Trump changes his tune on Donald Jr’s Russian meeting
‘I did not know about it’ ‘What law has been violated?’
DONALD Trump appears to have changed his story about a 2016 meeting at Trump Tower that is pivotal to the special counsel’s investigation, tweeting that his son met with a Kremlinconnected lawyer to collect information about his political opponent.
‘Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower,’ Mr Trump wrote in a Sunday tweet.
‘This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!’
That is a far different explanation than the US president gave 13 months ago, when a statement dictated by the president but released under the name of Donald Trump Jr, read: ‘We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago.’
The misdirection came amid a series of searing tweets sent from his New Jersey golf club, in which he tore into two of his favourite targets: the news media and Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into possible links between the US president’s campaign and Russia. Mr Trump unleashed particular fury at reports he was anxious about the Trump Tower meeting attended by Donald Trump Jr. and other campaign officials.
Mr Trump’s critics immediately pounced on the new story, the latest of several versions of events about a meeting for which emails were discovered between the US president’s eldest son and an intermediary from the Russian government offering damaging information about Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. Betraying no surprise or misgivings about the offer from a hostile foreign power, Mr Trump Jr replied: ‘If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.’
Sunday’s tweet was Mr Trump’s clearest statement yet on the purpose of the meeting, which has become a focal point of Mueller’s investigation even as the US president and his lawyers try to downplay its significance and pummel the Mueller probe with attacks. On Sunday, Mr Trump again suggested without evidence that Mr Mueller was biased against him, declaring: ‘This is the most one-sided Witch Hunt in the history of our country.’
And as Mr Trump and his allies have tried to discredit the probe, a new talking point has emerged: that even if that meeting was held to collect damaging information, none was provided and ‘collusion’ – Mr Trump’s go-to description of what Mueller is investigating – never occurred.
‘The question is what law, statute or rule or regulation has been violated, and nobody has pointed to one,’ said Jay Sekulow, one of Mr Trump’s attorneys, on ABC’s This Week. But legal experts have pointed out several possible criminal charges, including conspiracy against the US and aiding and abetting a conspiracy. Federal campaign finance law makes it illegal for a campaign to accept a ‘thing of value’, such as a financial contribution, from foreign nationals. Opposition research could be counted by investigators as a ‘thing of value’, experts have said.
Opposition research – collecting information on an opponent – is not illegal and is a common practice in political campaigns.
But ‘wilfully soliciting a foreign contribution is a crime’, Rick Hasen, a campaign finance expert and law professor at the University of California, Irvine, said yesterday. ‘You have to know you are doing something illegal and the courts would have to consider the opposition research from Russian agents a “thing of value” for campaign finance purposes.’
Beyond any criminal implications, a meeting such as the Trump Tower one would be of interest for counterintelligence reasons as investigators try to understand foreign efforts to penetrate an American campaign or sway public policy.
And despite Mr Trump’s public Twitter denial, the US president has expressed worry that his son may face legal exposure even as he believes he did nothing wrong, say White House sources.