Once derided by Trump staffers as the bungling Corleone son Fredo, Donald Trump Jr. has transformed into a slick-haired, meme-sharing, rifle-wielding conservative prodigy, whom some are backing for a 2024 bid. Unfortunately for Don, to be politically viable he must first escape the looming special counsel investigation, in which his role in possible collusion between Russia and the Trump election campaign is a central component. Not only did Donny attract Robert Mueller’s attention with his response to a proposed meeting with a Russian lawyer promising “dirt” on Hillary Clinton—“if it’s what you say I love it”—but his hastily released statement on said meeting, claiming its purpose was to discuss Russian adoption policies, was reportedly “dictated” by the president himself, yanking Donald Trump Sr. into the whirl of suspicion stirred up by his son. Though the president may not be in direct legal jeopardy, the same cannot be said of Don. “The conspiracy statute . . . makes it a crime for two or more people to agree to violate a federal law—whether they actually go forward and violate that law is not necessary to prove a conspiracy,” a top D.C. defense lawyer explained to my colleague Abigail Tracy. And so, Trumpworld has come up with an explanation to extricate him from the maelstrom: he’s not a criminal, but he is an idiot.

For a time, this excuse was implied rather than said aloud—the White House explained that nothing had come of the meeting, therefore Jr., lovable dope that he was, couldn’t possibly be implicated. But last month, when news emerged that Don had met with yet another foreign national during the campaign, a source close to Don Jr. floated the defense in a concrete way: Don, he explained to Axios, just “trusts people way too much . . . [he] is the king of people wanting to leave a meeting happy, whether or not he intends to follow up.” And now, in a new GQ profile, those close to Don Jr. are leaning fully into this line of defense. “I think he regrets taking the meeting,” a source “close to Don” told GQ. “Does he regret it because he thinks he did something wrong? No. He regrets it because it ended up causing a situation that wasted a lot of time and money.”

“Maybe he’s not an intellectual, but he tried to be useful for his family,” a participant in the Russia meeting added. “I feel bad for him, honestly.”

His Congressional testimony was, apparently, a similar story:

Instead of being wary of his questioners, Don wanted to be helpful and calmly acknowledged that he had corresponded with WikiLeaks during the election. He then happily turned the correspondence over to congressional investigators, helpful as ever. “He wasn’t embarrassed to be revealing that he had exchanged D.M.s with WikiLeaks,” says the source, even though it was by this point abundantly clear to the American officials that WikiLeaks had links to Russian intelligence. “He’s too stupid to be malicious.”

The source’s impression of Don was that he, like seemingly everyone else in Trump’s orbit, was uselessly trying to impress a man who can only be impressed by himself. “He’s hustling and trying to do what he can to contribute but without knowing where the lines are,” the source said of Don, adding ruefully, “He’s a sad and tragic figure.”

It’s still unclear whether pleading ignorance will be enough to get Don out of trouble—the explanation itself is plausible enough, but it’s by no means legally vindicating. The remainder of the profile sketches a sad, tumultuous childhood that has calcified into an acerbic nationalism ultimately designed to impress an audience of one: Trump Sr. After graduating from college, Donny spent a year and a half indulging his love of hunting and fishing in Aspen before yielding to the family business, where he ultimately pushed to develop properties in Russia. Despite his repeated efforts, he could never quite make it with the Soviets. “It is a question of who knows who, whose brother is paying off who, et cetera,” he reportedly said after making repeated trips to the country. “It really is a scary place.”