Have the Trumps been played by the Russians?

I'm pretty sure that they have. One thing that I actually believe from Trump Jr's account is that nothing was revealed at the meeting with the Russian lawyer. If you assume that Russia was behind the DNC hack, why would they choose to leak information that way? A clear and unencripted email chain leads to a meeting in which someone linked to the Russian Government hands over a USB to the dumb frat-boy son of a Presidential candidate? There is no way that the Russian secret services would be that slack and they could have just sent it to Wikileaks anyway. They didn't need collusion from the Trump family to damage Clinton and the only purpose of that meeting would be to publicly embarrass the Trump clan.

The Russian Government still have plausible deniability over the hacks in a legal sense because no concrete proof has been made public. Dumbass Jr himself may also have legal deniability but this all adds to the shambolic multi-scandal nature of the current Presidency.

Russia could be seen to have three objectives by what are assumed to be their actions:

1) Stop the Putin hostile Hillary Clinton from becoming President.
2) Install a President who Russia could work with and possibly blackmail.
3) Damage America's reputation internationally so it is a less dominant geo-political position.

For Russia the current situation is a win-win. If Trump stays he will be a damaged President and will always be fighting scandals. If he goes then it will be confirmation that Russia was able to influence an American Presidential election. It is entirely possible that Russia leaked details of the emails and the meeting themselves to crank up the scandal. You can even speculate that this may be in retaliation for Trump's strong-arm turn against Assad in Syria.

No legal proof has come forward about Russian involvement and it needs to if the US agencies have anything more concrete than that which they have already released. If not then this crazy and messy show will keep rolling on for months and years to the detriment of important and substantive issues.

windinhishair · 61-69, M

Bingo. I think you hit the nail on the head with the Russian objectives.

Don't expect to see legal proof of the Russian involvement with the Trump campaign staff any time soon. These investigations, particularly the one Special Counsel Mueller is engaged in, typically start at the bottom and work up. It will take awhile before they reach the Trumps, Kushner, etc. That way, when they do obtain depositions from the lawyered-up Trump family, they'll have most of the facts already and be looking for confirmation of what they already know and can document. And if they fail to tell the truth, as is likely given the Trump family past history, perjury is a very real possibility. This is also the point where Mueller would consider granting immunity to people such as Flynn to obtain the additional information that people won't release without personal immunity.

I do not expect Mueller to finish his investigation in 2017. I think it will be well into 2018, if not later, before the investigation is complete, particularly if it gets close to the mid-term elections in November 2018. Trump may well use his attorneys to delay the investigation as long as possible to avoid damaging information impacting the Republicans in the mid-terms. In that case, it would be 2019 before Mueller can wrap things up.

One thing we can be certain of at this point is that there will continue to be rolling disclosures about the campaign and coordination with the Russian government. Not the legal proof that Mueller needs to work with, but disclosures of more meetings, emails, communications, etc.