Thread by @jedshug

On Trump's answers on meeting foreign officials with info, people are overstating the first half of Trump's answer (meetings have to be OK), and underemphasizing the second half ("Oppo research" is not OK, likely a "thing of value."). I wrote in 2017: 1/
shugerblog.com/2017/07/12/re-…

2/ Review Trump's answers.
It has to be legal for campaign officials to meet with foreign officials and discuss candidates. If a European official had seen Trump bank records and met with a Clinton staffer to raise questions, would that've been illegal?
abcnews.go.com/Politics/id-ex…

3/ Many are trying to distinguish arranging the Trump Tower meeting - in itself - as illegal (or at least a duty to call FBI), while claiming that hiring Steele, a Brit, to talk to foreign sources was fine. It's hairsplitting.
Both arrangements generally must not be criminalized

4/ One key difference is how Trump appears to have handled that meeting afterward through the summer of 2016. I argued that it seems to rise to the level of illegal campaign coordination (and I will elaborate soon)... nytimes.com/2019/04/25/opi…

5/ But here's the key: Trump says explicitly "if they come up with oppo research," that's OK.
Let's be clear: an "oppo research file" crosses the line as a thing of value.
It's hard to distinguish between sharing info and creating oppo research. But Trump flatly doesn't care.

6/ Why is this even a matter for debate?
One reason is Mueller's failure to defer to Congress's campaign laws on coordination and foreign assistance. Even without indicting, he had a duty to explain.
Maybe Trump wouldn't care anyway, but Mueller failed to clarify for the public.