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So this morning after the New York Times informed Donald Trump Jr. they were going to publish the emails he exchanged with “music publicist” Roger Goldstone, setting up his meeting with Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Trump Jr. (probably on advice from his new criminal defense lawyer) posted the entire email exchange on Twitter.

Trump Jr.’s lawyer, as we pointed out yesterday, has defended several members of organized crime families in New York, and one would assume those criminals probably knew better than to document their schemes in email. But Donald Trump Jr. obviously believes he’s above the law, and posted these emails even though they prove beyond a doubt that he intended to collude with Russian sources to obtain damaging information about his father’s political opponent, Hillary Clinton.

And even though they prove beyond a doubt that he and other Trump campaign figures, including Mike Pence, publicly lied numerous times that there had never been any such contacts.

Watch: Trump, Pence, Kellyanne, Manafort denying any Trump campaign contact with Russians pic.twitter.com/bm4TzwzQRy

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) July 11, 2017

Trump Jr.’s response to the promise of damaging info on Clinton: “I love it!”

Perhaps the most amazing part of these emails is the open statement from Goldstone that the hacked information they promised to Junior was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

That’s what’s known as a “smoking gun,” folks.

Here are the tweets from Trump Jr.

Here’s my statement and the full email chain pic.twitter.com/x050r5n5LQ

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 11, 2017

Here is page 4 (which did not post due to space constraints). pic.twitter.com/z1Xi4nr2gq

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 11, 2017

And since he posted those out of order, the New York Times thoughtfully republished them in chronological order.

Trump Jr. and his Fox News apologists are trying to spin this today as ordinary “oppo research,” just the normal kind of thing every politician does. But that’s absolutely ridiculous, of course; real oppo researchers don’t collude with foreign powers to get dirt on opponents. The proper response to being approached for a meeting like this at the behest of the Russian government would have been to immediately call the FBI and report it.

As I’ve said several times now, the idea that Junior never even mentioned this meeting to his father simply doesn’t pass the smell test. Donald Trump is a micro-manager, and his sons are the ultimate sycophants. I think eventually we’re going to find out that Trump had full knowledge and approved of this meeting. And probably others as well.

Confirmed from an NYT source: “We were preparing to publish” story — Don Jr. camp “asked for more time” to comment “and then pre-empted us”

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) July 11, 2017