Shooting Yourself in the Foot While It Is in Your Mouth; Don Trump, Jr. Ed.

The June 3, 2016, email sent to Donald Trump Jr. could hardly have been more explicit: One of his father’s former Russian business partners had been contacted by a senior Russian government official and was offering to provide the Trump campaign with dirt on Hillary Clinton.

The documents “would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father,” read the email, written by a trusted intermediary, who added, “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

If the future president’s eldest son was surprised or disturbed by the provenance of the promised material — or the notion that it was part of a continuing effort by the Russian government to aid his father’s campaign — he gave no indication.

He replied within minutes: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

Donny Junior says that he has released his emails "because transparency," but I have to wonder if he bothered to run them by his lawyer, first. Because it seems pretty evident that Donny was conspiring to obtain intelligence information from a foreign power for the use in an American electoral campaign.

Which could earn him a stint in stir.

Contrast, if you will, what happened when someone gave Dubya's debate prep materials to the Gore campaign:

The materials never made their way into Mr. Gore's hands. Tom Downey, a Gore adviser and former congressman, received them by mail at his Washington offices on Sept. 13. He turned them over to the F.B.I.

The woman who took them went to prison.