Pay attention to the end of Trump Jr.'s statement. By acknowledging that "claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting," Trump is saying that he took the meeting because he had, in fact, been promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton from a Russian source, but that it was no big deal because the lawyer didn't deliver. Interesting way of thinking about it, Don. Let's ask anyone who appeared on To Catch a Predator how that argument holds up in court. Oh, sorry. They're not answering the phone. Because they're probably in jail now. (On top of all that, he apparently had a different account of the meeting when he talked to the Times on Saturday. Hmm.)

So yes, Donald Trump Jr., in attempting to deny the Times's accusations, confirmed the most damning piece of the report: That Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner met with a Russian government-connected lawyer under the "pretext" that she had information that the Trump campaign could use against Hillary Clinton. But if that still doesn't seem "collusion-y" enough for you, let's take a look at what George W. Bush's ethics lawyer had to say about it:

And Trump Jr.'s "acquaintance" who arranged the meeting? Well, according to The Washington Post, it was a music publicist named Rob Goldstone. And not to go into tin-foil-hat land, but here's what Goldstone posted on Instagram the day after the election:

Somewhere Robert Mueller is adding names to a list of people to interview as Donald Sr. gets nervous. I would say that Donald Jr. is nervous, too, but based on his showing here, I'm not sure he's smart enough to understand what he did wrong.

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