At Last! The Smoking Gun! From Trump Sr's Hand to Yours!

Finally!
This week the smoking gun of Donald Trump's election felony has at last emerged. Further, this smoking gun definitely has Trump's very own fingerprints on it, and —oh, the irony! — it exists because he can't control his compulsion to tweet.

The smoking gun turned up this week in a pile of material Donald, Jr.  submitted  to one of the Congressional committees investigating Russian aid to the Trump campaign in the 2016 election. We know that the Russians had feloniously interfered with our 2016 election. "On October 7th.... the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the National Intelligence Director had issued a joint statement, saying, 'The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.' Referring directly to WikiLeaks, the statement went on, 'These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process.”'Donald Trump's Trump, Jr., Problem - whatrump.com


What the Russians did was a felony, and the feds are now preparing to arrest six of them, but a greater concern is whether the Trump organization was involved in the crime. The nexus of the felony is a foreign government giving "something of value" to one of our campaigns.  We know the Russians were involved as the giver of the hacked emails because our intelligence community has so concluded. These are hard-headed prosecutors who clearly believe they have a case.

Until this week two questions have nevertheless remained. Most basically, was there a gift in the legal sense? Giving Trump the hacked Clinton campaign materials certainly looks like a gift, but to be a gift in the legal sense there must be "acceptance".  

Until now there has been no clear evidence that Trump or his campaign accepted Russia's offers of help. The Russian-Trump email exchanges during this period are frustrating because, while Donald, Jr., says he "loves" the  "dirt" material on Hillary Clinton, the campaign doesn't seem to openly agree to using it.

That has just changed. Finally, the missing acceptance has been provided. It occurred as the result of a message exchange between Donald, Jr., and Wikileaks on October 12, 2016. As quoted in the New York Times, Wikileaks says to Donald, Jr., "[G]reat to see you and your dad talking about our publications. Strongly suggest your dad tweets this link if he mentions us." The link in question is to the emails hacked by Wikileaks or the Russians from the Democratic chair of the Hillary Clinton campaign, John Podesta. Donald Trump Jr. Communicated With WikiLeaks During Campaign ...

Julian Assange,founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. (Axel Schmidt/Reuters)

Only fifteen minutes later, like a bolt of lightning, Donald Trump Senior leaps into tweeting his millions of followers: “Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks. So dishonest! Rigged system!”

In his compulsion to tweet, Trump has handed us the smoking gun. By availing himself of the Russian &/or Wikileaks materials he has "accepted" it. Thus there is a gift proffered and accepted. Trump has joined in the commission of a felony. 

Further, he can't push the culability off on his hapless dim son or some other campaign underling. Trump the candidate holds the gun.

He is also criminally complicit in another way.  He has aided and abetted the commission of the felony. By tweeting a boast about the Wikileaks material he has arguable heightened its circulation and increased its impact. And if that isn't aiding and abetting, what is?

Compounding Trump, Sr.'s aiding and abetting, just two days later Donald, Jr. tweeted to his followers the link to the Russian/Wikileaks hacked material, prefaced by this: “For those who have the time to read about all the corruption and hypocrisy all the @wikileaks emails are right here: http://wlsearch.tk/.”

One more issue: Had the Trumps accepted the gift from just Wikileaks, or were they accepting the hacked materials as a gift from Russia as well? It's important because if it was just Wikileaks then there's an issue of whether Wikileaks is a "foreign government"for the purposes of the federal statute.

Not to worry. For purposes of this case and this statute, the Russians and Wikileaks are virtually one, i.e. united in "a common enterprise". Since June 2016 the Russians had been promoting this material to the Trump folks and identifying Wikileaks as the immediate source for delivery to the campaign. Wikileaks and Russia were two hands washing each other. Luring in Trump and attacking our election was  their "common enterprise". 

Under another legal theory Wikileaks was Russia's "agent" in these transactions. Wikileaks either did the hacking itself and provided the results to Russia, or Russia did the hacking and then used Wikileaks as the distributor. 

 No matter the labeling, we are dealing with a Humpty-Dumpty, like your kids ganging up on you to swear you promised ice cream. These are two parties that are so close in motive, so united in purpose, and so conjoined in action that they are one. And please note that this theory of agency gets us out of having to  argue over whether Wikileaks itself is a foreign government. It's enough that Russia is.

Why did Trump do such a brash thing as to leap into this self-incriminating  twittering with no time to consider the possible result or to get advice from his attorney?  Because he is a brash and foolish man. He genuinely believes that everything he does is right.

But it isn't. In one reckless twitter he has scuttled the issues that might have saved him from being deemed in cahoots with Russia/Wikileaks.  He has demonstrated the moment that he and his campaign joined the Russians in attacking our election system. He has wronged us voters and his party. But most of all he has betrayed our system of government. He is in fact a traitor.

"Traitor" is a heavy word. It carries with it the thudding footstep of the executioner. And it should.

For treason is the one crime established in the Constitution as a capital offense. 

Sometimes I could almost support capital punishment.