Trump’s son: I met Russian lawyer who offered to dish election dirt on Hillary
DONALD Trump’s son has admitted meeting a Russian lawyer who offered to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton during the US election campaign.
It provides concrete proof for the first time that members of the US President’s inner circle met a Russian national, after months of denials of Kremlin collusion in the campaign.
Donald Trump Jr was also accused of changing his story about his meeting in New York’s Trump Tower last June with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a lawyer with Kremlin ties, and gobetween Rob Goldstone, a British music publicist said to have set up the meeting.
He initially claimed on Saturday that he had met the lawyer and Mr Goldstone, ‘primarily’ to discuss the issue of Americans adopting children in Russia. He made no mention of Mrs Clinton.
But after the New York Times claimed on Sunday that Mr Trump Jr, 39, had been promised damaging information on the Democrat presidential contender before he agreed to meet the lawyer, he shifted his position.
He admitted that he and two senior colleagues – his brother-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort – had initially discussed her claim to have information about Russian funding of Mrs Clinton’s campaign. Mr Trump Jr has admitted the Russian lawyer ‘had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Mrs Clinton’.
However, he claimed that Miss Veselnitskaya’s statements were ‘vague, ambiguous and made no sense’. Insisting yesterday there had been ‘no inconsistency’ in his statements, he tweeted that the ‘meeting went nowhere but had to listen’. Democrat politicians and even Republicans said yesterday Mr Trump Jr and others at the meeting should be questioned by Senate and FBI investigators.