The Slatest

Today’s Impeach-O-Meter: There Was No Hacker- or Spy-Related Collusion Besides the Collusion With an Accused Hacker/Spy

When it rains denials of collusion, it pours comically prolific evidence of collusion, is how the saying goes, I believe.

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

In the tradition of the Clintonometer and the Trump Apocalypse Watch, the Impeach-O-Meter is a wildly subjective and speculative daily estimate of the likelihood that Donald Trump leaves office before his term ends, whether by being impeached (and convicted) or by resigning under threat of same.

Remember that meeting that Donald Trump Jr., Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and current White House senior adviser Jared Kushner had last June at Trump Tower with a well-connected Russian lawyer offering them dirt on the Clinton campaign? Well! Tuesday night, Donald Trump Jr. said there was nothing more to it than had already been reported—but he, somehow, was wrong! Because it turns out that the meeting also included a former Soviet counterintelligence officer who is “suspected of continuing ties to Russian intelligence authorities” and who was recently accused in a United States lawsuit of “paying Russian hackers” (in the Daily Beast’s words) to carry out a “sophisticated and systematic breach” of computer systems at a company called International Mineral Resources. (The allegation has been withdrawn for unknown reasons.) You may recall that hackers believed to be linked to the Russian government released quite a bit of dirt about Hillary Clinton in the months after the Trump Tower meeting.

We just lowered the meter yesterday, and here we are today, raising it again!

Photo illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo. Photos by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, Win McNamee/Getty Images, Chris Kleponis-Pool/Getty Images, Drew Angerer/Getty Images, and Peter Parks-Pool/Getty Images.

Photo illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo. Photos by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, Win McNamee/Getty Images, Chris Kleponis-Pool/Getty Images, Drew Angerer/Getty Images, and Peter Parks-Pool/Getty Images.