Imagine a criminal accused of conspiring to receive stolen property. At trial, the accused testifies that he hired a big truck to carry away the goods, but when he arrived at the stash all he found was worthless garbage. I might feel for the hapless criminal, but his guilt would not be in question. This is much the situation that Donald Trump Jr finds himself in – by his own admission.



Consider the time logs. It is 10.36am on 3 June 2016. Donald Jr has just received an email from Rob Goldstone, a trusted Trump intermediary, expressing Russia’s willingness to provide the Trump campaign “very high level” “official documents” against Hillary Clinton “as part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump”.

Let us try to put ourselves in Donald Jr’s shoes at that moment. The candidate’s son is understandably intrigued, even tantalized. At the same time, we might expect a person in such a position to proceed with the utmost caution. How did the Russians obtain these “high level”, “official” documents? What does the Russian government’s support for Trump mean and entail?

At the very least, we might expect Donald Jr, an experienced businessman, to turn to a lawyer for advice before proceeding.



But he does none of this. His response follows a scant 17 minutes later, hardly time to seek counsel or advice. At 10.53am, he writes: “If it’s what you say, I love it.”



He then goes about planning the meeting with the Russian contact, a lawyer with close ties to the Kremlin. The meeting takes place six days later, on 9 June, on the 25th floor of Trump Tower. He arranges to be accompanied by Paul Manafort, who at the time was managing the candidate’s campaign, and Jared Kushner.



In the meantime, has he sought legal advice or consulted lawyers? No. No vetting. No concerns raised.



For reflexive defenders of the throne, the fact that Donald Jr did not contact lawyers will be spun as evidence that he saw nothing wrong in setting up this meeting. He was a political ingénue who, by his own lights, thought he was just receiving “political opposition research”.



Is it possible that Donald Jr saw no difference between receiving political dirt from an American journalist and from the Kremlin? Or that it never crossed his mind that conspiring with a foreign adversary to influence an election might constitute a federal crime? If so, then Donald Jr may pay a steep price for his ignorance of the law.



But if Donald Jr is anything like his father, ignorance played no role. President Trump does not operate in ignorance of the law – only in casual disregard of it. For Trump, rules, like truth, are to be deformed and ignored when it suits him. Paul Ryan may try to excuse the president’s behavior as that of a novice, but let us not confuse political naivety with ethical vacuity.



And what about that meeting itself? Donald Jr denies that his father had any knowledge of it, a statement that is unbelievable for reasons distinct from the fact that no statement made by Trump senior or junior enjoys any presumption of truthfulness.



In this case, Goldstone’s 3 June email – “I can also send this info to your father …” – suggests that the candidate was later apprised of the situation before the meeting that took place a floor below his office with his closest confidantes and a seemingly crucial Russian source.



And yet we are told by Donald Jr that the meeting produced “no information”; evidently, the Russian lawyer just “wanted to chat about adoption policy and the Magnitsky Act”. Here again the Trump credibility gap renders this statement worthless on its face.



But let us assume that Donald Jr is telling the truth – the meeting was a bust. What does that prove? We are simply back to our hapless conspirator to receive stolen goods.

The constitution arguably bars the indictment of a sitting president. The same cannot be said for a president’s son.

