Goodman and the experts he spoke with identified four types of actions that could create criminal liability for the Trump team stemming from this new information: If the campaign consulted with the Russians on their plans to disseminate the emails; if the Trump campaign gave tacit assent or approval or support; if Trump officials intentionally encouraged the Russians; or if they sought to conceal the facts of a crime. Just looking at the publicly available information shows the outlines of a potential legal case against members of the Trump team along these very lines...
As campaign finance law expert Paul S. Ryan points out, campaigns cannot coordinate with foreign nationals on any expenditure that seeks to influence a U.S. election. Coordination includes cooperation, consultation, or acting in concert with, or at the request or suggestion of the candidate or his team. A key word is “or”—each of those actions could independently suffice to establish a violation...
While significant focus has been given to Donald Trump Jr.’s enthusiastic response to the
offer of damaging information on Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” equal attention should be paid to the
rest of his response, in which he says that such information would be helpful “especially later in the summer.” In this statement, Trump Jr. was not only communicating a willingness to collude with Russia; he was also telling them
when the campaign thought the release of such information would be most politically useful. What’s more, as Bob Bauer has
noted, when Trump Jr. told the Russian lawyer the information that she presented on Clinton-related donors was not valuable, he “aided the Russians by providing access to its judgments about attacks that would be
ineffective.” That too was a form of consultation and assistance...
After Trump Jr. shared his assessment of the best timing for the release of damaging material on Clinton, WikiLeaks, which the U.S. Intelligence Community
assessed with high confidence was provided the stolen Democratic emails by Russia,
released a slew of emails later that summer right before the Democratic National Convention, exacerbating divisions within the Democratic Party and undermining the convention’s unifying message...
(my favorite part)
We now know that Trump Jr. was also
exchanging private messages with Wikileaks both during and after the campaign. In one instance, Trump tweeted about the hacked emails
just 15 minutes after WikiLeaks messaged Trump Jr. suggesting his father promote them. Trump Jr. wasn’t the only person talking with Wikileaks