Trump Jr. denies Russia collusion
MARY CLARE JALONICK, ERIC TUCKER and JONATHAN LEMIRE
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump’s eldest son told a Senate committee Thursday he was open to receiving information about Hillary Clinton’s “fitness, character or qualifications” in a meeting with a Russian lawyer last year.
However, Donald Trump Jr. insisted that neither he nor anyone else he knows colluded with any foreign government during the presidential campaign.
His description of a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower, delivered in an opening statement at the outset of a closed-door Senate Judiciary Committee staff interview, provided his most detailed account of an encounter that has attracted the attention of congressional investigators and special counsel Robert Mueller.
Multiple congressional committees and Mueller’s team of prosecutors are investigating whether the Trump campaign co-ordinated with Russia to influence the outcome of the election. A grand jury used by Mueller as part of his investigation has already heard testimony about the meeting, which besides Trump Jr., included the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.
In Thursday’s prepared remarks, Trump Jr. sought to explain e-mails he released two months ago that showed him agreeing to the meeting, which had been described as part of a Russian government effort to help his father’s campaign.
In his new statement, he said he was skeptical of the outreach by music publicist Rob Goldstone, who said he had information that could be damaging to Clinton. But Trump Jr. said he thought he “should listen to what Rob and his colleagues had to say.”
At one point during the email exchange, Trump Jr. had told Goldstone, “If it’s what you say I love it especially in the summer.”
Trump Jr. sought to explain that remark Thursday by saying it was “simply a colloquial way of saying that I appreciated Rob’s gesture.”
Trump Jr. and the Judiciary Committee negotiated for him to appear privately and be interviewed only by committee staff. Senators were allowed to sit in but not ask questions.