Charlie Savage of The New York Times pointed out that by confessing that Trump dictated the lie-filled memo about the Russia meeting that was released in his son’s name, Trump’s lawyers admitted to an impeachable offense.
Video:
Savage said on MSNBC Live:
So one of the things that Mueller is looking at is a statement that the white house issued in the name of Donald Trump Jr. When the “New York Times” first broke the story about the famous trump tower meeting with the Russian lawyer and the fact that Donald Trump Jr. Had been promised dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government and eagerly responded to that. In that sequence of this meeting — it took a while for those details to come out. They put a statement in his name saying we talked about adoptions. And there was nothing to it. And there’s been some suspicion that actually, that statement was personally dictated by the president. And in this letter, they seem to acknowledge that yes, he personally dictated that misleading statement because we know that the meeting was premised on the idea the Russian government was going to give dirt on Hillary Clinton to the campaign.
But they say well, so what. It’s no the — basically, that’s a personal matter between the president and the “New York Times.” In other words, it’s not a crime for a politician to lie to the media and the public. What business is it of yours, Bob Mueller. That’s their defense of that moment. What’s interesting about this is Mueller is interested in that for other reasons, we think.
One is, if Trump, in doing — personally, was personally trying to mislead the public, and cover up these campaign ties to Russia, that could be evidence that he wanted to cover up campaign ties to Russia and therefore evidence of his motivation and intention when he did other things. Like pressure the Comey to stop investigating Flynn or fire Comey other these other things. Even though that particular moment was between the public and “New York times”d the president is could be evidence of other things. The other thing relevant is one of the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon talked about, as one of the items against him, lying to the public and trying to mislead the public about whether there was anything there to the Watergate investigation. Even if it’s not a crime in terms of federal statutes and what you could be prosecuted for in court, lying to the public about — there is precedent in American history for lies in an investigation like this to be part of what was the bill of particulars in an impeachment proceeding.
Trump’s legal team appears to be so desperate to avoid a subpoena and future criminal charges that they are confessing to impeachable offenses to the Special Counsel because they either didn’t understand the ramifications of what they were saying or are in way over their heads. For a president who promised to only hire the best people, Donald Trump has some terrible lawyers, and his legal team has only gotten worse since Rudy Giuliani came aboard.
The memo itself is loaded with parsed legal views, and in some cases a flat out ignorance of the current law.
Trump is fighting so hard to win the PR war because, with lawyers like this, the legal battle is already lost.
For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.
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