Trump appears to change Russian story
BRIDGEWATER: United States President 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 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,’’ Trump wrote in a 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!’’
But 13 months ago, Trump, gave a far different explanation. A July 2017 statement dictated by the president but released under the name of Donald Trump jun read: ‘‘We primarily discussed a programme about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago.’’
The latest twist came amid a series of searing tweets sent from President Trump’s 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 president’s campaign and Russia.
Trump unleashed particular fury at reports that he was anxious about the Trump Tower meeting attended by Donald Trump jun and other senior campaign officials. 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 president’s eldest son and an intermediary from the Russian government offering damaging information about Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Yesterday’s tweet was Trump’s clearest statement yet on the purpose of the meeting, which has become a focal point of Mueller’s investigation even as the president and his lawyers try to play down its significance.