Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Trump Jr. talks in Senate probe
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump Jr. told Senate investigators Thursday that he set up a June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer because he was intrigued that she might have damaging information about Hillary Clinton, then the Democratic presidential nominee, saying it was important to learn about Clinton’s “fitness” to be president.
But nothing came of the Trump Tower meeting, the president’s eldest son said, and he was adamant that he never colluded with the Russian government’s campaign to disrupt last year’s presidential election.
In a prepared statement during an interview with Senate Judiciary Committee investigators, Trump Jr. said he was initially conflicted when he heard that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, might have damaging information about Clinton. Despite his interest, he said, he always intended to consult with his own lawyers about the propriety of using any information that Veselnitskaya,
who has ties to the Kremlin, gave him at the meeting.
A copy of Trump Jr.’s statement was obtained by The New York Times.
“To the extent they had information concerning the fitness, character or qualifications of a presidential candidate, I believed that I should at least hear them out,” he said. “Depending on what , if any, information they had, I could then consult with counsel to make an informed decision as to whether to give it further consideration.”
Trump Jr. sat down privately with committee investigators in the Capitol shortly before 9:30 a.m. Thursday and remained under questioning for about five hours. In a statement released afterward, he said he trusted that “this interview fully satisfied” the panel’s inquiry.
The judiciary committee is one of three congressional panels investigating whether President Donald Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the outcome of the election. The committee, which has oversight of the Justice Department, is particularly interested in the circumstances surrounding Trump’s abrupt firing in May of James Comey as FBI director.
In July, the committee’s chairman, Republican Charles Grassley of Iowa, said he wanted Trump Jr. to appear at a public hearing, though in recent days he’s declined to say whether that will happen.
Trump Jr. entered the Capitol under cover and did not speak with reporters. Senators were allowed to sit in on the interview but not ask questions.
The June 2016 meeting came about after the younger Trump received an email from a family associate saying potentially damaging information was being provided as part of the Russian government’s support for his father. But in his statement Thursday, he described his decision to agree to the meeting as the byproduct of the chaotic, seat-of-the-pants campaign assembled by his father, rather than any attempt to collude with Russia.
Trump Jr. has given differing accounts of his contacts last year with Russians. He told the New York Times in March that he never met with Russians on behalf of the campaign, a statement his lawyer has since said was meant to refer to Russian government officials.
In July, Trump Jr. described the Trump Tower meeting as primarily focused on the issue of Russian adoptions. Later, he said he took the meeting because he was told that Veselnitskaya had damaging information about Clinton.
His statements to the panel Thursday carries weight because intentionally misspeaking to Congress is a crime.
He told investigators that working for his father’s campaign consumed his life. “I had never worked on a campaign before, and it was an exhausting, all-encompassing, life-changing experience,” he said. “Every single day I fielded dozens, if not hundreds, of emails and phone calls.”
He is the second person connected to the Trump campaign to tell congressional investigators that the campaign was, essentially, too inexperienced and too unfamiliar with politics to pull off a master strategy — let alone coordinate with the Russian government. Trump Jr.’s brother-inlaw, Jared Kushner, painted a similar picture during an interview with the Senate Intelligence Committee.
In his statement, Trump Jr. said he had some reservations about the June 2016 proposal from the meeting’s facilitator, Rob Goldstone, whom he described as a “colorful” music promoter he had come to know through the son of a Russian oligarch. Goldstone asked Trump Jr. to take the meeting, saying it would include potentially damaging information about Clinton.
“Since I had no additional information to validate what Rob was saying, I did not quite know what to make of his email. I had no way to gauge the reliability, credibility or accuracy of any of the things he was saying,” he said. “As it later turned out, my skepticism was justified. The meeting provided no meaningful information and turned out not to be about what had been represented.”
In an email response to Goldstone, Trump Jr. wrote that if the promised information about Clinton was as advertised, “I love it.”
“As much as some have made of my using the phrase ‘I love it,’ it was simply a colloquial way of saying that I appreciated Rob’s gesture,” he said in his statement Thursday.
The statement also provided additional detail on how Trump Jr. knew Goldstone, whom he said he met through the family of Aras Agalarov, the Trump Organization’s partner on the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.
Trump Jr. said he did not attend the Moscow pageant, noting that he hasn’t traveled to Russia since 2011. But he later met Goldstone when Agalarov’s pop singer son, Emin, performed at a March 2014 golf tournament at Trump’s course in Doral, Fla.
Trump Jr. said Goldstone would “intermittently” contact him, including during the campaign, when he would offer congratulations or support. But when he received the initial email that ultimately led to the Russian meeting, Trump Jr. said he hadn’t heard from Goldstone in “quite some time.”
On the day of the meeting, Trump Jr. said, he didn’t know who would be attending because Goldstone didn’t give him a list ahead of time. He said Trump Tower security also didn’t keep a record. Goldstone was able to take the “entire group up” by only giving his name to a guard in the lobby, he said.
“There is no attendance log to refer back to, and I did not take notes,” Trump Jr. said.
Trump Jr. said he remembers only seven people attending the meeting, though eight have been publicly reported.
The attendees Trump Jr. identified were himself; Goldstone; Kushner; Veselnitskaya; a translator; Paul Manafort, who was the Trump campaign chairman at the time; and Irakli Kaveladze, who worked for the Agalarovs.
Trump Jr. does not mention Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, who has told multiple news outlets that he attended the meeting at Veselnitskaya’s invitation. In recent weeks, Akhmetshin has testified about his recollection of the meeting before a Washington grand jury used by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is conducting his own investigation.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said the mood during the interview was “cordial” and that investigators were asking primarily factual questions.
Blumenthal, a member of the judiciary committee, said what he has heard so far only makes him more certain that the committee needs to hear from other attendees of the Trump Tower meeting, including Kushner and Manafort. Blumenthal said the committee needs to look further into how Trump Jr.’s initial statements to the media about that meeting were put together.
“We covered a good deal of ground,” Blumenthal said. “There is still a lot of questioning to be covered.”
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, California Rep. Adam Schiff, released a statement responding to reports of the meeting and said Trump Jr.’s statement “raises more questions than it answers” and “highlights how significant the campaign viewed the promise of dirt on their opponent from the Russian government.”
Late Wednesday, the social network Facebook reported that hundreds of fake Facebook accounts, probably run from Russia, spent about $100,000 on advertisements aimed at stirring up divisive issues such as gun control and race relations during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Facebook has turned over its findings to the federal authorities investigating Russia’s involvement in the U.S. election. Information for this article was contributed by Maggie Haberman and Matt Apuzzo of The
New York Times; and by Mary Clare Jalonick, Eric Tucker, Jonathan Lemire, Jake Pearson and Chad Day of The Associated Press.