Constitutional expert Laurence Tribe — who has taught at Harvard Law for half a century -- explained how Donald Trump Jr. allegedly violated federal law during the 2016 presidential campaign.
On MSNBC's "The Beat" with Ari Melber, Tribe explained the significance to Tuesday's bombshell reports that Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was charged with obstruction of justice and Paul Manafort's attorneys inadvertently revealing how he mislead special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators.
Tribe has argued before the Supreme Court three dozen times and is the co-author of the 2018 book To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment.
"Professor Tribe, how do you view this in the larger context of these multiple investigations?" Melber asked.
"Ari, I view it as quite a bombshell," Tribe said.
"The Veselnitskaya part is probably less profound than the Manafort part, but I agree with Glenn [Kirschner] that Veselnitskaya is now clearly exposed as an agent of the Kremlin," he explained.
"So that when an offer was made at that infamous Trump Tower meeting of emails from Hillary Clinton, the offer that Donald Jr. said he would 'love' if it came at the right time in the campaign, we now know that that's basically an offer of help from the Kremlin and a violation of American Law, which forbids accepting offers or soliciting offers of foreign help," Tribe explained.
"As far as Manafort is concerned, we now have the umbilical cord that connects all of the Russian-side conspiracies with the American-side conspiracies," he added.
In addition to Manafort, senior White House advisor Jared Kushner and Trump Jr. likely have significant legal exposure after participating in the Trump Tower meeting.
"And it means that the president's son and the head of the president's campaign and the president's son-in-law -- all of those people were soliciting help, not just from some random Russian, but from the Kremlin," he concluded.
"All that's missing is a bow to tie this whole thing into a knot," Tribe added. "And I think we are now seeing the structure of a multinational conspiracy to help Donald Trump win the election. It's quite profound."
"It's profound when you put it like that," Melber agreed.
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