A former top official with President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign blasted the campaign's top brass -- particularly then-campaign Chairman Paul Manafort -- and Donald Trump Jr. for taking a June 9, 2016 meeting with a pro-Kremlin Russian lawyer and a Russian-born lobbyist.
"It is insane, borderline psychotic, that Paul [Manafort]…let this happen,” the Trump campaign aide said toThe Daily Beast. “It’s just one of those things that will follow you forever.”
The official said that many veterans of the Trump campaign are aghast that the meeting took place and that the excuses around it have been so flimsy. One official said the episode exposes the campaign's "inherent sloppiness" with matters large and small.
"It’s a situation that has left Trump-world’s legal teams, surrogates, and senior figures in a constant scramble to find the next best-sounding explanation," wrote The Daily Beast's Asawin Suebsaeng.
She noted that Yahoo News said presidential son-in-law and senior White House adviser Jared Kushner's legal team is resorting to claiming that Kushner accidentally emailed in his Standard Form 86 (SF86) security clearance application before completing it.
A spokesperson for the legal team said "a member of [Kusner's] staff had prematurely hit the ‘send’ button for the form before [the form] was completed.”