Trump says dirt on rival meeting’s aim
Don Jr.’s talk with Russian ‘totally legal,’ he maintains
BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — President Donald Trump on Sunday offered his most definitive and clear public acknowledgment that his oldest son met with a Kremlin-aligned lawyer at Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign to “get information on an opponent,” defending the meeting as “totally legal and done all the time in politics.”
It is, however, against the law for U.S. campaigns to receive donations or items of value from foreigners, and that June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya is now a subject of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.
While “collusion” is not mentioned in U.S. criminal statutes, Mueller is investigating whether anyone associated with Trump coordinated with the Russians, which could result in criminal charges if they entered into a conspiracy to break the law, including through cyber-hacking or interfering with the election.
“Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower,” the president wrote in one of several early morning tweets Sunday, many of which took aim at the media.
“This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics — and it went nowhere.”
He concluded by further distancing himself from the meeting his son arranged, writing: “I did not know about it!”
The misdirection came amid a series of searing tweets sent from his New Jersey golf club, in which he tore into two of his favorite targets, the news media and Mueller’s ongoing investigation. Trump unleashed particular fury at reports that he was anxious about the Trump Tower meeting attended by his son 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. Betraying no surprise or misgivings about the offer from a hostile foreign power, Trump Jr. replied: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”
Sunday’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 downplay its significance and pummel the Mueller probe with attacks. On Sunday, Trump again suggested without evidence that Mueller was biased against him, declaring, “This is the most one sided Witch Hunt in the history of our country.”
And as Trump and his allies have tried to discredit the probe, a new talking point has emerged: that even if that meeting was held to collect damaging information, none was provided and “collusion” — Trump’s go-to description of what Mueller is investigating — never occurred.
“The question is what law, statute or rule or regulation has been violated, and nobody has pointed to one,” said Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s attorneys, on ABC’s This Week.
But legal experts have pointed out several possible criminal charges, including conspiracy against the United States and aiding and abetting a conspiracy. And despite Trump’s public Twitter denial, the president has expressed worry that his son may face legal exposure even as he believes he did nothing wrong, according to three people close to the White House familiar with the president’s thinking but not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.
Sekulow acknowledged that the public explanation for the meeting has changed but insisted that the White House has been very clear with the special counsel’s office. He said he was not aware of Trump Jr. facing any legal exposure.
“I don’t represent Don Jr.,” Sekulow said, “but I will tell you I have no knowledge at all of Don Jr. being told that he’s a target of any investigation, and I have no knowledge of him being interviewed by the special counsel.”
Trump was responding to a Washington Post report this weekend that although he does not think his eldest son intentionally broke the law, he is worried that Trump Jr. may have unintentionally stumbled into legal jeopardy and is embroiled in Mueller’s investigation largely because of his connection to the president.
The Trump Tower meeting also included Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his campaign chairman at the time, Paul Manafort, who is on trial over tax and bank fraud charges after being indicted by Mueller.
Trump’s tweet, however, conflicts with a statement that Trump Jr. had released to The New York Times in July 2017, as the newspaper prepared to report about the meeting. In that statement, Trump Jr. had indicated that the meeting had been “primarily” about the issue of the adoption of Russian children by Americans.
Amid public uproar over the meeting, the president’s son was forced to release follow-up statements, ultimately acknowledging that the meeting’s true purpose had been to get dirt about Hillary Clinton from a lawyer he had been told was working for the Russian government.
The Washington Post reported a few weeks later that Trump Jr.’s initial misleading statement had been “dictated” by his father.
Democrats hammered away at the president’s admission Sunday.
“The Russians offered damaging info on your opponent. Your campaign accepted. And the Russians delivered,” tweeted Rep. Adam Schiff, top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “You then misled the country about the purpose of the Trump Tower meeting when it became public. Now you say you didn’t know in advance. None of this is normal or credible.”
Trump’s days of private anger spilled out into public with the Twitter outburst, which comes at a perilous time for the president.
A decision about whether he sits for an interview with Mueller may also occur in the coming weeks, according to another one of his attorneys, Rudy Giuliani. Trump has seethed against what he feels are trumped-up charges against Manafort, whose trial began last week and provided a visible reminder of Mueller’s work.
And he raged against the media’s obsession with his links to Russia and the status of Michael Cohen, his former fixer, who is under federal investigation in New York. Cohen has indicated that he would tell prosecutors that Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting ahead of time.
On Sunday, the president’s attorney alluded to what he called “irregularities” in the special counsel’s investigation — including the role of FBI agent Peter Strzok, who sent anti-Trump messages to another agent and was dismissed from Mueller’s team a year ago.
“Let’s be honest with the American people, there are irregularities in this investigation the likes of which we have not seen,” Sekulow said, mimicking one of the president’s favorite phrases.
Sekulow said the president has the constitutional power to shut down the Mueller probe. He also said no decision has been made as to whether Trump would answer questions from Mueller but that a subpoena to do so could spark a court battle.
“A subpoena for live testimony has never been tested in court as to a president of the United States,” he said. Citing 32 witness interviews and the White House turning over 1.4 million documents, Sekulow asked, “Why is the president’s testimony needed here?”
In addition to weighing in publicly on the Trump Tower meeting, the president also unleashed angry tweets against the media Sunday morning from his 11-day working vacation in nearby Bedminster.
In one tweet, he declared the media the “Enemy of the People” and accused them of sowing division and distrust. “They can also cause War!” Trump wrote. “They are very dangerous & sick!”
In another, he expressed frustration with both the media and Mueller’s probe. “Too bad a large portion of the Media refuses to report the lies and corruption having to do with the Rigged Witch Hunt — but that is why we call them FAKE NEWS!”
“The question is what law, statute or rule or regulation has been violated, and nobody has pointed to one.” — Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s attorneys, on ABC’s This Week