naivety, look, we were high-powered business people running these operations but not smart enough to get this political thing. by the time the particular russian meeting happened in june 2016, they had been running for president for a year. don mcgann was on staff from the very beginning. now the white house counsel, but was campaign counsel. one of the smartest, most effective washington lawyers. why didn t he tell them this protocol? who knows whether they did or not. my point is, they had his advice. rules for running for governor in particular states, rules for running for senate. i ve seen these business people hire people that know politics, as mr. trump did, and start to rely on their expertise so they do everything according to federal lie. they like to play the naivety
come to certain conclusions about conduct in this case. but we can t come to conclusions now. we could have opinions. just not come to conclusions. let s put up one of the there is a serious question about whether it s possible that a campaign finance violation occurred. there is a law i worked on campaigns and i knew this to be the case. no american shall knowingly solicit, accept or receive from a foreign national any contribution or donation and it says anything of value. when i worked on campaigns, if you got a call from australia, the uae or russia and they want to give you information about an opponent that s strictly out of bounds. you re right, you go to the campaign counsel or to the fbi. right. do you think it s possible at least that a campaign finance violation occurred. it depends what happened in that meeting. nicolle, we don t know what happened in the meeting yet. i am not saying nothing happened and i m not saying something happened. you know why? because i
people were open to a soft pitch, you have jared kushner leaving the meeting after 7 minutes. paul manafort work away on his blackberry. the meeting ending inconclusively. if it were an fsb operation be it obviously failed. as a government official and private citizen, over the years i talked to cia, fbi counter-intelligence people on any number of occasions when they asked me about people who contacted me. it comes in all different shapes and sizes. the meeting shouldn t have taken place. when they got the email it should have been sent to the campaign counsel. i think that would have stopped it right there. but for god s sake. at some point you have to ask what precisely is it they have done so far that we know of that they have done wrong? have they mishandled the communications strategy dealing with it? sure.
they feel like he s under siege and when he tweets, of course, they re quick to support him. i don t know that that s so for the rest of the country. if this had been a traditional campaign and you had a campaign counsel would have advised against taking a meeting like this and this was not a traditional campaign and don junior took a meeting that was ill-advised and sadly, was joined by paul manafort and jared kushner. it s just unfortunate. it s not going to go away any time soon. it will continue to be investigated, obviously, and it doesn t help in terms of the i don t think it becomes a prosecutable offense and with regard to how it looks with the collusions with russians in the campaign. it leaves a bad taste in everybody s mouth. had i been don junior i would have come out and told the truth about everyone that was at the meeting. i think to have withheld some of the information only has made it
finance laws, and you would think before you have a meeting between, with a russian attorney you would go to the campaign counsel and say, is this appropriate? well, you might. think about that. but this was a very small insular group of people who maybe didn t have a campaign attorney at the time. i m not quite sure if they did or not. i don t know. it they were facing a delegate fight. had other things to think about. especially paul manafort, hired to make sure that donald trump got enough delegates. according to the russian who was there, he was looking at a cell phone the entire time, but, you know, it seems it seems to me, everyone, just common sense is, this is a russian who says the russian government supports mr. trump, and we have sensitive information for you. yes, it was before russia became a big issue in the campaign, but common sense would say, and