Donald Trump Jr. is interviewed by host Sean Hannity on Fox News on July 11. | Richard Drew/AP Obama and Bush ethics lawyers call Trump Jr.’s defense of Russia meeting ‘nonsense’

Former ethics lawyers for Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush both think Donald Trump Jr. broke the law when he met with a Russian lawyer to obtain what he thought would be damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

In an op-ed penned Tuesday night in The New York Times, the two called Trump Jr.'s defense “nonsense” and said they would have called the FBI immediately in such a situation.


“As ethics lawyers, we have worked on political campaigns for decades and have never heard of an offer like this one,” wrote Norm Eisen and Richard Painter. Eisen is chairman and Painter is vice chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “The promised Russian ‘documents and information’ would have been an illegal campaign contribution from a foreign government — and a priceless one.”

They said this meeting could tangle with conspiracy law, criminal violations and campaign-finance laws, among other liabilities.

Painter, who served for more than two years in Bush’s administration, said on Tuesday that people should not collect information from Russia unless they “want to be accused of treason.” He also said such acts would not have been tolerated during the Bush presidency.

“We’d have one of them — if not both of them [Jared Kushner and Trump Jr.] — in custody right now, and we’d be asking them a lot of questions” Painter said. “This borders on treason if it is not itself treason.”

Painter additionally said that “you can accomplish a lot by way of damaging your own country, assisting an adversary and espionage” during the 20 to 30 minutes Trump Jr. met with the Kremlin-related lawyer.

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Eisen, who served during Obama’s administration, has not made any public appearances regarding Trump Jr.’s actions, though Eisen has tweeted multiple times about the meeting since his piece was published.

“Actually, nothing burger turns out to be a whopper, in every sense of the word,” Eisen tweeted late Tuesday night. He continued tweeting into Wednesday morning as more developments unfolded. “This is an ethics violation: use of public money & time to benefit a private individual. See5 CFR §2635.702 (Tho poss. Don Jr crimes worse!)”

Eisen also coauthored an op-ed with white-collar crime lawyer Barry Berke, which was published Wednesday in USA Today. In that piece, Eisen discusses President Donald Trump’s Twitter habits, rather than his son’s undisclosed meetings.

Painter and Eisner concluded their piece by asking whether the president knew about his son’s meeting, noting Trump’s possible proximity to the unrecorded meeting and the fact that the three people involved — Kushner, Trump Jr. and campaign chairman Paul Manafort —were “three of his closest confidants.”

“Evidence is accumulating, but we do not definitely know yet what crimes, if any, have been committed, or by whom,” the two said of the Trump-Russia investigation. “For that reason, it is now more critical than ever that the investigations by the special prosecutor and Congress be allowed to complete their course without White House or other interference.”

