Donald Trump Jr. could be the next person facing renewed scrutiny on Thursday after a guilty plea in federal court by his father's former private attorney, according to at least one expert on the case, "directly" implicates not just President Trump but his eldest son as well.
"Don Jr is in immediate trouble and pops isn't that far behind." --journalist Marcy Wheeler
Trump has reportedly canceled a scheduled meeting with Russia President Vladimir Putin at this weekend's G20 summit and he lashed out at Michael Cohen after the former lawyer entered the guilty plea for lying to Congress about a Russian real estate deal he worked on while Trump was running for president in 2016.
According to the Associated Press:
Cohen told the judge he lied about the timing of the negotiations and other details to be consistent with Trump's "political message." Cohen and prosecutors referred to Trump as "individual one" throughout Thursday's proceedings and said he lied "to be loyal to Individual One."
Among other lies, Cohen said he told Congress that all discussions about building a Trump Tower in Moscow had ended by January 2016, when they had actually continued until June of that year. He said he also lied about his contacts with Russian officials and lied when he said he never agreed to travel to Russia in connection with the project and never considered asking Trump to travel to support the project.
Prosecutors said in a court complaint that Cohen had misled Congress to give a false impression that the Moscow project had ended before the Iowa caucus and first Republican presidential primary in 2016.
Depending on what else Special Counsel Robert Mueller has come to understand about various aspects of the case--including what he recently told Mueller in written testimony--Cohen's guilty plea could have significant ramifications:
In the wake of the news, Trump spoke to reporters outside the White House where he called Cohen a "weak person" and accused him of lying to get a lighter sentence.
Independent researcher and journalist Marcy Wheeler, in a post late Thursday morning, argued that Cohen's testimony "directly" implicates both the president and "his spawn" - meaning Donald Trump Jr., the oldest of the president's five children.
After running through the details of the testimony, and referring to Trump's recent written answers he submitted in response to Mueller's questions, Wheeler says that she "would bet a lot of money Trump lied in his answer" about the contacts he had regarding the Russia real estate deal in 2016. "Don Jr.," she concludes, "is in immediate trouble and pops isn't that far behind."
The morning's developments, especially in light of the Republican's in the Senate blocking an effort on Wednesday to insulate the Mueller probe from further inrterference from the White House, advocacy groups like Public Citizen called on constituents to call their lawmakers and urge them to act:
