Interesting – Big Trump’s people conferred on how Little Trump should respond to the Times story, and Big Trump signed off on the criminally incomplete statement they composed for Little Trump.

As Air Force One jetted back from Europe on Saturday, a small cadre of Mr. Trump’s advisers huddled in a cabin helping to craft a statement for the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., to give to The New York Times explaining why he met last summer with a lawyer connected to the Russian government. Participants on the plane and back in the United States debated how transparent to be in the statement, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Ultimately, the people said, the president signed off on a statement from Donald Trump Jr. for The Times that was so incomplete that it required day after day of follow-up statements, each more revealing than the last.

So basically Daddy’s people told him to lie, which could put him in legal jeopardy as he keeps having to revise the lies.

The emails, which the younger Mr. Trump released after learning that The Times had obtained copies and was about to publish them, undercut the president’s line of defense in the Russia inquiry. For months, Mr. Trump has dismissed suspicions of collusion between Russia and his team as “fake news” and a “total hoax.” His eldest son, likewise, had previously asserted that talk of collusion was “disgusting” and “so phony.” Donald Trump Jr. said in a Fox News interview that he would have done things differently in retrospect, but he maintained he had done nothing improper.

At a minimum, however, the emails show that the younger Mr. Trump was not only willing, but also eager, to accept help advertised as coming from the Russian government. “I love it,” he wrote.

Daddy raised them to be as corrupt and dishonest as he is, as his Daddy Fred raised him. They’re basically Mafiosi but without the cannoli.

In the Fox News interview on Tuesday night, the younger Mr. Trump said that Mr. Kushner left the meeting a few minutes after it began.

While Donald Trump Jr. has been the main focus of the controversy because he set up the meeting, Mr. Kushner faces potential trouble because he currently works in the White House and neglected to mention the encounter on forms he filled out for a background check to obtain a security clearance.

They’re crooks, all of them. They’re sleazy, conscienceless crooks and they’ve taken over a large nuclear-armed country. The hair oil and the snappy suits don’t make them any less crooks.

The emails were discovered in recent weeks by Mr. Kushner’s legal team as it reviewed documents, and the team amended his clearance forms to disclose it, according to people briefed on the developments, who like others declined to be identified because of the sensitive political and legal issues involved.

What? Can you do that? Can security clearance forms be amended after they’ve been submitted and acted on and the person is doing the job for which he needed the clearance? Corrupt son of corrupt father submits security clearance to work in executive branch, then months later it’s “Oh whoops I forgot to mention my secret dealings with a hostile foreign power, let me just cross out that line and add a footnote.” It doesn’t seem as if it would work that way.