On Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski asked Matt Miller about the "most damaging aspects" of the latest revelations about Donald Trump Jr. meeting with a Russian lawyer --and the legal implications.
"The most damaging thing is what Donald Trump Jr. admitted to in the statement," he said. "It is a crime to solicit or accept anything of value from a foreign national in a campaign.
"Now, the thing of value has never come up in this context before because we've never had a campaign like this that potentially colluded with a foreign government. In other cases, bribery and extortion cases, 'thing of value' doesn't have to be money. It has to be something tangible but not money.
"It could be he's potentially confessing in a statement to committing a crime, and I think if you're Bob Mueller, you look at that and the lies, the repeated lies, the changing statements from Donald Trump Jr., and from other people connected to the administration -- including the president himself, and you're going to realize the only way to trust what any of these people say is to put them in the grand jury, put them under oath, where if they lie, if Donald Trump Jr. has the kind of shifting statements to a grand jury, he'll go to jail for that."
"Looking at Donald Trump Jr.'s words in itself, you're saying what you see is him admitting to a crime? Could you define the crime again, please?" Mika asked.
"It's potentially a crime under campaign finance law you can't accept a thing of value," Miller said.
"Usually that's thought to be donations. It was an extension of a law that was set to bar foreign donations but in other cases, it's been defined not just as money, not just as something like a plane ride or something like that. But it could be other things. Sex has been defined as a thing of value in some cases. It's something Mueller could look at.
"This meeting is soliciting a thing of value. Would that be by itself something that might bring an indictment? Unclear, but when you look at everything else, it's potentially something along with all the people who have misled, not told the truth on their statements under oath, it's one more potential charge that you add to a growing list facing a lot of people connected to the administration."
By the way, here's a little stroll down Memory Lane:
