ONCE AGAIN, FOR THE PRESIDENT: “IGNORANCE IS BLISS!”

…Don Jr. could have a serious legal issue with Robert Mueller.

Someone please inform the president, “Ignorance of the law is not an excuse.”

Here is the latest tweet from the president that could be just another nail in the coffin of a conspiracy and obstruction of justice: 

“Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics - and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!”

5:35 AM - Aug 5, 2018

OK, let’s break this down and please note, that the president’s tweets that are received by millions of Americans are being considered as official statements from the president just as his speeches or interviews would be considered.

Multiple former federal prosecutors have made the point that there have been three laws passed by the US congress that states that it’s against the law to agree to meet with representatives from a foreign country to receive anything of value involving a US election.  Even if nothing is obtained from the foreign entity, just agreeing to meet to receive the information is against the law.

Donald Trump Jr. and other Trump campaign personnel have admitted attending the meeting which was supposed to be for giving the Trump campaign political dirt on Hillary Clinton.

The Trump personnel have said nothing was actually offered at the meeting, but the following will illustrate that this “Hillary dirt” would have been “something of value” for an election campaign.

As an example, in the 2016 election, our neighbor Canada had offered to provide a  brochure in support of an issue in the US election.  Canada was told that their brochure was an “item of value” for the issue in question and therefore, as it was from a foreign country, the brochure was not allowed to be distributed.

President Trump has yet again ignorantly tweeted about his personal legal issues in a way that he should not have.

The Washington Post reported that Trump had expressed concerns about his son Donald Trump Jr.'s legal exposure from the 2016 Trump Tower meeting. In a tweet about that report, Trump said, “This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics - and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!”

This is amazing and it brings up two important issues:

First, Trump broke new ground when it comes to admitting the true purpose of the Trump Tower meeting with a Kremlin-aligned lawyer.  It also further contradicted the initial statement he helped draft about the meeting.

Back then, Donald Trump Jr. had issued a statement explaining that he and the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, had “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children.” It was later discovered that President Trump had actually dictated that statement to Hope Hicks while aboard Air Force One as they were returning from Europe.

That meeting explanation quickly fell apart, and we learned that Trump Jr. had actually previously been promised harmful information at the meeting about the Democrats, including Hillary Clinton.

Back in July 2017, the president himself shrugged it off, saying that, “from a practical standpoint, most people would have taken that meeting.” He then added: “It’s called opposition research or even research into your opponent.”

However, this latest presidential tweet acknowledges even more so than before, that the meeting was indeed predicated on opposition research: “This was a meeting to get information on an opponent.”  The initial denial, which Trump himself dictated, was just another Trump falsehood.

Today, Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation has matured to looking at whether Trump obstructed justice.  And he’s now got even more evidence of a clear attempt to mislead the public and obscure the truth.  That is pure "obstruction of justice".

Trump's July 2017 comments came before we knew he was involved in drafting Don Jr’s. initial misleading response, and that message didn’t say the meeting was intended to get op-po research.  Now, there is no questioning that point if you're Trump's lawyer.  It's like Trump's Lester Holt interview, in which he said Russia was on his mind when he fired James Comey.  That may not be, legally speaking, that Trump saying he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation, but it’s obviously what he meant.

The second issue is Trump’s final words of the latest tweet. “I did not know about it!”  The question is:  “When did he find out about the meeting?”

If he found out about the meeting and its purpose before it occurred or even right after the meeting, that’s much different than him finding about it just a week ago.

Trump has said many times that he didn’y know about the Trump Tower meeting.  But Michael Cohen is reportedly now telling people, including Mueller, that Trump did know about it.  And Cohen has supposedly said that other people heard Trump say he knew about it.

If the president has no real concern about legal exposure from the Trump Tower meeting, why would he distance himself from it?

Trump seems to be arguing against his own point by assuring us that he had nothing to do with this meeting, which apparently in his mind, was totally on the up-and-up.

Trump might as well have just confirmed The Post's report that he is worried about what the meeting portends legally for his son.

Trump really doesn’t understand how much trouble his son, his son-in-law, and all those that attended that meeting could be in.

I guess for the Trumpster, “ignorance really is bliss”.

Copyright G.Ater  2018