Trump and Treason?

When Trump declared on Twitter that his son held that Trump Tower meeting with the expectation of receiving dirt on Hillary Clinton, he may have done more than concede that collusion did, in fact, take place.

Much of the chatter about Trump’s Twitter focuses on two facts: 1) the Trump Tower gathering “was a meeting to get information on an opponent.” However, we know this meeting was “information on an opponent” furnished by the Russian government.

2) Trump has flatly conceded collusion more directly than ever before.

But what’s also notable is why Trump tweeted. He was responding to a report in The Post that said this: Trump has confided to friends and advisers that he is worried the Mueller probe could destroy the lives of what he calls “innocent and decent people” — namely Trump Jr. … As one adviser described the president’s thinking, he does not believe his son purposefully broke the law, but is fearful nonetheless that Trump Jr. inadvertently may have wandered into legal ¬jeopardy.

Publicly Trump claimed that this report is “a complete fabrication,” adding that the meeting was “totally legal and done all the time in politics.” [and he was only helping the sheep...]

Trump and his lawyers keep claiming there was nothing wrong with this meeting — but they keep lying about it.

Trump dictated the statement falsifying the meeting’s rationale is one glaring example of this.

Trump keeps pretending, as he did in this tweet, that the very thing that may make this meeting legally problematic — the Russian government’s role — never happened.

“The obstruction case against Trump is more solid if there is evidence that he recognizes legal jeopardy,” Daniel Hemel, an assistant law professor at the University of Chicago who recently co-published a useful scholarly exploration of presidential obstruction of justice.

But to show criminal obstruction of justice, Mueller would have to demonstrate that Trump acted with “corrupt intent” for the express purpose of protecting his son from investigation. Trump may have done some or all these things. But we don’t know that, and it has to be proved.

Or, as Adam Davidson puts it, Trump has at this point “openly admitted to collusion, lying, and a coverup.” Which means that the case against him — politically — has gotten stronger.