In a shocking statement Sunday, Donald Trump Jr. admitted to meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer who had "stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting [Hillary] Clinton." While Trump added that "it quickly became clear that [the lawyer] had no meaningful information," MSNBC justice and security analyst Matthew Miller said Trump's statement in and of itself could be the potential confession of a crime.
"You know, it is a crime to solicit or accept anything of value from a foreign national in a campaign," Miller explained to the Morning Joe hosts. "The 'thing of value' has never come up in this context before because we've never had a campaign like this, that potentially colluded with a foreign government, but in other contexts, in bribery cases and extortion cases, a thing of value doesn't have to be money."
"It could be, potentially, accepting information," Miller added.
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Miller noted that Special Counsel Robert Mueller would almost certainly be looking at Donald Trump Jr.'s statement "and the lies, the repeated lies, the changing statements from Donald Trump Jr. and other people connected to the administration."
"The only way to trust what any of these people say is to put them in the grand jury, put them under oath," Miller said, "where if they lie, if Donald Trump Jr. has the kind of shifting statements to a grand jury that he did to The New York Times, he'll go to jail for that." Jeva Lange
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