OnPolitics Today: Somewhere in time

Happy Monday, OP friends. What we've gathered from the past few days: Everything old is new again.

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Time loop

Look back to summer 2017, when we learned that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in summer 2016 to get dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Now that it's summer 2018, President Donald Trump has weighed in to insist that there was nothing illegal about this.

"Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower," the president tweeted Sunday. "This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!"

The biggest takeaway from this: That the meeting with the lawyer was indeed about getting information on Clinton.

Loopholes

Nearly three dozen lawmakers are set to retire after this year.

Where will they go next is unclear – and the public is left in the dark whether those new jobs will pose potential conflicts of interest as members of Congress finish up their terms.

Paste BN's Bill Theobald explains: "The two main reasons: A loophole in legislation that was touted as promoting disclosure of retirees’ post-congressional job negotiations, and interpretations of how to apply the law. The two have combined to result in almost no disclosure for these retiring members or anyone leaving office."

So, how many people this cycle have disclosed any negotiations for future employment? Zero.

Elsewhere in politics

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