Ex-Bush ethics lawyer on Trump Jr.'s meeting: 'This borders on treason'
"We do not get our opposition research from spies, we do not collaborate with Russian spies, unless we want to be accused of treason," Richard Painter said.
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President George W. Bush's ethics lawyer thinks Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer who claimed to have compromising information about Hillary Clinton "borders on treason."
"This was an effort to get opposition research on an opponent in an American political campaign from the Russians, who were known to be engaged in spying inside the United States," Richard Painter, who serves a Bush's top ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007, said Sunday on MSNBC.
"We do not get our opposition research from spies, we do not collaborate with Russian spies, unless we want to be accused of treason," Painter continued. "If this story is true, we'd have one of them if not both of them in custody by now, and we'd be asking them a lot of questions."
"This is unacceptable," Painter added. "This borders on treason, if it is not itself treason."
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The New York Times reported on Sunday that Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower weeks after Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination.
Trump Jr. admitted in a statement to the Times that he expected to received information that could hurt Clinton's campaign, but left the meeting when the lawyer's focus appeared to be the repeal of the Magnitsky Act, which blacklists Russians suspected of human rights abuses.
"After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton," Trump Jr. said in the statement. "Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information."
"It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting," Trump Jr. added.
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for President Trump's lawyer, told the Times that "the president was not aware of and did not attend the meeting."