Trump Jr. revelations threaten adoption hopes, agency fears

NEW YORK — Getting Russia’s ban on adoptions by Americans lifted may now be more complicated because of revelations regarding Donald Trump Jr., according to a U.S. agency.

The son of U.S. President Donald Trump, explaining a meeting last year with a Russian lawyer, initially said the subject was the adoption ban, but later released emails showing his motive was to obtain negative information about Hillary Clinton.

Chuck Johnson, chief executive of the National Council for Adoption, said: “Because Russia is so much in the news, it’s now made lifting the ban even more awkward and difficult.

“You’d have Democrats and the hawkish Republicans who would see it as further collusion.”

The ban has had “disastrous results” for orphans in Russia, said Johnson, a leading advocate of international adoption.

Signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December 2012, the ban served as retaliation for a U.S. law targeting alleged Russian human-rights violators.

It also reflected resentment over the 60,000 Russian children adopted by Americans in the previous two decades, about 20 of whom died of abuse, neglect or other causes while in the care of their adoptive parents.

More than 200 U.S. families were trying to adopt children from Russia when the ban took effect. Many of those children have now been placed in Russian homes. The fate of other children remains unknown to their wouldbe adoptive families.

Resumption of adoptions from Russia has been a goal of the Trump administration, as it was for the Obama administration. But there was no movement until Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov agreed in April to include the matter in high-level talks aimed at resolving festering conflicts.

Estimates of the number of orphans in Russia vary widely, but the country has been trying to place more of the orphans with Russian families through an expansion of domestic adoption.