Reply to Kushner, Manafort and Don Jr. met with a Russian lawyer with Kremlin ties during the campaign

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have a question to all you brilliant DCUM legal minds out there.  What's the legal standard/definition for collusion in this context? The more that comes out, the more certain it sounds like the Trump campaign had at least some knowledge of Russian involvement in the election during campaign season. However, this doesn't necessarily mean they acted on this knowledge. But would being complicit meet a collusion threshold test?

My pure speculation here.  I have a feeling all these meetings that took place were about the Russians telling the Trump campaign what kind of information they had and what they were going to do with the information, while team Trump so sat there and nodded their heads. [/quote]

"Collusion" is a general umbrella term for all the inappropriate coordination that TeamTrump had with Russian agents. It is not referring to a specific violation of a specific statute in this context. "Collusion" is also a legal term for a specific crime, but in a entirely different context, so it can get confusing.  Several  people (some ignorantly, some intentionally) are trying to muddy the waters between the two concepts to suggest Team Trump violated no laws here.

There are several laws that Team Trump may have violated - specific crimes with specific elements that prosecutors will determine whether they can prove. For example, some of the people on Team Trump may have conspired to violate election laws. Others may have offered or received bribes. Still others may have lied under oath. Others may have obstructed justice. Others may have willfully failed to report information accurately (a version of perjury, I suspect.) Addressing each of those potential crimes in detail is a complex undertaking because each has about 3-6 elements that must be assessed for each situation. There are a number of articles that discuss crimes generally, but you may need to dig a little deeper to find the ones that list out the specific elements for each likely crime and apply the facts we know to those elements. Doing that is interesting for practicing lawyers, but not usually of much interest for the general public, so mainstream media like CNN or Fox rarely go into that sort of detail. I have read a few of those articles that lay out the specific elements, and it seems several people on Team Trump are well on their way to checking off all the boxes that allow them to get charged. Some of those elements are a little subjective, so it's still debatable. But they're pretty close to the red line based just on public disclosures. There are certainly lots of other facts and communications that the investigators have that are not yet public.

Hth

[/quote]

PP again.  Here are a couple articles that describe some potential crimes that might be investigated or charged:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/us/politics/collusion-trump-russia-campaign.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-jr-emails-illegal-campaign-2017-7

Here is the one people are most focused on right now, 52 USC 30121:
[quote]§?30121.
Contributions and donations by foreign nationals

(a) Prohibition. It shall be unlawful for—

(1) a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make—
(A) a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State, or local election; ...

(2) a person to solicit, accept, or receive a contribution or donation described in subparagraph (A) or (B) of paragraph (1) from a foreign national.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/52/30121[/quote]

In the context of this Don Trump Jr situation, Trump likely thought he was meeting with a "foreign national" because the email describes her as a "Russian government lawyer" and says clearly that she is relaying information from the Russian government.  The "thing of value" is the opposition research and secret info that's described in the email.  When Don Jr wrote "I love it" and arranged the meeting, he took a substantial step toward soliciting and accepting the contribution.

Criminal defense lawyers would offer many counter-arguments, such as by saying the opposition research wasn't really of any value, or that Don Jr wasn't really intending to accept anything, or maybe that he didn't really read the email and take note of the fact that he was meeting with a foreign national.  Maybe they even have some records to back up those defenses, such as Don Jr's personal diary where he says "Dear Diary, I'm so tired and sick these days that I can't focus on my emails. I think I'm meeting tomorrow with a friend of Rob Goldstone's who is a US lawyer who might have received some oppo research from a friend in NY who worked for the Clinton campaign, but I'm not even sure because I was drunk on cough syrup when I accepted the meeting. I've asked Kushner to attend so I don't get confused about the details."  Smart defense lawyers will look into issues like that and build defenses.

None of us know enough about the details to know for sure what the result will be.  But Trump clearly danced closer to the line of illegality than any defense lawyer would want him to.[/quote]

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