Trump Dictated Misleading Statement On Son’s Meeting With Russian

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Publish Date:
July 31, 2017
Source:
Reuters
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Summary

U.S. President Donald Trump dictated a statement, later shown to be misleading, in which his son Donald Trump Jr. said a meeting he had with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 was not related to his father’s presidential campaign, the Washington Post reported on Monday.

Trump Jr. released emails earlier in July that showed he eagerly agreed last year to meet a woman he was told was a Russian government lawyer who might have damaging information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as part of Moscow’s official support for his father. The New York Times was first to report the meeting.

David Sklansky, a professor of criminal law at Stanford Law School, said that if Trump, as reported by the Post, helped craft a misleading public statement about the meeting, he may have bolstered a potential obstruction of justice case against himself.

To build a criminal obstruction of justice case, federal law requires prosecutors to show that a person acted with “corrupt” intent. A misleading public statement could be used as evidence of corrupt intent, Sklansky said.

“Lying usually isn’t a crime,” he said. But “it could be relevant in determining whether something else the president did, like firing (former FBI Director James) Comey, was done corruptly.”

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