Trump Jr and Kushner met Russian lawyer in June last year

Donald Trump’s eldest son, son-in-law and campaign chairman met a Russian lawyer in June last year, shortly after Mr Trump won the Republican presidential nomination.

Representatives of Donald Trump Jr and Jared Kushner confirmed they had met Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower.

Paul Manafort, Mr Trump’s campaign chairman at the time, also attended, the president’s son said.

“It was a short introductory meeting,” Mr Trump Jr said, adding that they discussed a disbanded programme that used to allow US citizens to adopt Russian children.

Russia ended the adoptions in response to American sanctions against it after the 2009 death of an imprisoned lawyer who spoke about a corruption scandal.

Mr Trump said he had been asked to attend the meeting with Ms Veselnitskaya by an acquaintance, and was not told who he was meeting.

“It was not a campaign issue at that time and there was no follow up,” he said.

Mr Kushner’s lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, said her client had disclosed the event in a form on which he was required to tell of meetings with foreign agents.

“Mr Kushner has submitted additional updates and included, out of an abundance of caution, this meeting with a Russian person, which he briefly attended at the request of his brother-in-law, Donald Trump

Jr,” Ms Gorelick said.

“As Mr Kushner has consistently stated, he is eager to cooperate and share what he knows.”

Unlike Mr Kushner, the younger Mr Trump does not serve in the administration and is not required to disclose his foreign contacts. The New York Times reported on Saturday that Mr Manafort disclosed the meeting to congressional

investigators looking into his foreign contacts.

Mr Manafort led Mr Trump’s campaign for about five months until August. He resigned immediately after reports of his firm’s secret Washington lobbying on behalf of Ukraine’s ruling party.

He is one of several people linked to the Trump campaign who are under scrutiny by a special counsel and congressional committees investigating Russian meddling and possible co-ordination with Trump associates.

Mr Manafort has said his work in Ukraine was not related to the campaign.

Meanwhile, the US president said it was time to work constructively with Moscow, and that Russian leader Vladimir Putin had “vehemently denied” meddling in last year’s election.

“I strongly pressed president Putin twice about Russian meddling in our election,” Mr Trump said after returning from Europe where he met the Russian leader for the first time. “He vehemently denied it. I’ve already given my opinion.”

The president posted on Twitter that he and Mr Putin had talked about setting up “an impenetrable cyber-security unit” to prevent hacking in future elections.

He said the two men had discussed implementing a ceasefire in Syria, which began yesterday. “Now it is time to move forward in working constructively with Russia,” Mr Trump tweeted.

His comments came two days after the two leaders met for the first time, at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.

The US and Russia have issued sharply conflicting accounts of the meeting, with Mr Putin saying on Saturday that Mr Trump had been satisfied by his denials of any Russian interference in the polls.