This is big: Donald Trump caught lying to the FBI about Trump-Russia scandal

| 8:15 pm EDT April 23, 2018
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It turns out Donald Trump’s obsession with disputing the Pee Pee Tape story has gotten him into some hot water in the Trump-Russia scandal. Trump told then-FBI Director James Comey that when he traveled to Moscow in 2013, he never even spent the night there. But now flight records reveal that Trump was there from Friday to Sunday, meaning he definitely spent the night, which means he directly lied to the FBI about an ongoing criminal investigation. So what does this mean?

In general, if you lie to the FBI about an investigation, you go to prison for it. Just ask Michael Flynn or George Papadopoulos how it worked out for them. It may be different for Donald Trump, because he wasn’t being questioned about an investigation when he lied to the FBI Director; instead he was being briefed by the FBI. There’s little precedent here, because it’s yet another area in which Trump is doing corrupt things that no past U.S. President is known to have done. But even if it turns out Trump didn’t commit a crime, this is still a major legal blow to him, and it hands a major victory to Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Because Trump has been caught lying about his role in the Trump-Russia scandal, from a legal perspective, it delegitimizes everything else he’s said about the scandal. It gives legal weight to Comey’s version of what transpired between them, which is crucial because Comey’s version had Trump committing felony obstruction of justice. There’s more.

If and when Donald Trump ends up on trial for his crimes, whether it be while he’s still in office or after he’s ousted, his lie about spending the night in Moscow can be used to cast legal doubt on all of his testimony. Of course Trump lies constantly, as fact checkers have proven on a daily basis. But what matters here is that he lied to a federal investigator about his role in an investigation, which is far different from his usual lies.