Does it really matter if President Donald Trump’s three most senior campaign staff, including his son, Donald Jr., his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and campaign manager Paul Manafort met with a Russian agent (spy) days after Trump won the Republican nomination?

After all, Donald Jr. was new to politics and may not have appreciated that considering a foreign adversary as a campaign supporter willing to help defeat Hillary Clinton was maybe closer to treason than reason. Why would Junior even think that Russia might have interests other than helping the United States?

And, as Trump Jr. has said, at first, it was just a meeting about adoptions of Russian children. That is, until it became a meeting about damaging information about Clinton when Junior’s emails reached the New York Times.

Even if Junior forgot this meeting ever occurred until the media discovered it took place in Kushner’s security application, that is perfectly understandable. After all, there were several meetings with Russians throughout the Trump campaign, so who can be expected to remember one with the other two campaign advisors closest to the president?

And even if the meeting did take place to see if the Trump campaign could accept the help of the Russians, there was no collusion because, as Junior reported honestly, the emails setting the meeting were totally false and nothing about Clinton was discussed in the secret meeting without notes. And we can believe that because, after lying about the purpose of the meeting when first asked (Russian adoptions story), Junior told the truth when the Times revealed his emails. That has to count for something.

Then, too, collusion is not really a crime is it? So the worst possible case here is that the Trump presidential campaign, beginning with this meeting after Trump’s nomination, partnered with the Russian government to destroy Clinton and win the presidency for Trump. Successfully as it turned out. And were it not for silly campaign laws about not accepting exchanges of value from foreign entities, and common law issues like obstruction of justice, there would just be a nothingburger here, nothing to see at all.

Unfortunately for Junior, though, receiving information that could be valuable in winning the presidency would likely violate the election law. So it is a darn good thing that the meeting about damaging Clinton information was not about that at all, right?

The greater bit of bad luck might be what this meeting means to the president and his chances to avoid very serious charges of obstruction of justice in the firing of FBI Director James Comey.

First, to believe the president innocent of removing Comey to protect himself and his son and son-in-law from the Russian/Trump investigation, one would have to suspend reason and imagine the president knew nothing of Russians meeting with his campaign.

The president has said “No one on my campaign met with Russians,” but, of course, that has been proven false long before this week. So one would have to once again suspend disbelief if the president would suggest he had no knowledge his son and son-in-law and campaign manager met with Russians in Trump Tower while Trump was in town, immediately after his nomination.

Given the small, close-knit, tightly-held Trump campaign, and given this president’s need to control all events, it is impossible to imagine he did not know about this meeting. And if Trump did know about this meeting, then firing Comey was obstruction of justice to prevent an investigation that would find his guilt in colluding with the Russian government to win the election, since following this meeting the Russians did interfere and Trump did win.

Or maybe you would rather believe the meeting was about orphans, flowers, and the many joint interests of Russia and Trump about free speech.

 

Jim Crawford is a retired teacher and political enthusiast living here in the Tri-State.