Trump Jr defends his decision to meet with Kremlin-linked lawyer
Donald Trump Jr, the US president’s eldest son, tried to extricate himself from a growing controversy about a 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer, saying on Tuesday that in hindsight, he would have done things a “little differently”.
“In retrospect,” he said on Fox news, “I probably would have done things a little differently.”
However, he defended his decision to meet Natalia Veselnitskaya — who offered incriminating information against Hillary Clinton — despite having known that she represented the Russian government, a claim since been denied by Moscow.
“For me, this was opposition research. They had something, you know, maybe concrete evidence to all the stories I’d been hearing about, probably underreported for years, not just during the campaign, so I think I wanted to hear it out,” he said.
Trump Jr went on to point out that his June 9, 2016 meeting and the email exchange took place before Russia’s meddling became public knowledge.
President Trump defended his son as well, calling him a “highquality person”. He was more expansive on Wednesday, saying Trump Jr, “was open, transparent and innocent”.
The meeting and related revelations have been described by Trump’s critics as the “smoking gun” that linked his campaign to Russian meddling. Trump’s FBI director pick Christopher Wray said the Russia probe is not a ‘witch hunt,’ declining to adopt the president’s characterisation.
He also said he will not let politics get in the way of the FBI’s mission, saying its work will be driven only by “the facts, the law and the impartial pursuit of justice”.