Donald Trump, Jr. is in a lot of trouble. While his father was campaigning for the US Presidential election last year, he had a shady meeting with a Russian lawyer to try and get information he could use against Hillary Clinton’s rival campaign, which was a bad idea indeed. He didn’t even get the information he wanted, so the plot didn’t work exactly in Trump, Jr.’s favour. However, a few days after the meeting, Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee and leaked thousands of potentially incriminating emails, which some say swung the result of the election, so that’s being looked into.
Trump, Jr. forced to release emails
Trump, Jr. has been forced to post the emails in question, which reveal how enthusiastic he was to work with the Russian government to use illegitimate means to smear Hillary Clinton’s campaign to give his dad a boost in the election race. Laws of campaigning may have been broken here, so it’s being investigated by the Senate Intelligence Committee in order to get to the bottom of it. See, this is known as a hostile act by a foreign power, so senior Trump officials should’ve said something before it came to light.
According to Trump, Jr. himself, he could’ve handled the Russia meeting better (i.e. not done it at all in the first place). He said he did not disclose information about his meeting with the Russian lawyer to his dad because, in his words, “it was a nothing.” The emails show that the purpose of this “nothing” meeting with “the crown prosecutor of Russia” was “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 the Trump campaign.
The US political world responds
Pundits and politicians from all walks of the American political arena have been speaking out about the Trump, Jr. Russia situation. The Republicans have remained mostly silent, perhaps hoping the situation will just go away. But some of them have spoken out, still, and the Democrats most certainly have made their opinions known.
Senator Marco Rubio, who’s on the Senate Intelligence Committee and ran against Trump in last year’s Republican primaries, has pretty much pinned everything with a “criminal element” re: the Russia meeting on Trump’s counsel Bob Mueller. He also said that Mueller “will have to determine” himself whether or not Trump, Jr. wanted to collude with the Russian government.
He added that he’s working on a report for the Senate Intelligence Committee that will determine the extent to which “the Russians interfered in our elections and the tactics they used” and that this situation with the Trump, Jr. emails will be “insightful in that regard.”
Hillary Clinton’s running mate has also responded
Tim Kaine had the strongest response to the Trump, Jr. emails. This is unsurprising as Kaine was Hillary Clinton’s running mate in last year’s Presidential election, so the campaign that Trump, Jr. hoped to use Russian intelligence to smear was just as much Kaine’s and it was Clinton’s. If Hillary Clinton is the anti-Donald Trump, then Tim Kaine is the anti-Mike Pence. He told CNN that the Trump, Jr.
situation is “beyond obstruction of justice.”
Obstruction of justice, of course, is the unconstitutional act that Democrats in Congress have been hanging on to in the hopes of using it to get President Trump impeached, since he fired FBI Director James Comey for investigating the potential Trump/Russia collusion. But Kaine said that this is going “beyond” that, and instead “moving into perjury, false statements, and even potentially treason.” Treason! That’s the big one. Kaine did say that “nothing is proven yet,” but we’ll see. It’s a good step forward in the right direction. Democratic Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, who fought in the war in Iraq, has also accused Trump of treason. He tweeted, “If this isn’t treasonous, I’m not sure what is.”
