1.) what is the law is so unclear, that even the son of the president, even (one would expect) after instructions by some very expensive lawyer, is unable to avoid traps which lead him into "confessional territory" (I like this phrase).
I don't think he had hired this particular attorney, Alan Futerfas, yet. What is, however, striking, is that none of the other lawyers in the Trump organiztion could have given him certain advice. One of the interesting things about a bunch of these excuses describing the Trump administration as newcomers who don't know exactly what they're doing is that some of this is easily enough covered by saying, "Yeah, but you're a lawyer," as if to mean one should know that, already.
Then again, President Trump's attorney, Marc Kasowitz, ran around town boasting that he got a U.S. Attorney fired, and virtually indicting himself and his client by doing so. So, yeah, I know that he's only been a
White House lawyer for a little while, but just being a lawyer should have been enough that he understands to not go around telling people he advised your client to do something illegal, and shouldn't
boast triumphally that the client followed the advice to tamper with federal investigations.
To the other, if the attorneys constantly get away with bullshitting various courts and exploiting traditional juristic presuppositions about institutions and individuals, then they aren't really putting in much actual juristic work, and neither are their clients needing to put in certain efforts.
And
that might have just devoured the Trump presidency. It's a weird sloth that comes in what Americans denounce as "culture of privilege". It's kind of hard to explain in this particular aspect, but not only is the so-called culture of privilege the great equalizer by which the poor black male can feel nearly equal to the rich white man—no, really, if the poor black guy is important enough to money, he, too, can grab 'em by the genitals, and more, just like a rich white guy—it is also a cultivar of achillean sloth.
What Donald the Younger was trying to do was simply minimize the prospect of Clinton dirt. He could have said it was just some cheap bauble she tried to tempt them with as part of her pitch on the Magnitsky Act, and maybe some part of his formulation intended to keep that question away from the headlines—the
American outlook↱ on such pitches is pretty straightforward—but in the end he used the word "pretext", and perhaps he simply meant "pretense", which word still would have hitched people up a little, but has a different enough meaning to not do such damage.
To the other, part of the problem is that the eldest Trump son also
knew enough↱ to not want to lie. When he said the word "pretext" he really should have used another one. But when he used it, he admitted to something, and that's part of the circumstance:
It's hard to overstate the significance of revelations like these. Dan Pfeiffer, a former top advisor in the Obama White House, noted overnight, "Not in the wildest Democratic fantasy did we think there would be an email to a Trump clearly stating a Russian government effort to help."
As the shockwave makes its way through the political world, there are multiple angles to keep in mind:
• Trump Jr. wasn't the only one from the campaign at that meeting. Remember, Jared Kushner, one of Trump's closest confidants, and Paul Manafort, the campaign chairman at the time, also participated in the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower. They, too, will need to prepare an explanation.
• The Nixonian question: What did Donald Trump Sr. know and when did he know it? Three of the top people in Trump World attended this meeting, and no one said a word to the candidate?
• The sourcing: Much of the New York Times' reporting has been based on White House sourcing. It would appear someone in the West Wing isn't pleased with the president's oldest son.
• That Tapper interview: In July 2016, Trump Jr. did an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, dismissing the idea that the Russians wanted to help the Republican campaign as a "phony" story. This looks even worse now.
• Congressional scrutiny: The investigation into the Trump-Russia scandal on Capitol Hill is ongoing, and yesterday, there was bipartisan interest in having a chat with Trump Jr. The latest revelations all but ensure that he will have to testify.
Stepping back, there's been ample talk in recent months about whether there's fire beneath the smoke in this controversy. But those questions have effectively been answered: Russia wanted to put Trump in power, and the Trump campaign welcomed the assistance of the foreign American adversary.
The question isn't whether there's fire; it's who'll be burned and how severely.
Steve Benen's↱ summary for msnbc works well enough; there is far more going on here than simply collecting and using damaging information about other candidates. The
continuing revelations↱ make it clear that Donald Trump, Jr., is in extraordinarily dangerous legal territory. And it seems worth noting, though, that there was at least a brief period in which the calculated evasion was subject to at least one valence of interpretation in order to indict within in the juristically ineffective courts of public discourse and opinion, but that degree of doubt evaporated last evening with revelations of the Goldstone email. Everybody's kind of reeling, right now; as
Pfeiffer↱ really did say, "not in the wildest Democratic fantasy".
You picked a very strange and seemingly ill-informed anti-American line to pursue; even by your own clarification—
BTW, in civilized countries you will not be punished if you did not know the law. In Germany, for example, there is §17 StGB. If you err about your action violating a law, and were unable to avoid this error, you cannot be penalized. Of course, this is quite theoretical, and is seldom applied. You would have to show that you were unable to avoid the error, which is quite hard. But this is part of a civilized society that it recognizes this possibility.
—ignorance will not be a reasonable claim to bliss for Donald Trump, Jr.
Your rabid critique against the United States and American society prefers ill-informed complaint compared to actually sinking teeth into the real problems in our society. For instance, all Donald Trump, Jr., needs to do is convince a jury that he did not know, at any time in agreeing to meet with a Russian national ostensibly on behalf of the Russian government seeking to tamper in our election affairs, and then lying about whether or not he had any contacts with the Russians—presumably on official paperwork, too, in order to obtain various security clearances—was a crime. And these are the United States of America; he's white and male, so that suffices. Ignorance isn't bliss for people of color or people not of wealth. Bad legal advice isn't bliss, but I noticed nobody ever really stands up for Wesley Snipes, and, sure, I get it, there really is a Reasonable Person standard by which we wonder about why he accepted bad legal advice, but all these years later people will make excuses for Mike Milken because we should believe that he did not know that his attempts to evade the law would be considered illegal, or have some reasonable inkling thereof.
While ignorance isn't actually supposed to be bliss in these United States, more and more it seems to suffice. Still, though, any number of points apply, starting with the proposition that we are well beyond the bliss of ignorance.
Honestly, in a society where it is possible to convince a jury that wearing a bikini in the Florida summer means a woman wants to be held down and forced to participate in sexual intercourse while trying to refuse and resist, I think you're on the wrong tack if the problem with the American situation in comparison to other civilized countries is that Donald Trump, Jr., finds himself in a circumstance when pretending crippling stupidity just won't help.
Seriously, there are so
many ways to badmouth the U.S. if what one really wants is to criticize its pretense of civilized society. Hell, in Montana they're dealing with a problem where prosecutors were reluctant to charge crimes victimizing women because, well, boys will be boys. No, really, that's what the one prosecutor apparently said, somewhere along the way.
Or the California judge who needed a woman's vagina "shredded"—his own damn word—before he was ready to punish a rapist.
And what you're worried about is that the law might not be forgiving enough to clownish but extraordinarily dangerous villainy achieving and attending the White House?
Oh, hey: Consider Attorney General Jeff Sessions. So, as an attorney, he knew enough to offer a pretense of recusal from #Russiagate affairs. What I don't get is why, being an attorney, he chose such a bizarre parsing of circumstance in trying to conceal, or failing to report, particular meetings with foreign nationals. It is also true I furthermore don't understand how a U.S. Senator who did time on the Judiciary Committee and formerly served as a state attorney general could possibly expect to conceal those contacts unless, to borrow a term, he naïvely expected the so-called "deep state" to support President Trump unconditionally and unequivocally.
No, really, ignorance only pleads so much before no "reasonable person" buys the excuse. The Trump administration in general and family in particular are well beyond any former known or projected boundary.
