If any other adviser had allowed his presidency to be compromised by Russia and a flamboyant British “freak” with a love of silly hats, Donald Trump’s retribution might have been brutal. But the adviser in question was his eldest son.
So Trump lashed out publicly at his son’s critics last week instead of acting decisively to try to close down the scandal that the 39-year-old had caused — a flaw that the president’s enemies hope is another step on the path to his downfall.
Don Jr, as Trump’s son is known within the family, is due to testify before Congress about his decision during the 2016 presidential campaign to meet a Russian emissary who he was told had information that the Kremlin had produced in “support” of his father.
Whatever his explanation, the White House can now no longer deny — as it has for so long — that the Trump campaign was willing to accept help from the Russian government in its quest to defeat Hillary Clinton. The evidence is in email after incriminating email released by Don Jr himself last week after The New York Times got on his trail.
The revelation — by far the most serious since allegations were first made a year ago that Russia was actively backing Trump — is causing deep frustration among his fellow Republicans.
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Representative Trey Gowdy, a Trump loyalist, could barely conceal his dismay concerning the White House “amnesia” about Russia. The “drip, drip, drip” of disclosures “is undermining the credibility of this administration”, he said.
Politics aside, however, what makes this drama unlike any other is the outlandish cast of characters involved.
Don Jr is the eldest of Trump’s three children by his first wife, Ivana. He is also the only one to have rebelled against their father, refusing to speak to him for a year as a teenager during his parents’ divorce. “Rather than going directly into the family business, he headed to Colorado and tended bars and roamed through the mountains,” said Marc Fisher, co-author of Trump Revealed, a biography of the president.
“The father was not at all pleased so there’s been some very public tension in their relationship.”
Once he had returned to the fold, Don Jr turned into a bumptious alter ego of his father, becoming a senior figure in the family property business and the Trump presidential campaign.
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Some see his unstinting fealty to his father as a form of atonement and go so far as to compare the Trumps to the Corleones in The Godfather film trilogy, who value blood ties and loyalty over ability and nous — Don Jr in the role of Fredo, the family loser.
In Moscow in 2013 Don Jr met Rob Goldstone, a rotund, Manchester-born music publicist with a penchant for hard partying and outrageous headgear.
Based in New York, Goldstone is on what he calls “a gap year” with his boyfriend cruising in the Adriatic. During stops in Venice and Dubrovnik he posted on Facebook pictures of himself with young men before turning uncharacteristically silent last week.
CIA analysts are working on the theory that this almost comically unthreatening and apolitical figure was an unwitting tool of Russian intelligence in the relentless courting of Trump.
One of Goldstone’s clients is Emin, a Russian pop singer who is both the son of a wealthy oligarch and the former son-in-law of the president of Azerbaijan.
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In 2013 Emin’s father staged the Miss Universe contest — formerly owned by the Trump Organisation — in Moscow. That brought Don Jr to the Russian capital, where he met Goldstone. They formed a fateful friendship.
Trump himself also met Emin and Goldstone. A photograph on Goldstone’s Instagram account, until it was made private last week, showed them dining together in Las Vegas in 2013. Emin’s account showed a video of Trump wishing him a happy birthday three years ago.
Goldstone contacted Don Jr on June 3 last year to say that Emin’s father had met Russia’s prosecutor-general, who had offered “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary”.
In a phrase that sent shudders down the spines of Trump loyalists when it was revealed last week, Goldstone spelt out that this “high-level and sensitive information” was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump”.
Any prudent US campaign official would have immediately contacted the FBI, as this proposal was a potential breach of electoral law. But Don Jr replied: “If it’s what you say, I love it . . .”
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Six days later at Trump Tower in New York, Don Jr met Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer viewed by the CIA as a proxy for President Vladimir Putin. She is reported to have powerful Russian clients and had a role in the Kremlin’s unsuccessful efforts to persuade Congress to repeal the Obama-era law penalising top Russian officials blamed for the death in jail of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who had exposed high-level fraud.
Don Jr brought in Jared Kushner, the husband of his sister, Ivanka, and Paul Manafort, who was the Trump campaign chairman. In a shock development two days ago, Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist described as a former Russian military intelligence officer, confirmed that he was also there.
No outsider knows for sure yet what was discussed at the meeting. Don Jr has characterised it as a waste of his time because Veselnitskaya only wanted to discuss Magnitsky. But at the very least his emails show that three senior figures in the Trump campaign were eager to receive help from Moscow.
They also throw new light on other fragments of the Trump-Russia story. Just after the Veselnitskaya meeting was arranged, but before it happened, Trump promised a “major speech” about “all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons”. The speech was never made.
Seven weeks after the meeting, Don Jr dismissed as “phoney” claims that Russia was trying to help his father.
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Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow, will want to know more.
The old Watergate question of “what did the president know and when did he know it?” is now crucial. Trump maintains he knew nothing of the meeting. But, given his closeness to Don Jr and Kushner, many doubt this is plausible.
To make things more difficult for the president, he was handling the crisis while crisscrossing the Atlantic last week in Air Force One.
Arriving home from the G20 summit in Hamburg, he barely had time to reset his hair before flying off again to dine with the Macrons in the Eiffel Tower and watch the Bastille Day military parade — the kind of martial display that he had wanted for his inauguration.
One White House official said that initially Trump was privately “furious” with his son for getting involved with a “freak” like Goldstone. Later he stood four-square behind him, telling reporters travelling on Air Force One: “Don is — as many of you know, Don — he’s a good boy. He’s a good kid. And he had a meeting, nothing happened with the meeting.” In his biographer’s view, Trump took the criticism of his son personally. “It is the classic relationship of a narcissist with his children,” said Fisher.
“He sees them as extensions or mirrors of himself. He doesn’t like it when people come after the kids. They’re his most trusted advisers and so he’s not in a position where he can contradict them or embarrass them in the ways he does mere hirelings. In a way it’s a stronger relationship but it’s also more delicate.”
That presents a problem when it comes to Kushner, whose dealings with Russians are of increasing interest to Mueller. Kushner reportedly failed to declare the Veselnitskaya meeting when completing an obligatory FBI form — a potential crime.
The White House official said Trump was concerned about Kushner’s role. “For the first time President Trump may be questioning whether Jared really deserves to be in the circle of trust.
“But there is no person he is closer to than Ivanka and she and her husband come as a package. If they’re divided, that’s when the whole thing comes tumbling down.”
@tobyharnden