Every denial from the White House is now suspect

On the same day that Donald Trump Jr. had reportedly taken a meeting with a Kremlin lawyer at Trump Tower, Donald Trump Sr. was reported to be in the same building. This information comes despite President Trump's claims that he had no knowledge of the meeting. But, as more details have developed over the course of the week, the number of people that were in attendance appears to have grown from five to eight, most recently adding Russian operative Rinat Akhmetshin.

Willful deception and 'playing dumb'

Veteran prosecutors who have been asked about the optics of the reports agree that there is now every indication that Trump Jr.

colluded with Russian officials. Such a profound statement is even more so due to the fact that Trump Jr. was open to accepting whatever incriminating information he could get from a foreign source, even an adversarial one such as Russia. But, after months of endless denial from the administration that have only ended up becoming contradictions to what's actually taken place, their pattern of willful deception should be pretty clear.

In an article by Politico titled: "Trump Jr. delivers ‘smoking gun’ to Mueller," a spokesman for Paul Manafort told them on Tuesday that he was not aware of the purpose of the meeting before going in. He said that he had not read the end of the email they had received to know those details.

But, this appears to be an effort to play dumb so that Manafort doesn't give the appearance that he intentionally knew he would be colluding.

Trump administration likes to play with the opposition

One attorney whose client happens to be involved in the Russia investigation said that the senior levels of the Trump campaign are too old to be feigning ignorance, but this pretending to be ignorant, creating "alternative facts," and pitching false information over the first several months of the Trump administration is enough evidence to show that it's how they like to play with the media, investigators, and their opposition.

In the article by Politico, one former federal prosecutor suggests that Congress is now under pressure to no longer deny that collusion exists due to the obvious intent from Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort -- who were present at the meeting. This is because they were all associated with the emails sent between the contact who arranged the meeting, luring them with the promise that they were going to get damaging information to attack Hillary Clinton and the DNC with.

Even more so was the fact that Trump Jr. had no problem taking the information when he said "I love it." This is overwhelmingly seen as collusion with intent. Of course, none of this matters with the Trump administration, as they continue to deny the obvious.