Only the Good Lord knows what was going through Donald Trump Jr.’s mind when he decided to publish the email chain between himself and lawyer Rob Goldstone on Tuesday, willingly revealing his knowledge of the Russian government’s involvement in a meeting he took last June at the promise of opposition research on Hillary Clinton. That involvement, as anybody who’s read news reports of the meeting likely knows, seems to constitute a violation of federal election statutes that prohibit campaigns from accepting anything of value from foreign nationals.
The emails released by Trump Jr. clearly show he went to the meeting for the express purpose of obtaining information on Clinton that he knew was to be provided as “part of Russia and its government’s support” for his father. In other words, it looks a lot like the president’s son just voluntarily published documents that seem to prove the Trump campaign violated federal law.
I have no interest in mocking or condescending Trump Jr. as many in the media are now eagerly engaged. Trump detractors constantly slam his administration for eschewing transparency and, here, Trump Jr. wasted little time in being completely transparent (that doesn’t excuse the meeting itself). I assume he had some reason for doing so, I just have no idea what that reason could be.
Therein lies the question.
Given how blatantly the emails appear to show willful statute violations and how ardently he’s shrugged off his own actions, it looks like Trump Jr. just doesn’t believe what he did was wrong. He may now acknowledge he violated law (that, we do not yet know), but he almost certainly believes the meeting was well-within the bounds of ethical behavior.
More than anything this seems to be a statement on just how obtuse some in the Trump orbit are to what constitutes appropriate behavior in government. He released the emails, it seems, because he honestly doesn’t think they contain any evidence of unethical behavior. Actually, it almost looks like he believes they absolve him of wrongdoing.
Of course, Paul Manafort’s attendance at the June 2016 meeting can’t be explained in the same way since he’s an experienced veteran of the political world. But Trump Jr.’s decision to release the emails on Twitter appears to betray a fundamental disconnect between his understanding of ethical behavior, shaped by decades spent in the private sector, and what actually constitutes ethical behavior in politics.
That’s why so many in Washington, those people intimately familiar with the conventions of political campaigns, are now left searching for some way to explain the younger Trump’s bizarre decision.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
