Watch: Bush’s Ethics Lawyer Says Donald Trump Jr.’s Action ‘Borders on Treason’

‘When a Russian Agent Calls to Offer Dirt on a Political Opponent, a Loyal American Will Call the FBI’

For two and a half years Richard Painter was the chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush. Today he is a University of Minnesota law professor, and vice chairman of CREW, a non-partisan legal watchdog group.

Painter says that what Donald J. Trump Jr. did “borders on treason.” He’s referring to the bombshell New York Times report from Sunday afternoon that reveals then candidate-Trump’s eldest son met with a Russian attorney linked to the Kremlin, and “was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet.”

Painter talked makes clear in any other administration Donald Trump Jr. likely would have been behind “in custody” already.

“This was an effort to get opposition research on an opponent in an American political campaign from the Russians, who were known to be engaged in spying inside the United States,” Painter told MSNBC Sunday.

“We do not get our opposition research from spies, we do not collaborate with Russian spies, unless we want to be accused of treason,” he added.

“This is unacceptable,” Painter added. “This borders on treason,” Painter said, if the New York Times story is true. 

Trump Jr. not only did not deny the Times story, he offered several different reasons for why he, along with Jared Kushner and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort (both of whom have Russia-related issues) attended the meeting.

CNN’s Brian Steltzer posted Jr.’s rather different statements side by side.

The Times report states “The meeting — at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, two weeks after Donald J. Trump clinched the Republican nomination — points to the central question in federal investigations of the Kremlin’s meddling in the presidential election: whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians.”

And here is the article’s key point: 

“The accounts of the meeting represent the first public indication that at least some in the campaign were willing to accept Russian help.”

The Times also notes Trump Jr.’s changing story.

“When he was first asked about the meeting on Saturday, Donald Trump Jr. said that it was primarily about adoptions and mentioned nothing about Mrs. Clinton,” the Times reports. “But on Sunday, presented with The Times’s findings, he offered a new account.

“In a statement, he said he had met with the Russian lawyer at the request of an acquaintance from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which his father took to Moscow.”

He said she then turned the conversation to adoption of Russian children and the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers. The 2012 law so enraged President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that he halted American adoptions of Russian children.

“It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting,” Mr. Trump said.

Painter also followed up on Twitter:

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Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license