Nadler: I don’t understand why Mueller didn’t charge Donald Trump Jr., others in Trump Tower meeting

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said Sunday that he doesn’t understand why special counsel Robert Mueller didn’t charge Donald Trump Jr. and others involved in the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with criminal conspiracy.

Nadler, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” noted that Mueller said he didn’t bring charges against those in the meeting because he couldn’t prove they willfully intended to commit a crime.

{mosads}”Well, you don’t have to prove that,” Nadler continued. “All you have to prove for conspiracy is that they entered into a meeting of the minds to do something wrong and had one overt act. They entered into a meeting of the minds to attend a meeting to get stolen material on Hillary. They went to the meeting. That’s conspiracy right there.”

WATCH: Should Mueller have charged anyone for meeting with Russians in Trump Tower? #MTP #IfItsSunday@repjerrynadler: “I do not understand why he didn’t charge Don Jr. and others in that famous meeting” pic.twitter.com/trwIhndOBS

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) April 21, 2019

The 2016 meeting also reportedly involved Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. The associates, according to Mueller’s report, agreed to the meeting with a lawyer linked to Russia who had promised dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Mueller wrote in his report, which was released last week, that he considered bringing charges because campaigns can’t accept help from a foreign government or foreign nationals.

“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. The investigation has not developed evidence that the participants in the meeting were familiar with the foreign-contribution ban or the application of federal law to the relevant factual context,” Mueller added. 

According to Mueller’s 400-plus-page report, the special counsel’s office “did not obtain admissible evidence” that could demonstrate legal standards that campaign officials knew that the action was illegal.

“The investigation has not developed evidence that the participants in the meeting were familiar with the foreign-contribution ban” or the federal law applying to the meeting and “does not have strong evidence of surreptitious behavior or efforts at concealment at the time of the June 9 meeting,” the report states. 

“Don did nothing wrong in taking the meeting — which is why after 2 years of investigations, not a single person involved was charged with a crime by Mueller,” a source close to Trump Jr. told The Hill. “It’s unfortunate that instead of doing his actual job, Rep. Nadler seems hell bent on continuing to spend his time smearing and harassing a private citizen for purely partisan political reasons.”

Mueller concluded in his findings that investigators found “no documentary evidence” that President Trump had been made aware of the June 2016 meeting.

–Jonathan Easley contributed to this report, which was updated on April 22 at 10:17 a.m.