It took some time, but here we are. After decades of minimizing the menace posed by Russia—recall Barack Obama’s gibe, in response to Mitt Romney’s suggestion that Russia was our greatest geopolitical threat, that the 1980s had called and wanted their foreign policy back—American liberals are suddenly convinced of the Russian government’s malevolence toward the United States. We’re glad to see our friends on the left take a more clear-sighted view of an adversary, even if this new conviction has taken the rather strange form of an unshakable certitude that Donald Trump’s campaign staff and its surrogates illegally collaborated with Russian operatives in the run-up to and immediate aftermath of the 2016 election.
Not that we lack evidence that Moscow attempted to influence last year’s election. Mike Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, had undisclosed contacts with Russian officials; Sen. Jeff Sessions, an early Trump ally and the president’s attorney general, forgot about more than one meeting with Russia’s ambassador to the United States; and a Trump campaign adviser named Carter Page had relationships with numerous Russian officials.
There are plenty of suspicious oddities, too. Longtime Trump associate Roger Stone acknowledged his relationship with the Kremlin-tied hacker known as Guccifer 2.0; and Paul Manafort, briefly the Trump campaign’s chairman, has a history of well-paid work for foreign politicians and companies tied to the Russian government.
All very odd, but none of it alone would necessarily lead an unbiased observer to believe the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia. Then, in May, the Washington Post published a story revealing that last December Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, had asked the Russian ambassador about the possibility of Trump transition officials using Russian diplomatic facilities to communicate with the Kremlin, apparently in order to avoid monitoring by U.S. officials.
And this week, we learned from the New York Times about Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with an individual purportedly representing the Russian government.
On June 3, 2016, with Trump on the verge of securing the Republican nomination for president, the candidate’s eldest son was approached via email by an entertainment publicist named Rob Goldstone claiming to have a source of damaging information about Hillary Clinton. The source, whom Goldstone later said was a “Russian government attorney,” was offering documents that “would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father. . . . This is obviously very high level and sensitive information, but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
Trump Jr.’s reply: “If it’s what you say I love it.”
Political campaigns are often approached by people claiming to possess evidence that, if known, would do irreparable harm to an opponent. And most campaigns are happy to listen: Such is the unsavory nature of politics. Usually, the campaign dispatches a trusted third party to find out what it’s all about and whether it amounts to anything. In this case, however, Donald Jr. chose to meet personally with Goldstone’s contact at Trump Tower. And he didn’t just agree to a meeting; he urged Kushner and Manafort to join him. Which they did.
If we believe their story, the three got nothing for their time. The “Russian government attorney,” Natalia Veselnitskaya, was just there to lobby the men on the subject of the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 law fiercely opposed by Vladimir Putin because it allows the U.S. government to seize the assets of designated human rights abusers. Both Donald Jr. and Veselnitskaya insist she had nothing of significance to reveal about Hillary Clinton.
The exchange might have amounted to very little, but for the fact that Donald Jr. seems to have believed that Veselnitskaya was in direct contact with the Kremlin. That he agreed to talk to her on the subject of Hillary Clinton is clear evidence that the president’s son was eager to “collude” with Russia for the purpose of ruining the campaign of an American political opponent. Not only that: He forwarded the email correspondence between himself and Goldstone to Manafort and Kushner—meaning that three of the people closest to candidate Trump were ready to collaborate with a foreign government for the purpose of influencing the outcome of an American election.
Despite all this—despite the facts that (a) a hostile power put substantial resources into efforts to subvert the American electoral process, and (b) the winning candidate’s son was ready to play along—Donald Jr. as far as we know hasn’t done anything illegal. What he and his confreres are guilty of, rather, is sleaze and incompetence—and, in Donald Jr.’s case, a series of lies to divert attention from what the meeting with Veselnitskaya was really about. First, he claimed there was no campaign-related meeting with any Russian; then he admitted to one, but only a “short introductory meeting”; then he admitted the Clinton opposition research had come up but said that the meeting had been scheduled to discuss an adoption program for Russian children. Only when the New York Times indicated that it possessed the emails between Donald Jr. and Goldstone did the former release them to the public.
Is this the last significant revelation about the Russian Connection? Unlikely. On June 7, 2016, a few hours after Trump Jr. confirmed his scheduled meeting with Veselnitskaya, his father was declaring victory in the Republican primaries. Speaking in New York, he stated his intention to “give a major speech” in which he would discuss the Clintons’ many perfidies. “Hillary Clinton turned the State Department into her own private hedge fund,” Trump remarked: “The Russians, the Saudis, the Chinese all gave money to Bill and Hillary and got favorable treatment in return.”
Trump Jr. says he never told his father about the meeting with Veselnitskaya, and the president initially said he didn’t know about it until a few days before the Times story ran. But, in a July 12 conversation with reporters on Air Force One, the president noted that he may have been told about the meeting after all: “In fact maybe it was mentioned at some point.” Trump’s admission came in a 70-minute interview that had been declared off-the-record The following day, Trump suggested to Maggie Haberman of the New York Times that the session could be retroactively treated as on the record—meaning reporters could quote from it at will. When the White House released excerpts from the session, Trump’s admission-against-interest was nowhere to be found. A press pool report later noted the omission and printed the quotation.
For months Trump’s fiercest adversaries have drawn parallels with Richard Nixon and Watergate. We’d say Team Trump’s bumbling incompetence looks pretty amateur next to Nixon’s elaborate and circumspect scheming. What the Trump-Russia affair has most in common with Watergate is that it’s going to last a long time. The chances that Robert Mueller’s investigation will produce nothing look vanishingly thin: If the Times can learn details like these, a team of attorneys with subpoena powers will likely uncover a great deal more.
Which is bad news for the president’s congressional agenda—he can expect total obstruction from Democrats from this point on—and bad news, too, for the president’s capacity to challenge Russian interference and expansionism. With Putin’s regime in effect occupying eastern Ukraine, threatening the Baltic states, and backing Syria and Iran, American foreign policy desperately needs coherence and consistency—precisely the qualities the Trump administration seems unable to give it. A president unable to deal wisely and decisively with America’s greatest geopolitical threat is a president destined for failure and maybe disaster.
Most Americans want the president to succeed. The Kremlin, we assume, does not. And so far the Kremlin is getting its way.
