Does anyone really believe

[Proud liberal 80]

That trump didn't know of Jr's Russia meeting!

[NanceGreggs]

1. Nope.

The only people buying into this bullshit are the same people who believe the Earth is flat, dinosaurs lived peaceably with humans, and gravity is a hoax perpetrated by libruls.

[KentuckyWoman]

2. Jr's taking one for the team

in exchange for enough money to make even the Flying Spaghetti monster kneel before Vlad.

It doesn't take a mensa member to figure this one out.

[applegrove]

3. A CNN panelist pointed out that, in the email to Don Jr., the

Last edited Thu Jul 13, 2017, 01:12 AM - Edit history (1)

contact said that the Russian Government was backing Trump in the election. I think that information alone would have been passed on to Trump himself.

[RDANGELO]

4. Jr. Kushner and Manafort all showed up.

That means they thought this was a big deal. It is very unlikely that Trump didn't know about it. Especially with his public remarks a couple of days before the meeting. And they are all technically guilty of soliciting for the campaign. I suppose Kushner and Jr. can hope that they give them a pass because maybe they just didn't know any better, but Manafort doesn't even have that. He definitely should have known. He has come out with a statement that he did not read the whole e-mail.----- Right.

[customerserviceguy]

6. Manafort will be the fall guy for this

He was never "in like Flynn", if you'll pardon the pun. He was a hired gun to take over from the anger-challenged Cory Lewandowski, and he let his client down by not quashing this meeting with a "If she has something on Hillary Clinton, tell her to take it to the press, and then we'll be aware of it, like everybody else."

[emulatorloo]

13. Manafort will flip on Trump rather than take the fall. Trump is not worth going to prison for

[customerserviceguy]

14. What if

Manafort were the most truly guilty person in this whole scenario? I consider Trump clueless, but a political operative like Manafort (goes back to the Ford administration) is probably very savvy, just didn't think he'd get caught. What if he thought he could dupe Trump into giving his Eastern European connections exactly what they wanted for the megabucks he was being paid?

If Trump comes off as a useful idiot, yes, he's still an idiot, but that's somewhat different from a criminal mastermind. Trump's base is loyal to Trump, they really don't care about what happens to Manafort.

[emulatorloo]

15. Trump's a snake who got caught laundering money for the Russian mob thru one of his casinos.

Trump's casino was a money laundering concern shortly after it opened
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/22/politics/trump-taj-mahal/index.html

(CNN)The Trump Taj Mahal casino broke anti-money laundering rules 106 times in its first year and a half of operation in the early 1990s, according to the IRS in a 1998 settlement agreement.

It's a bit of forgotten history that's buried in federal records held by an investigative unit of the Treasury Department, records that congressional committees investigating Trump's ties to Russia have obtained access to, CNN has learned.

<snip>

"The violations date back to a time when the Taj Mahal was the preferred gambling spot for Russian mobsters living in Brooklyn, according to federal investigators who tracked organized crime in New York City. They also occurred at a time when the Taj Mahal casino was short on cash and on the verge of bankruptcy."

He's not some poor dumb innocent led astray by Manafort.

[customerserviceguy]

5. I think it's possible

He may well have known only vaguely that Junior and Kushner and Manafort were having all kinds of meetings, but Trump is not a detail-oriented person on most things, and besides, he had a full time job running around the country campaigning for president. Certainly, after nothing would have come from the meeting (presuming that's true) it would have never come up again.

All three of the Trump family members involved would not be in a position to know that there was a potential breaking of the law, and their legal advisers, especially Manafort, dropped the ball on this. Yes, it means that Trump picks lousy people, but he's already had to admit that with Flynn, and his supporters don't hold it against him.

Donald Trump is not a very secretive person, I think we've all had enough evidence of that. His son, however, probably has learned to be one, given all of the denials and obfuscations, and that may well have extended to not telling his father about potential dirt on Hillary. They're very dysfunctional people, trying to masquerade as a competent, solid family to do business with.

[marylandblue]

7. Trump can always be caught under RICO

Which makes it a crime just to work for an organization that does something illegal. The whole purpose was to avoid the need to prove that the boss knew what his underlings were doing it. So either way, he is still guilty.

[customerserviceguy]

9. That's a stretch

I can't think of any RICO case that involved politics, can you? Can a US President be charged with a crime, or is it solely up to the Congress to impeach in the House and try in the Senate? And nothing will stop Trump from resigning with a pardon from Pence. Whatever shamelessness Nixon had, Trump has it ten times over.

[Neema]

8. Nope, but it will be a convenient way to have Junior take the fall while everyone else

gets off scot-free. Then daddy will pardon junior before he spends a day in jail. And the GOP can wash their hands of the whole thing.

[triron]

10. I have a bridge in Arizona to sell them.

[nini]

11. that 30% or so do

they believe anything they are told.

[Laxman]

12. These Idiots Don't Get....

what kind of trouble they're in yet. They think this is a Page 6 of the NY Post controversy and they need to win the PR war. So they hire some mouthpieces to put out misinformation and a thousand different stories to muddy the waters. They obfuscate and deny, deny deny.... they hire lawyers that are better suited to fighting in the newspaper than in the courts. There is a rude awakening in their collective futures.