Amy Zegart: “The key word in The New York Times piece is ‘flurry.’ There isn’t one email exchange. There are many. Trump Jr.’s email ‘dump’ will not be the end of the story. Instead, as Churchill once said, it’s just the end of the beginning. Investigators and journalists will be following the email trail.”
How Russia Co-Opted the Trump Campaign
Just Security: “Vesilnitskaya may have had her own agenda in requesting a meeting with Trump. That part could be legitimate. But Russian intelligence practice is to co-opt such a person by arming them with secret intelligence information and tasking them to pass it to Trump’s people and get their reaction. Did Trump’s associates like it? Do they want more? Did they report it to U.S. authorities? The key point is that essentially no Russian citizen or lawyer has compromising material on Hillary Clinton which has not been supplied to them from Russian intelligence. The simple assertion that she had such information is tantamount to declaring that Vesilnitskaya was acting as agent of Russian government in this particular role.”
“Couple that with the specific text of the email messages sent to Donald Trump Jr. to set up the meeting which described the material as coming from the Russian government. All the alarm bells should have been going off in Trump Tower when they received an email offering to provide ‘very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and it’s government’s support for Mr. Trump.’ A later email refers to the ‘Russian government attorney who is flying over from Moscow.’ Donald Trump Jr.’s response: he would include Manafort and Kushner in the meeting.”
“In sum, Vesilnitskaya’s advocacy of other causes is irrelevant to her mission on behalf of the Russian government. Based on what we now know, this interaction had all the hallmarks of an overture by Russian intelligence to the campaign, and it is utterly damning that Trump Jr. took the meeting, brought in Manafort and Kushner to the meeting, and none of them reported the events immediately to the FBI nor to U.S. authorities until very recently.”
Lawfare: “Was this really a one-off meeting that didn’t go anywhere, or was it an effort to sound out the people around the candidate to determine their willingness to accept Russian help before taking further steps?”
Who Is the Mole?
Jonathan Swan looks at the fallout from Donald Trump Jr.’s email bombshell, noting there is “a lot of internal anger” over who originally gave this information to the New York Times.
“Many of our White House sources are playing amateur detective, some with wackier theories than others, and some of which turn on people within the White House. Suspicion spread between people who worked in campaign and in White House, and while no one we’ve spoken to has any evidence to support their theories, it’s not stopping them from speculating.”
“It’s creating a very tense environment, and a number of administration officials can’t believe the level of foolishness required for Don Jr. to not only do this but to have such a conversation over email.”
Kushner, Manafort Implicated in Trump Jr. Email
Politico: “Two of Trump’s most senior campaign advisers — Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort — are also included in the ‘private and confidential’ email exchange, which the lawyers interviewed by Politico say exposes them to the same potential federal criminal statutes as Trump Jr., including prohibitions on the solicitation or acceptance of anything of value from a foreign national, as well as a conspiracy to defraud the United States.”
“A source close to Manafort said that the campaign manager hadn’t read all the way to the bottom of the email exchanges on his phone and that he didn’t even know who he was meeting with when he attended the 20 to 30-minute session. Kushner’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.”
How Much Collusion Happened?
Jonathan Chait: “Not long ago, it was fashionable for pundits to assert there was no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. That line was shaky at the time, and has been quickly blown to smithereens. We have gone from evidence of collusion to proof, with emails establishing the campaign’s clear interest in accepting Moscow’s help to win the election.”
“This is the scope of the unresolved question now. How much collusion happened?”
“How far the collusion went, and what elements will be provable, is hard to say. But a few larger realities are suggestive. Trump has, and many of his close advisers have, lied repeatedly about their contacts with Russia. Many of his norm-breaking actions — from the refusal to disclose the tax returns that would reveal the extent of his ties to, or dependence upon, Moscow, to his firing of Preet Bharara and James Comey — can be most rationally explained as a desire to cover the story up.”
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McConnell Will Delay August Recess
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) will keep the Senate in session the first two weeks of August, as Republicans face a daunting to-do list that includes repealing Obamacare and raising the debt limit, Politico reports.
Fredo Trump
The Daily Beast: “Since the campaign, a popular, behind-his-back nickname for Trump Jr. within among these advisers has been ‘Fredo,’ referring to Fredo Corleone, the insecure and weak failure of a son in The Godfather series who ends up causing major damage to the family.”
“Over the past week, one senior White House official and a former top Trump campaign aide both independently and bluntly described the president’s son as an ‘idiot’ — one who played a role in the campaign and Trump’s political rise simply because he ‘shares the same DNA,’ the official noted.”
GOP Drops Tax Cuts In Revised Health Bill
“Senate Republican leaders dropped provisions that would repeal two taxes on high earners in a revised draft of their health-care bill sent to the Congressional Budget Office,” Bloomberg reports.
“GOP leaders are considering retaining Obamacare’s 3.8 percent tax on net investment income for people who earn more than $200,000 and couples with incomes over $250,000, as well as a 0.9 percent Medicare surtax on the same incomes.”
