If Trump meeting is illegal, then Clinton dossier is criminal too

The Hill ^ | 8/6/2018 | Jonathan Turley

[bitt]

President Trump has ignited yet another firestorm with a tweet admitting that the meeting in Trump Tower between Russians and his son, Donald Trump Jr., was an effort to gather dirt on Hillary Clinton. It contradicts the statement that Trump released to the media in 2016.

CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota and others declared that the tweet makes a criminal charge against Trump an “open and shut case.” It does not. It is not even compelling evidence of a crime, because it is based on an erroneous interpretation of federal election laws. What is most alarming is the failure, again, to consider the implications of radically expanding the scope of such laws just to bag Trump or his family at any cost.

Early on Sunday morning, Trump tweeted, “Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics — and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!” At the outset, there are a couple glaring problems with these public statements.

[bitt]

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[AndyJackson]

Fallacious logic. There is no equivalency. The dosier was false and fabricated for fraudulent purposes.

[CivilWarBrewing]

Turley is full-o-shiite. Even if Trump's meeting was LEGAL, Hillary's Dossier of Russian lies is STILL ILLEGAL because.. SHE PAID MONEY FOR THOSE LIES, TRUMP DIDN'T PAY FOR SQUAT!

[stylin19a]

Pres. Trump tweeted basically the exact same thing back july of 2017...where were the splody heads then ?

[sam_whiskey]

I don’t understand why the President refocused attention on this when it all came out over a year ago.

[virgil]

If this is illegal, then when are they going to fry Hillary’s fat ass?

[CatOwner]

The DEMs would love nothing more than to take down Trump and Hillary simultaneously. Tying the two together may do just that.

[rfp1234]

This is a prelude to refusing to sit down for an “interview” with the Mule Team. POTUS should continue to discredit Mueller and his circus probe, and this is an effective way to do it.

[rfp1234]

No way would they sacrifice Broom Hilda. That would alienate half of their base before a major election.

[xkaydet65]

Playing Devil’s Advocate here but we do not know what, if any , dirt was given to Jr. But if info was given then since no one is alleging Trump paid money, what did he pay? This is where it can get dicey. Were promises made to Russia by Jr in the form of policy and decisions favorable to Russia? If true, and I am not saying it is, that would be far more damaging and illegal than paying money as the Clintons certainly did. In a court this is not even allowed to be presented as the crime is speculation. But impeachment is another story. Rules of evidence are the business of each House.

[yoe]

" What is most alarming is the failure, again, to consider the implications of radically expanding the scope of such laws just to bag Trump or his family at any cost."

A Trump administration was never to be,as we now know everything was in place to prevent that. (D.T. will never be POTUS)...the same Americans who were apart of the Clinton, Obama, Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Pelosi, Lynch, Michelle and Barack Obama, Jarrett crime scene that was under way then and those same talking heads etc. are responsible for the fake news, slander, ugly Americanism we see and hear daily....Muller and Rosenstein doing the Swamp Trot while tearing their country apart.

Hypocrisy reins supreme on the radical left and the Deep State. Case in point:

The Washington "aristocracy" is like the fading Norma Desmond....the party is over Progressives.

[Rockingham]

Trump fears an obstruction and perjury case against his son. He is trying to counter Mueller’s likely theory.

[Rockingham]

Payment can be an important factor but is not the essential point. The charge of collusion is based on the claim that the Russian government was offering to help Trump get elected. With such a claim, even the thinnest and least consequential of contacts with seeming Russian government emissaries becomes highly suspicious. The meeting with the Russian lawyer was in fact agreed to by the Trump campaign in the belief that dirt on Hillary was on offer, apparently from a Russian government source. Even without anything coming of it, the impression is left that the Trump campaign was open to using help from the Russian government to defeat Hillary. That would likely be legal but ominous enough for the U.S. security agencies to spy on Trump. If Meuller issues a report to that effect, it would go a long way to clearing those in the FBI, CIA, and the DOJ who spied on Trump.

[JohnnyP]

This is CNN.

[Sacajaweau]

They'e very different. Clinton's dossier is collusion, i.e., the Clinton people actually participated and PAID to obtain the resultant dossier.

The Trump meeting had no, "0, nadda result. It produced nothing. There was no collusion....no payment.

In hindsight, it was a setup.

[Rockingham]

Really?

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Hussein Obama criminally meddled in the 2016 election. Not Putin.

[Cboldt]

-- Hillary's Dossier of Russian lies is STILL ILLEGAL because.. SHE PAID MONEY FOR THOSE LIES --

That doesn't make it illegal either.

As Turley points out, paying foreigners for opposition research is common, just usually done via cutouts.

[blueyon]

So if getting “dirt” on your opponent is illegal then most democrats need to be charged...starting with Obama who (from what I heard) won the Ill Senate after a “sealed” court document was leaked on the guy he was running against