Stop Overreacting, Liberals! There's No Trump Jr. Quid Pro Quo... Oh God, Never Mind.

Are these people nefarious or stupid? It's a serious question.

Kellyanne Conway will have to update her visual aides. The official White House spin on Junior’s revelation that he — and, more probably importantly, Paul Manafort — met with Natalia Veselnitskaya is they took a meeting and didn’t get anything, so who cares. For those keeping score, the story was originally “we didn’t meet with Russians” then “we met with her and only talked about adoption” and now it’s “sure we met with her as part of the Russian government’s support of the campaign, but it’s only a crime if you succeed, right?”

The “adoption” line was always curious since adoption is the crux of America’s sanctions on Russia. After the U.S. imposed sanctions on the Russian government under the Magnitsky Act, Russia’s retort was to ban adoptions, meaning an “adoption” discussion was always a discussion of sanctions making that the dumbest possible excuse. Maybe that’s why the administration has run away from the little orphan Anya excuse.

Putting aside whether or not meeting with a Russian lawyer is treasonous (it’s not) or a violation of campaign finance laws (it, actually probably is), the best thing going for Trump Jr. & Co. so far is the lack of a concrete quid pro quo. No matter how much Trump and Putin cozy up to each other and give John McCain hives, until the Trump administration throws the Russians a real bone, the campaign officials under the spotlight can still, whether you believe they got anything from Veselnitskaya or not, portray themselves as political neophytes who took an innocent meeting. If it was untoward, where’s the payoff?

Well, according to Foreign Policy — the four decade old, staid wonk journal that will be decried as “Fake News” by a Pepe the Frog avatar on Reddit before I finish this sentence — some elected officials are starting to raise questions about a Trump DOJ decision to settle a massive money laundering case. In fact, the very case that resulted in the Magnitsky Act (after the lawyer who uncovered the case, Sergei Magnitsky suspiciously died). When the case settled a few months ago, most observers were dumbfounded, but in the wake of the Trump Jr. emails there’s a new reason for skepticism because the lawyer defending the Russian laundering scheme was — apparently covering your tracks is for chumps — Natalia Veselnitskaya:

The forfeiture case was heralded at the time as “a significant step towards uncovering and unwinding a complex money laundering scheme arising from a notorious foreign fraud,” Bharara said. “As alleged, a Russian criminal enterprise sought to launder some of its billions in ill-gotten rubles through the purchase of pricey Manhattan real estate.”

But Instead of proceeding with the trial as scheduled, the Trump Justice Department settled the case two days before it was due to begin. By then, Bharara had already been axed by the president. Bharara’s assistant did not immediately respond to request for comment.

How much of a giveaway was this? Well, the government was seeking $230 million. After the new administration took over, they settled for $6 million and sought no admission of wrongdoing. And they did this two days before trial. That’s… curious.

The Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee penned a letter to the DOJ yesterday asking for some clarification about why the federal government. Is this the quid pro quo from the infamous meeting? Maybe, maybe not. But the administration can no longer blithely say there’s not even the appearance of post-election impropriety.

Sponsored

And while the motivation for digging into this is all about Trump, the good thing about this inquiry is that, at the very least, we should find out why the DOJ invested all the time and money into going to a multimillion-dollar criminal trial and then settled two days before for mere kopeks.

DOJ Settled Massive Russian Fraud Case Involving Lawyer Who Met With Trump Jr. [Foreign Policy]


HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

Sponsored