Donald Trump Jr. was quick to say he wasn’t surprised to see California attorney Michael Avenatti endorse Joe Biden‘s presidential bid on Twitter Thursday afternoon, deploying the “Creepy Porn Lawyer” insult that has been used on more than a few occasions on Fox News.
“I kind of assumed he would be supporting @BernieSanders, since Bernie wants to give incarcerated criminals the right to vote…Unless maybe @JoeBiden secretly supports that too???” he said, referring simultaneously to Avenatti’s well-documented legal problems and the Bernie Sanders‘ recent statement that even convicts like the Boston Bomber should not lose their right to vote while incarcerated.
The Don Jr. and Avenatti feud is a long running one. Avenatti wrongly predicted that Trump Jr. would be indicted by the end of 2018 for lying under oath.
“Donald Trump Jr. will be indicted before his birthday on 12-31-18. If you doubt my prediction, please check my record over the last 7 months. #Winning” he said on Twitter last October. Trump Jr. would say during an interview with ABC News that he wasn’t worried.
“I’m not [worried] because I know what I did and I’m not worried about it,” he said. In the end, Trump Jr. was not indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for a campaign finance violation related to the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting. But according to Bloomberg, there’s been no public indication that Mueller’s team interviewed Trump Jr., and legal experts said that it’s common for prosecutors to avoid questioning potential targets for indictments.
Mueller’s decision sparked some outrage among the public, many of whom believed Trump Jr. should be held accountable, regardless if he knew whether or not he was breaking the law (some dubbed him “too dumb to prosecute“). Jill Wine-Banks, an attorney and former prosecutor during the Watergate era, called out Trump Jr. on Twitter, stating, “Ignorance of the law is not if the FBI warned you that Russians might try to compromise you and you do not report contact to help your father’s campaign and you do not report it. Plus, why didn’t he know foreign help is 100% prohibited?”
According to Mueller’s report, however, “On the facts here, the government would unlikely be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the June 9 meeting participants had general knowledge that their conduct was unlawful.”
Matt Naham contributed to this report.
[Donald Trump Jr. via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]
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