entities. If you are running for office in the US, you are not supposed to seek or take help from non-Americans. Bernie Sanders knows this, which is why he hit Hillary Clinton over foreign donations to her family’s foundation.
Up for debate is whether “opposition research” potentially provided by Moscow to Trump Jr would qualify as a “thing of value” under campaign finance law, which explicitly prohibits “contributions, donations, expenditures, and disbursements”.
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