Coverage of national and international news, including breaking stories. Jay sekulow on abc yesterday. Would that meeting constitute a violation of the law . And what you have is a situation and ive said this well over a year. You have to look at what laws, rules and Regulation Statutes are purportedly violated here. Hes been saying that for well over a year. Well over a year ago, he said the opposite about that meeting in trump tower. Remember, it was all about adoptions. I didnt hear anybody talk about babies this weekend. And there are some potentially relevant laws. For example, u. S. Code of federal regulations. Quote, a Foreign National shall not directly or indirectly make a contribution or a donation of money or other thing of value or expressly or impliedly promise to make a contribution or a donation in connection with any federal, state or local election. And, quote, no person shall knowingly solicit accept or
receive from a Foreign National any contribution or donation proh
could put him in greater legal jeopardy, so why do that? because it was stupid. technically speaking. because it was stupid. i got it. look, you can t always seek explanations for the president s behavior and some form of higher rationality. i mean, there is clearly a pneumonic tick going on here. he is fulminating. obsessing his mind. this is the risk for any administration, a president whose every stray thought goes to twitter. some i think clearly amount to attempts to obstruct justice. he is digging a legal hole for himself that s going to be very deep. the issue, however, is this. i agree with every word that kim said. and you really did lay out the legal facts beautifully. but here s the other detail. bob mueller, according to the justice department regulations, cannot indict the president. so the issue ends up being a
he is consistently conflating political and legal problems which puts everybody who s trying to defend him in trouble. remember, the key thing about the whole adoptions, adoptions are connected to the it was never really even when they said it was about adoptions, adoptions are codes. exactly, exactly. like saying i m going shopping for a car and i m a getaway driver. to the degree that also leads to look like it was collusion, like they were getting material help, that s where the president gets everybody in trouble. speaking of everybody in trouble, let s stick with don jr. kim, you ve written in the past that mueller could use don jr. as a way to get to the president. but don jr. ain t your normal con si c conciliatory to the president. well, he s not protected by the clause. there s doj guidance that
university baltimore school of law. excellent table this morning. kim, to you first, bottom line this, did djtj, donald trump jr., break the law by taking the meeting? you did a terrific job laying out the law. i start teaching my students in a couple weeks and i couldn t even do it as well as you did. we have a code of federal regulations but a united states statute passed three different times that basically says we don t want foreign nationals mucking around in our elections. it s very broad. it does not require that they actually achieve some kind of benefit from a foreigner. soliciting, meaning trying to get something of benefit from a foreign national is verboten, it s against the the law. so that s one thing. the second thing, you mentioned conspiracy. robert mueller is already indicted. multiple members of the russian intelligence community for hacking into servers and
repercussions, consequences for hosting that meeting with those ruckuses back at trump tower last year. the president suggesting there s nothing to it. basically saying it s fake news reporting. saying it s a complete fabrication that recent report over this weekend. but the bottom line is we have been witnessing him while on vacation, hardly in vacation mode, lashing out increasingly frequently. the pace of his mistruths or lies has been growing in recent weeks and months. appears something in the president s head, as one person said to me last week, this is something in his head, this russia topic, and he can t erase it. the lies or mistruths might work for his base or republicans who want air cover here. the question we need to dig into is was the law broken. because if it does, it don t matter how popular you are. i want to bring in my panel, kim wha waley, a professor at the