Donald Trump’s endgame just became even more self destructive
For nearly two years now, Donald J. Trump and those close to him have been telling us that the Trump Tower meeting that took place in June 2016 was about adoption. Now the Greatest “Prevaricator Of The United States” of all time is changing his tune. On Sunday, 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!”
The June 9, 2016 meeting took place between senior members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign: Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. In July 2017, Trump drafted the false statement about the purpose of the meeting for Junior. Trump has always disclaimed any knowledge of the meeting and purportedly did not participate in the meeting.
Initially Trump denied any involvement in the statement that came out in 2017, which denied any political activity. News media later reported that Trump had in fact drafted the statement. His legal team has tried to downplay any involvement of Trump or any significance to the meeting. With Trump’s latest tweet on the meeting’s purpose, he appears to be (once again) changing his story about the meeting. It is almost as if his crackpot legal team has been forecasting this was coming. Giuliani and Sekulow have recently used the refrain that if Trump were obstructing justice, there would be leaks and disclosures. Trump may have just proved their point.
Finally, the tweet might be connected in some way to the appearance of Hope Hicks having flown in Air Force One with Trump over the weekend. Recall she was part of the original statement-drafting and denials. Trump is coming clean and one expects we will eventually have confirmation that he was physically or remotely present at the June 2016 meeting – or at least knows everything that took place.
Daniel is a lawyer writing and teaching about SCOTUS, and is the author of the book “The Chief Justices” about the SCOTUS as seen through the center seat.