An early-morning tweet from President Donald Trump on Sunday is contradicting a statement he dictated on behalf of his son, Donald Trump Jr., last year regarding the infamous Trump Tower meeting between high-ranking members of the Trump campaign and Russian government liaisons.
A statement dictated by the President but released in Donald Trump Jr.'s name insisted that the topic discussed between Don Jr., Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Trump campaign advisor Jared Kushner and others was primarily Russian adoption.
Trump's tweet this morning directly contradicts that story.
This tweet does line up more closely with uncovered email correspondence between Trump Jr. and Russian intermediaries. When promised dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian team, Trump Jr. responded: "If it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer."
The president's tweet is the most forthright statement yet on the motivations of the meeting, which is being scrutinized by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team as evidence of possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.
Analysts on Twitter leaped to point this out.
The "totally legal" aspect of the tweet falls in lockstep with the latest spin in an ever-changing narrative put forth by the Trump administration.
While "no collusion" has been repeated incessantly by Trump officials and the president himself, it's only recently that the president's legal team has begun expressing skepticism as to whether or not collusion is, in fact, a crime.
The president first made the claim last year in an interview with the New York Times, saying, "there is no collusion, and even if there was, it's not a crime."
The president's head lawyer and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani posed the argument recently on CNN's "New Day":
they're not going to be colluding with Russia, which I don't even know if that's a crime, colluding about Russians. You start analyzing the crime -- the hacking is the crime...The President didn't hack.
The president echoed the sentiments in a tweet soon after:
The argument, according to legal experts, appears to be purely semantic.
While the word "collusion" is not specifically used in federal campaign finance laws, Title 52, Section 30121 states in part:
It shall be unlawful for—(1) a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make—
(A) a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State, or local election
Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) recently pointed this out to Trump's legal team in a pointed video via Twitter.
Folks on Twitter broke it down for the president:
And called out Trump's blatantly shifting narrative:
As the president increases efforts to discredit Special Counsel Mueller's investigation and as more revelations unfold, it's likely the tempestuous narratives will continue to shift. Eventually, enough spinning is bound to make anyone dizzy.
@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social
@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social