In the rush to excuse Donald Trump Jr.’s Russian meeting, I have seen many GOP surrogates parsing the word collusion. Saying he went to the meeting looking for information, but since none was given, no collusion. I have been trying to find a way to convince the willfully ignorant that the nature of the contact was inappropriate.
If we judge the Russian Government by the same standards as a Super PAC. A meeting between a campaign manager (Paul Manafort) and even a mid level staffer (Natalia Veselnitskaya) of the Putin Super PAC and the resulting public statements would be a violation of FEC rules against foreign entities providing in-kind contributions.
“FEC regulations establish a three-prong test to determine whether a communication is coordinated. All three prongs of the test—payment, content and conduct—must be met for a communication to be deemed coordinated and thus an in-kind contribution.”link
The coordinated communications surrounding the meeting meet every tenet of the FEC requirements. Below are sample communications by the campaign before and after the June 9 meeting. I could also cite every ad in which Trump discusses the Clinton ties to Russia, her emails, or in which he calls her “Crooked Hilary.” They are all part of coordinated communication with the Russian government who wants
“to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father”. link
On June 7, Trump teased on Twitter that he would deliver a "major speech" to discuss "all the things that have taken place with the Clintons."
"I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week, and we're going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons," Trump said during a speech after winning the California, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota and New Jersey primaries. "I think you're going to find it very informative and very, very interesting. I wonder if the press will want to attend. Who knows?"
The speech was later moved to June 22 -- due to the deadly terrorist attack at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando -- but Trump called on Clinton's deleted emails "to be found."
"Should be able to be found because the government -- I will say, I've always heard you can never really delete an email," he said. "So it should be able to be found if they really want to find them, but I don't think they want to find them.” link
The Payment Prong
the communication need only be paid for, in whole or in part, by someone other than a candidate, a candidate’s authorized committee, a political party committee or an agent of the above.link
Veselnitskaya paid for her own flight to the US and Trump provided the place for the meeting. Both sides had financial input. Mueller could do a deeper dive on the financials and find out who paid the hackers and who paid for the DCLeaks.com servers and other money ties, but travel is unambiguous.
The Content Prong
(any communication ) made 120 days before a Presidential primary election through the general election and: Refers to a clearly identified Presidential or Vice Presidential candidate and is publicly distributed in a jurisdiction before the clearly identified federal candidate’s election in that jurisdiction. link
Obviously Trump advocates for himself and against Clinton.
The Conduct Prong
If the communication is created, produced or distributed at the request or suggestion of the candidate, candidate’s committee, a party committee or agents of the above; or the communication is created, produced or distributed at the suggestion of the person paying for the communication and the candidate, authorized committee, political party committee or agent of any of the foregoing assents to the suggestion. link
Don Jr.’s emails provide this: “If it’s what you say, I love it, especially later in the summer.”link This shows that the premeditated intention is to use the information to create a narrative about Clinton.
This should get us past unethical and into illegal territory, right? I understand judging a hostile foreign country by the same rules as a domestic PAC is silly, but is there a clearer way to get this beyond political and into the legal realm?