Report: Trump Jr. was offered info on Clinton
Son met with lawyer with ties to Kremlin
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s eldest son said Sunday he met with a Kremlin-linked lawyer shortly after his father clinched the Republican nomination, hoping to get information helpful to the campaign.
A New York Times report Sunday citing advisers to the White House briefed on the encounter said Trump Jr. agreed to the meeting after being promised information damaging to Hillary Clinton.
The June meeting at Trump Tower with attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya involved Trump Jr., his brother-inlaw Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, who was then the campaign chairman.
The existence of the meeting was disclosed only recently to government officials and confirmed Saturday by representatives of Trump Jr. and Kushner following a separate Times report.
In a statement Sunday, Trump Jr. did not confirm that the information he was promised would be damaging to Clinton.
But he said he was asked to have a meeting by an acquaintance he knew from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant who he was told might have information that would be helpful to the campaign.
He said that during the meeting the attorney claimed to have information that “individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee” and supporting Clinton.
“No details or supporting information was provided or even offered,” Trump Jr. said. “It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”
He said no details or supporting information was ever offered, and that his father was unaware of the meeting.
On Saturday, Trump Jr. had described the same gathering as a “short introductory meeting” during which the three discussed a disbanded program that used to allow U.S. citizens to adopt Russian children. Russia ended the adoptions in response to American sanctions brought against the nation following the 2009 death of an imprisoned lawyer who spoke about a corruption scandal.
He said on Sunday that the attorney turned the conversation to the adoption of Russian children, and that he believed that this was the “true agenda” of the meeting and that claims about damaging information had been a pretext for the encounter.