Trump denies claim he knew of Russia meeting
Exlawyer Cohen ready to share info with Russia probe team
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Friday denied he had advance knowledge of a Trump Tower meeting of his son and members of his campaign team with a Russian lawyer in June 2016, as claimed by his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen.
“I did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don jr,” the president tweeted. “Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam (Taxi cabs maybe?)”. That’s a reference to Cohen’s taxi-cab business in New York which is facing troubles.
Citing sources, CNN reported on Thursday that Cohen was willing to tell Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is probing Russian meddling in the 2016 election, that candidate Trump knew in advance of the meeting and had approved it. NBC news reported it had independently verified that account as true.
Cohen was in the room when Trump was told of it. If true, this bombshell claim by Cohen could bring all sorts of trouble to the president, his son and lawyers who have said Trump did not know of the meeting. The president has said he became aware of it in only in 2017, after it was first reported by The New York Times.
Donald Trump Jr, his brotherin-law Jared Kushner and then campaign chairman Paul Manafort, had in June 2016 met a group of people including the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who had offered politically sensitive information about Trump’s rival candidate Hillary Clinton.