{"id":316922,"date":"2017-07-12T06:03:44","date_gmt":"2017-07-12T05:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/was-the-meeting-between-donald-trump-jr-and-the-russian-lawyer-really-treason-or-the-smoking-gun-of-collusion\/"},"modified":"2017-07-12T06:03:44","modified_gmt":"2017-07-12T05:03:44","slug":"was-the-meeting-between-donald-trump-jr-and-the-russian-lawyer-really-treason-or-the-smoking-gun-of-collusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/was-the-meeting-between-donald-trump-jr-and-the-russian-lawyer-really-treason-or-the-smoking-gun-of-collusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Was the Meeting Between Donald Trump Jr. and the Russian Lawyer Really \u201cTreason\u201d or the \u201cSmoking Gun\u201d of Collusion?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Richard Painter, an ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush, has declared that<\/a>\u00a0the meeting of\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0Jr., with a Russian lawyer who claimed to have compromising information on\u00a0Hillary Clinton<\/a>\u00a0during the campaign,\u00a0\u201cborders on treason.\u201d Others have said that the disclosure could be\u00a0the long sought after \u201csmoking gun\u201d<\/a>\u00a0on collusion and evidence of criminal conduct. \u00a0I am afraid that I have to continue my record as something of a \u201cbuzz kill\u201d on these stories. \u00a0There is not a clear criminal act in such a meeting based on the information that we have. \u00a0Moreover, it is not necessarily unprecedented.<\/p>\n

Painter declared on MSNBC that<\/p>\n

\n

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. We do not get our opposition research from spies, we do not collaborate with Russian spies, unless we want to be accused of treason. \u00a0. . . \u00a0If this story is true, we\u2019d have one of them if not both of them in custody by now, and we\u2019d be asking them a lot of questions. This is unacceptable. This borders on treason, if it is not itself treason.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I have to respectfully disagree with Painter. I tend to view these things through the lens of a criminal defense attorney and I do not see how either Trump Jr. or\u00a0Natalia Veselnitskaya could be put into \u201ccustody\u201d for such a meeting. \u00a0There is no crime in listening to people who say…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Painter, an ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush, has declared that\u00a0the meeting of\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0Jr., with a Russian lawyer who claimed to have compromising information on\u00a0Hillary Clinton\u00a0during the campaign,\u00a0\u201cborders on treason.\u201d Others have said that the disclosure could be\u00a0the long sought after \u201csmoking gun\u201d\u00a0on collusion and evidence of criminal conduct. \u00a0I am afraid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2520,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-316922","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2520"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}