Did Donald Trump Jr. Provide the Smoking Gun?

With the Donald Trump Jr. email news, it’s time to stop talking vaguely about collusion with the Russians. “Collusion,” as such, isn’t a crime. But conspiracy is, and Trump Jr.’s startling July 11 admissions raise the question of whether he and other senior members of his father’s camp engaged in a conspiracy to violate U.S. election law.

For a year, President Trump, his eldest son, and his political lieutenants have derided suggestions that they sought or received assistance from Russia to win November’s election. Trump Jr. severely undermined that strategy of flat denial when he used Twitter to release an email exchange that shows him welcoming a meeting in June 2016 with a “Russian government attorney” said to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said: “This is the first time that the public has seen clear evidence of senior-level members of the Trump campaign meeting with Russians to try to obtain information that might hurt the campaign of Hillary Clinton.”