Republicans Increasingly Pessimistic About Health Bill
“Tensions are rising between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s leadership team and his party’s ideological factions, with a renewed sense of pessimism creeping into the Senate GOP’s efforts to repeal Obamacare,” Politico reports.
“An amendment written by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) is fracturing the conference, with the measure taking center stage at the party’s first caucus lunch in nearly two weeks on Tuesday. Though the proposal to allow the sale of cheap, deregulated insurance plans is championed by the right, disagreements over the drafting of the amendment could delay or torpedo altogether the GOP’s healthcare bill.”
Said Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA): “We should not be surprised if people are irritated with the Republican majority when we have been promising, and we do not deliver. I am very pessimistic.”
Trump Jr. Emails Suggest He Broke the Law
Rick Hasen: “Just to recap where we are: It is illegal for a person to solicit a contribution to a campaign from a foreign individual or entity.”
“Looking at the emails, it seems pretty serious…. Hard to see how there is not a serious case here of solicitation. Trump Jr. appears to have knowledge of the foreign source and is asking to see it.”
“It is also possible other laws were broken, such as the laws against coordinating with a foreign entity on an expenditure. There could also be related obstruction, racketeering, or conspiracy charges, but these are really outside my area of specialization and I cannot say. But there’s a lot for prosecutors to sink their teeth into.”
Flashback Quote of the Day
“It’s disgusting. It’s so phony… I can’t think of bigger lies.”
— Donald Trump Jr., in a CNN interview on July 24, 2016, on the Clinton campaign’s claims that the Russians were helping his father.
Email to Trump Son Was Explicit About Russian Help
“The June 3, 2016, email sent to Donald Trump Jr. could hardly have been more explicit: One of his father’s former Russian business partners had been contacted by a senior Russian government official and was offering to provide the Trump campaign with dirt on Hillary Clinton,” the New York Times reports.
The promised documents “would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father,” read the email, written by a trusted intermediary, who added, “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
Trump replied: “If it’s what you say I love it.”
Four days later, after a flurry of emails, the intermediary wrote back, proposing a meeting in New York with a “Russian government attorney.”
Extra Bonus Quote of the Day
“We’re now beyond obstruction of justice… this is moving into perjury, false statements, and even potentially treason.”
— Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), quoted by NBC News, on the federal investigation into Trump campaign collusion with Russia.
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Innocent Explanations on Russia No Longer Hold Up
Ezra Klein: “The best defense of Trump’s associates, at this point, is they were too dumb to know what they’re doing — a defense that doesn’t work when it includes experienced international operators like campaign manager Paul Manafort and ex-Defense Intelligence Agency Director Michael Flynn. Donald Trump Jr.’s own defense of himself is that he attempted to collude with Russian agents but they didn’t have any useful information and so he didn’t. This is, as my colleague Zack Beauchamp notes, no defense at all — even if it is true, Trump Jr. may well have committed a crime.”
“What’s more, we know for a fact that the Russian hacking of Democratic files happened, that it was successful, and that Trump has stubbornly resisted efforts to admit or investigate Russia’s intervention into the campaign while repeatedly praising Putin. We also know Trump has, since taking office, undermined the NATO alliance while cozying up to Vladimir Putin — the two of them joked about their shared dislike for the American media at the G20 last week and pledged to work together on cybersecurity.”
“This isn’t just smoke. We can see the damage done by the fire. We are watching our president pal around with the suspected arsonists. And so we are past the point where innocent explanations on Trump and Russia remain credible.”
Trump Has Lost All Credibility on Russia
Weekly Standard: “The bill, now before the House, would force the president to seek congressional approval before easing the sanctions. The administration has been lobbying lawmakers to remove this provision. That’s understandable, inasmuch as the president’s power unilaterally to ease or lift sanctions can be a useful tool by which to encourage favorable conduct from a global miscreant. In more ordinary circumstances, the administration’s objection would have some merit.”
“But these are not more ordinary circumstances. These are circumstances in which the president has no capacity to set policy toward Russia. Whether the media has unfairly targeted the president and his advisers over their dealings with Russian officials is now beside the point. By a series of unforced errors—omissions of financial dealings with Russian companies, unaccountably faulty memories on meetings with Kremlin-connected operatives—the Trump team has lost all credibility on the question of Russia. Second-guessing by the media and politicians of both parties will be the inevitable accompaniment to every White House announcement about Vladimir Putin or Russia.”
Matthew Yglesias: “Trump has been willing to reverse himself on other policy issues, gets no political benefit from pursuing such a pro-Russian course in the face of bipartisan opposition, and could score easy points by doing a little formulaic Putin-bashing. The fact that he refuses to tells you a lot about why Trump’s presidency remains mired in scandal — and why the worst may still be to come.”
Bonus Quote of the Day
“President Trump is the greatest thing that’s happened to this country. I consider it a Biblical miracle that he’s there.”
— Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL), quoted by the Birmingham News, at a Senate candidate forum.