Donald Trump's story, up until now, has been that "there was no collusion with Russia" during his campaign. That is now -- as the Nixon White House used to say -- no longer an operative statement. The best they can now claim is that while such collusion was attempted, it ultimately wasn't successful. That's pretty weak, though, and with the shifting nature of the story even that may soon become impossible to claim. We'll have to wait and see where the next smoking gun points, before we find out what Trump's next party line will be.

It has been revealed over the past couple of days that Donald Trump Junior actively tried to collude with the Russian government to obtain dirt on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign. The emails he just released show that beyond a shadow of a doubt. He was offered a meeting with someone supposedly in possession of this dirt, which supposedly came from the Russian government, who was vying for influence with Trump. Junior not only set the meeting up, he also included Jared Kushner and Trump's campaign manager at the time, Paul Manafort. No matter what actually took place at that meeting, the intent of all three was crystal clear. Russia was offering opposition research, and Team Trump was not just willing but eager to see what it was.

Note that none of this changes no matter what actually happened in the meeting itself. If, as is now claimed, they talked about Russian-American adoption laws, it doesn't matter. The intent to collude was present before anyone walked in the room, whether it happened or not, in other words. Even if you take their statements at face value, just because they were disappointed when the dirt wasn't offered up doesn't excuse them from sitting there eagerly anticipating it.

Now, "collusion" is more of a political term than a legal term. "Conspiracy" is, though, and conspiracy is just two or more people planning a crime, at its heart. Doesn't matter if the crime ever actually happens or not -- just ask anyone convicted of planning a terrorist attack, for instance. Planning a crime is also a crime.

I, however, am not a lawyer, so the preceding paragraph was just offered up hypothetically. Whether any laws were actually broken or not (again, no matter what actually took place in the meeting) is a subject that Robert Mueller will assuredly be looking into, with a fine-tooth comb. There are all kinds of laws that might be relevant to this meeting, and until Mueller releases his conclusions we simply won't know whether Junior will ever have to face charges or not.

That's not going to stop anyone from speculating, of course. Democrats, so far, have been fairly restrained in their condemnation of Junior's meeting. By "fairly restrained," what I really mean is: "as opposed to what Republicans would now be saying if the same thing had happened with, say, Chelsea Clinton." If Chelsea were in the middle of such a collusion scandal with Russia, you can just imagine what would be happening right about now. It wouldn't surprise me in the least to have GOP congressmen calling for Chelsea to immediately be sent to Guantanamo Bay for some "enhanced interrogation," in other words. Any Republicans now claiming that Democrats are going too far in calling Junior treasonous would -- if this shoe were on Chelsea's foot -- doubtlessly be using the exact same word (and probably a lot louder).

Alternate universes aside, though, it will indeed be interesting to see how this episode plays out. Junior has previously indicated that he'd be happy to testify before the Senate and House committees looking into the Russian election tampering, but now that he's lawyered up he might decide this isn't such a good idea. If he does eventually testify, it will surely be riveting must-see television, that's for sure.

Junior's not the most important player here, though. If the meeting had taken place one-on-one between Junior and the Russian lawyer, then President Trump could shut down the investigation into the meeting by just pre-emptively pardoning his son. He would face a storm of political criticism for doing so, but there would simply be no way to get around it. The presidential pardoning power is one of the strongest cards in the executive's hand, and there is nothing that can stop him from using it. Sure, there are Justice Department procedures which are traditionally supposed to be followed before a pardon is issued, but they are nothing more than suggestions, really. Bill Clinton faced a huge storm of controversy over the propriety of his last-minute pardons, but it didn't result in anyone being "unpardoned," in other words. The Constitution's pardon power is only limited "in Cases of Impeachment." Since Junior doesn't really hold an impeachable job, that wouldn't be a problem. If his dad decided that the political blowback for doing so was acceptable, then nobody could stop Trump from pardoning his son, or even reverse it after the fact. Trump could go down in history as the president who used his first pardon to get his son off the hook for treason, but that probably wouldn't faze him all that much (after all, nothing else seems to).

But Junior didn't set up this meeting just for himself. Now, Paul Manafort got tossed under the bus by Donald Trump long ago, so metaphorically backing the bus up and bumping over him a few more times wouldn't really have much of an impact (on anyone other than Manafort). But Jared Kushner is a lot more central to the Trump White House than even Junior is. Kushner's got all kinds of responsibilities he's supposed to be in charge of (by way of an example, just one of these tasks is: "forge peace in the Middle East between Israel and its neighbors").

Junior is supposed to be running Trump's business empire until he leaves office. That job has nothing to do with politics (or, at least, it is theoretically not supposed to). So if Trump pardoned Junior, he'd be free to continue running the family business. But if Kushner faces the same legal jeopardy that Junior does, that's going to hurt the Trump administration a lot more. Even if Trump pardoned his son-in-law along with his son, Kushner would almost certainly have to quit being a senior White House advisor in any sort of official capacity. At the very least, he would probably lose his security clearance (being pardoned for committing possible treason seems completely incompatible with having the keys to the nation's secrets, to state the obvious).

Tomorrow, we will get a preview of how the politics of Junior's bombshell email dump are going to play out, when the nominee to be the new F.B.I. director is scheduled to appear before the Senate to answer any and all questions. This hearing was already slated to be pretty contentious, since Trump fired the previous F.B.I. director for "this Russia thing." The questions (from Democrats, at least) about Russian involvement in the election were already going to be as sharp as can be imagined. Now, there's a whole new area of concern that will be asked about. Will there be an extended dialog about what "treason" means? It's now certainly a possibility, and the answers will likely be fascinating to hear, since they are no longer all that hypothetical.

Donald Trump began by desperately pressuring people to tell the media that he "wasn't under investigation." Then he tried to shift to "no collusion has ever been found" between anyone on his campaign and Russia. It'll be interesting to hear what he comes up with next, perhaps in an early-morning tweet tomorrow.

The Russia scandal has already sent some big shockwaves out. James Comey is gone. Jeff Sessions had to recuse himself. Michael Flynn is gone. Paul Manafort was thrown overboard a long time ago. But the next dominoes are a lot closer to Trump, because they are both members of his extended family. Cleaning up the mess would be a lot easier if it were just a matter of pardoning Junior, and then sending him off to New York to run Trump's corporate empire. But I'm keeping my eye on what happens to Jared Kushner, because he's a lot closer to Trump than any of the rest of the people impacted by this scandal, to date. And even pardoning him wouldn't solve the problem, because it would still mean Kushner would have to quit being part of the Trump White House's inner circle. Even Junior's smoking-gun emails still haven't reached Donald Trump himself yet, but the scandal is getting a lot closer to him by the day. And it's far from over.

An investigation into a political scandal is usually a marathon, not a sprint. This is by no means the end of the Russia story. There will doubtless be further revelations along the way, and perhaps more smoking guns (pointing in different directions). Trump and all those around him certainly seem to be bending over backwards to appear as guilty as possible, instead of just getting all the information out there as soon as possible. At this point, such guilty behavior leads to only one possible response: "What else are they trying to hide?!?"

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant