How Robert Mueller conned Donald Trump into giving up Donald Trump Jr

| 3:44 am EDT August 6, 2018
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Over the weekend we watched a series of developments play out which were stunning even by the always-surreal standards of the Trump-Russia scandal. By the time the whole thing was over, Donald Trump had voluntarily incriminated his son Donald Trump Jr on crimes along the lines of treason. Special Counsel Robert Mueller had his best weekend yet, and he didn’t even do anything. Here’s the thing: this doesn’t feel like something that just magically fell into place by accident.

This all began when Mueller let it be known late last week that he wanted to imminently interview Donald Trump about his criminal scandals. In that same timeframe it was reported that Michael Cohen was willing to testify that Trump knew about the criminal nature of Trump Jr’s Russia meeting in advance. Then Rudy Giuliani blurted out that Rick Gates, who has already cut a plea deal, also knew that Trump knew. Shortly after that, CNN and the Washington Post reported that Donald Trump was privately telling friends that he feared Donald Trump Jr had exposed himself to criminal liability with his Trump Tower meeting with the Russians. Even if Trump was telling his friends this, why would they turn around and leak something so embarrassing (and incriminating) to the media? Then things got stranger.

Donald Trump crawled out of bed and tweeted that Donald Trump Jr’s meeting with the Russians was indeed “a meeting to get information on an opponent.” That means Junior goes to prison, and so does anyone else who knew about the meeting’s true nature in advance. Trump made a point of adding “I did not know about it” because of course he doesn’t want to join his son in prison, even though Mueller has two witnesses willing to testify that he did.

When you filter out the usual Trump histrionics, you’re left with a remarkable progression of events. Robert Mueller let it be known that he wanted an interview with Donald Trump, just as someone let it be known that Michael Cohen could confirm that Trump knew about the Russia meeting, and just as someone told the media that Trump was worried that Trump Jr might go down. How convenient. Who really put these other two stories out there? In any case, the three storylines prompted Trump to give up Trump Jr for no good reason. Either Mueller got incredibly lucky this weekend, or he orchestrated more of this than the eye can see.