Trump ‘personally dictated son’s letter’
Donald Trump personally helped craft a misleading statement in which his son Donald Trump Jr said a meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 election was innocuous, the White House said. Legal analysts suggested Mr Trump may have put himself in legal jeopardy by “weighing in”.
PRESIDENT Donald Trump personally helped craft a misleading statement in which his son Donald Trump Jr said a meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 election was innocuous, the White House admitted last night.
On June 9 2016, Mr Trump’s eldest son, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and then campaign manager Paul Manafort met with a Russian government lawyer who had claimed to have incriminating information about Hillary Clinton.
The fact the meeting took place came to light last month and the president’s advisers wanted to reveal all details of the encounter, including who was there and what was discussed, the Washington Post reported. But Mr Trump was said to have overridden them and decided to reveal few details.
On board Air Force One, returning from the G20 summit in Hamburg, he reportedly crafted a statement which was then issued in his son’s name.
The statement said Donald Trump Jr and the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya “primarily discussed a programme about the adoption of Russian children”, and insisted that “was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow-up”.
Mr Trump Jr was later forced to publicly reveal a series of emails about the meeting after they were obtained by a newspaper.
The emails showed how he had been promised “very high level and sensitive information” that was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump”.
Last night Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, told a news conference: “He certainly didn’t dictate (the statement), but... he weighed in, offered suggestion like any father would do. The statement that was issued was true and there were no inaccuracies in the statement.”
Analysts suggested Mr Trump could have put himself in legal jeopardy by drafting the initial statement.
One adviser told the Washington Post: “Now someone can claim he’s the one who attempted to mislead.”
But Jay Sekulow, Mr Trump’s personal lawyer, said: “Apart from being of no consequence, the characterisations are misinformed, inaccurate and not pertinent.”
In a separate development, Mr Kushner’s remarks to a group of interns in Washington were recorded and leaked to the media.
On a tape obtained by Wired magazine, Mr Kushner was heard discussing the Middle East peace process and admitting there may be “no solution”. He said: “We’re thinking about what the right end state is and we’re trying to work with the parties very quietly to see if there’s a solution.
“And there may be no solution, but it’s one of the problem sets that the president asked us to focus on.
“So we’re going to focus on it and try to come to the right conclusion in the near future.”
Mr Trump himself celebrated the stock market reaching an “all-time high” and also declared he would continue his use of social media.
Writing on Twitter he said: “Only the Fake News Media and Trump enemies want me to stop using Social Media (110 million people). Only way for me to get the truth out!”
That came a day after John Kelly, a retired general, took over as White House chief of staff with the aim of introducing miltary-style discipline following a chaotic few weeks.
On Monday, Anthony Scaramucci was sacked as communications director on just his 11th day in the job.
Republican senator Lindsey Graham said: “He (the president) has an obligation to be president for all of us and stop the chaos.
“Most of the chaos is generated by him and no one else.”