Trump May Have Just Guaranteed His Son Will Go to Jail

According to Monday’s Morning Joe panel, President Donald Trump’s frantic weekend tweetstorm shows that he knows that his son Donald Trump Jr. is in serious legal trouble.  They also said Trump’s inner circle “won’t be able to hide from the legal consequences much longer” because “the walls are closing in.”

Yesterday we reported that Donald Trump has admitted to friends that he’s worried about Donald Jr’s legal exposure and and “he’s losing it because he knows his son may be going to jail.” 

Nobody was prepared for what Donald Trump ended up doing yesterday however: confessing to the crimes that took place with respect to the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. By doing this it’s possible that has inadvertently made sure that Don Jr. will go to prison.

Here’s what Donald Trump tweeted about the Trump Tower meeting:

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“Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!”

Here’s what this tweet means:

• Donald Trump finally confessed that the meeting was an attempt at obtaining dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russians.
• It was not “totally legal” but an illegal attempt to receive a gift of value from a foreign entity on behalf of a campaign, as well as attempting to illegally receive stolen goods.
• It may have proved other charges like treason and conspiracy against the United States.
• It has proved Don Jr’s guilt while attempting to show the president was innocent, by saying “I did not know about it!”

In today’s Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough reminded viewers of the many false statements that Trump, his lawyers, and administration officials have made about the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting ever since it was first reported.

Scarborough said:

“We’re used to the lying, but on something this big, perhaps the most important part of this entire investigation, everything you heard from White House representatives there was a lie. Donald Trump admitted weekend they were all lying. What are the consequences of this?”

Then panel member John Heilemann pointed out that the president’s tweets show that he and his inner circle now realize that the lies they have been telling are falling apart:

“I know it’s an indication that some folks are not just in serious trouble but now recognize they’re in serious trouble. Last week, we watched as Donald Trump went further, deeper, into the realm of public obstruction of justice when he started attacking the Mueller probe, started suggesting the attorney general should shut it down.”

Heilemann also said he believes that the Manafort trial has forced Trump to focus on how much trouble his son might really be in:

“We now have a clear explanation for why that is, which is that the president is looking at the Manafort trial starting to focus on Rick Gates, on some of the things that perhaps Michael Cohen has told investigators about this meeting, about what might have led up to it, about what the president’s role might have been, about what Donald Jr.’s role might have been. The walls are closing in and actual facts are coming closer and closer to the surface.”

While the president has thrown his own son under the bus, he may not have saved himself by claiming that he wasn’t in on the conspiracy. We’ve been told that both Michael Cohen and Rick Gates will testify that Donald Trump did in fact know about the meeting before it took place.

Clearly Donald Trump would not be making such desperate moves if he wasn’t out of options. Clearly Donald Trump knows that all of his lies are falling apart and the walls are indeed closing in around him.

Leo Vidal

I am a lifelong Democrat with a passion for social justice and progressive issues. I have degrees in writing, economics and law from the University of Iowa.