What really went on with Robert Mueller and Donald Trump Jr at that airport terminal this morning
It was an unexpectedly surreal moment, even by Trump-Russia scandal standards. This morning a photo went viral on social media which depicted Donald Trump Jr standing in line at an airport terminal, while Special Counsel Robert Mueller sat in a chair just a few feet from him. The photo turned out to be real, and it turned out to have been taken this morning. It caused enough of a fuss that Mueller’s office ended up releasing a statement about it – and yet it still has people trying to figure out what was really going on. Here’s some context.
The photograph in question was taken and posted to Twitter by a Politico reporter. It clearly showed Mueller sitting in the foreground, but there were some questions as to whether it was really Trump Jr standing in line in the background. Later the reporter posted a photo of a clearly identifiable Trump Jr from a different angle, thus proving that this strange moment really did happen. This set off an immediate firestorm about what might have been going on.
photo credit: Politico
There are only three possible explanations for what transpired. The first is that this was a remarkable coincidence, and that both men simply happened to be leaving town on the same Friday morning flight. Robert Mueller’s spokesman Peter Carr ended up telling CNN that Mueller was not aware of Donald Trump Jr’s presence. But this didn’t satisfy some observers who noted the timing, coming the morning after the story surfaced that Michael Cohen was willing to testify about Donald Trump’s advance knowledge of Donald Trump Jr’s treason meeting with the Russians.
There are two other possibilities here. One would be that Robert Mueller and Donald Trump Jr made a point of meeting each other at that terminal to discuss the Cohen revelation – but that would require cooperation between Mueller and Junior, and there has been no evidence of that to date. The other would be that Mueller made a point of sitting there just to spook Junior, and remind him that the Trump-Russia investigation will end up putting him in prison for decades if he doesn’t cut a plea deal.
