to live through Watergate.

“What did the president know,

and when did he know it?”

"Events have been rushing toward

one seemingly inevitable conclusion."

The disorientation, the confusion,

the feeling that you don’t know the truth,

but with each and every day that goes by,

knowing the truth is worse

than you had possibly imagined.

I think I know what it feels like now.

We are filling in a picture, slowly,

that unfortunately makes a lot of sense.

Think back to May,

when President Donald Trump fired

FBI director James Comey.

Why did he do that?

Why did he put his whole administration at risk?

Well, he had an answer.

It wasn’t his White House’s initial answer,

but he had an answer.

"When I decided to just do it, I said

to myself — I said, you know, this

Russia thing with Trump and Russia

is a made-up story. It's an excuse by

the Democrats for having lost an election

that they should've won.

But now it’s clear that story wasn’t made-up.

And what’s worse, and what might explain

Trump’s decision to fire Comey, to obstruct

justice, to risk his presidency, is that

that investigation threatened the people

he loves most in the world.

Here is what we learned this week.

On June 3, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. got an email.

It was from a British publicist named Rob Goldstone.

He was writing on behalf of a Russian businessman,

Aras Agalarov, and his son, Emin.

Both of these folks had worked with

Donald Trump Sr. on the 2013 Miss Universe

Pageant in Moscow, and they've

worked with him on other... endeavors.

"Emin wake up, c'mon!"

"What's wrong with you?"

In the email, which Donald Trump Jr. released

on Twitter, in order to get in front of the

New York Times releasing it, Goldstone says

a few interesting things.

First, he writes that Aras, the older Agalarov,

met with someone he calls Russia’s

“crown prosecutor” — that’s a term

that, in other countries, describes a lawyer

who argues on behalf of the state.

Now, crown prosecutor doesn’t exist in Russia.

But just to be clear, the source is later described

as a “Russian government attorney,”

And what this person has is a pretty big deal.

they have “official documents and information

that would incriminate Hillary Clinton”

and they want to meet with Trump Jr. and

the campaign to hand them over.

The most interesting part of the email,

the one that leaves no shadow of doubt about

what what happening here, is the last sentence:

this whole thing, the meeting with this lawyer

about the incriminating documents, is, quote,

“part of Russia and its government’s

support for Mr. Trump.”

Right there, Donald Jr. is told that the meeting

is part of the Russian government’s effort

to sway the American election to his dad.

And how does he respond?

Does he go to the FBI,

does he ignore the email?

No, minutes later he replies:

“if it’s what you say I love it,” and he forwards

the whole email thread to then campaign chair

Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner.

They all go to this meeting with the

Russian lawyer at Trump Tower.

So what does this tell us?

What have we learned here?

First, we learn that that Donald Trump Jr.

and Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort

knew the Russian government

wanted to elect Trump.

Next, it tells us all three of these men,

they weren’t just open to working with the

Russian government against Clinton’s campaign.

They were actively trying to do it.

They were taking meetings at a

busy time in the campaign.

All three of them.

They were taking meetings to try to work

with the Russian government.

That has not been their story until now.

“Are there any ties between Mr. Trump,

you, or your campaign

and Putin and his regime?”

“No there are not. That's absurd and

y’know, there’s no basis to it.”

“So no collusion whatsoever

between anybody involved with Trump

and anyone involved with Russia

in the 2016 campaign?”

“No.”

"Just to button up one question,

did any advisor or anybody in the Trump campaign

have any contact with the Russians who

are trying to meddle in the election?

“Oh of course not.”

Now Donald Trump says the Russian lawyer

ended up having “no meaningful information"

for them.

So his defense is basically, he tried

to collude with the Russian government

to influence an American election,

but ugh, the Russian lawyer

just didn’t have the goods.

So first, that might not matter

in a court of law.

“The law says soliciting, accepting or receiving."

"He solicited."

"He accepted."

"He maybe never received it."

"He violated the law.""

But also remember,

Russia did end up hacking Democratic emails

and releasing them in ways and at times

that helped the Trump campaign.

We know about this meeting now,

which doesn’t seem to have been

about those emails.

But we don’t know if there were other meetings,

if there was cooperation on other questions.

All we really know now is that the Trump campaign

was open to, and actively work towards,

colluding with Russia to influence the election.

We also know that when they were told Russia

was trying to help them, they didn’t react

with surprise, or shock, or fear.

They said, ‘yeah!

Let’s take that meeting.’

It’s always worth asking how people involved

in clear wrongdoing might have seemed like

the hero of the story to themselves.

Trump and his family, they bought into

the most fevered conspiracies about Clinton.

"She’s arguably the most corrupt politician

we’ve ever seen in this country,

there's no question about it."

“If Hillary Clinton were elected,

she’d be the first president who

couldn’t pass a basic background check.”

"She's a world-class liar."

And they likely believed there was

information crucial to American interests

lurking in her documents.

If they had obtained the emails

or anything else and proven

Clinton dangerously unfit to lead,

or revealed that foreign powers had more

information or more leverage over

American policy-making than we knew,

they would have done the country

a great service, or at least it’s easy to

believe how they would see it that way.

But what they were actually doing

was working with a foreign government

to influence an American election.

And that's crossing a very serious line.

Behind all this, I wonder sometimes:

How hard is Vladimir Putin laughing

at us right now?

One theory of Russia’s involvement in the election

is they never expected to elect Trump

— they just wanted to sow doubt

in America’s institutions and in its leaders.

Look how easily,

look how wildly they succeeded.