Donald Trump Jr. was quick to dismiss his recently uncovered quest last summer to find dirt on Hillary Clinton as much ado about nothing. "Obviously, I'm the first person to take a meeting to hear info about an opponent," he facetiously wrote Monday, "went nowhere but had to listen."

Too bad that meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was premised on getting opposition research that could have proven valuable to the Trump campaign. Federal criminal statutes bar political campaigns from either soliciting or accepting anything of value from foreign agents, and in this case, gleaning intel that damaged Clinton clearly would have benefitted the Trump campaign. It doesn't matter one bit whether Trump Jr. did or didn't succeed, trying is enough.

But first and foremost, this latest revelation puts to rest all previous White House denials (and there were many, including from Trump himself) that contacts between Russians and campaign officials did indeed take place. Additionally, the email Trump Jr. received in advance of the meeting means he knew Russia was attempting to “aid his father’s candidacy,” despite his father’s refusal to accept that fact.

The entire scenario could put Don Jr. and potentially the other attendees—Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort—in legal jeopardy, according to a former White House counsel under President Obama and the Democrat’s 2008 campaign attorney, Robert Bauer.

“If they accept the meeting on the understanding that they will be offered something of value — the opposition research — they are sending a clear signal that they would like to have it.” Bauer added that accepting a meeting where there’s an understanding of purpose “raises a question under the federal campaign finance law” for which Trump Jr. could be held accountable.

In that sense, the meeting also establishes a mindset of criminal intent, writes white-collar criminal law professor Randall D. Eliason.