The president’s son,
Donald Trump Jr., admits that a Russian lawyer with whom he met in June 2016 claimed she could provide him potentially damaging information about his father’s opponent, Hillary Clinton.
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, said in a statement Sunday that a Russian lawyer with whom he met in June 2016 claimed she could provide him potentially damaging information about his father’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
He said he had agreed to the meeting because he was offered information that would be helpful to his father’s campaign.
At the meeting, which also included Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, the Russian lawyer opened by saying she knew about Russians funding the Democratic National Committee and Clinton, the statement said.
Trump Jr. said her statements were “vague, ambiguous and made no sense” and that she then changed the subject to discuss a prohibition that the Russian government placed on the adoption of Russian children as retaliation for sanctions imposed by Congress in 2012.
Trump Jr. said his father “knew nothing of the meeting or these events” and there was no further contact with the woman.
The meeting seems likely to become a focus of investigations into whether the Trump campaign coordinated and encouraged Russian efforts to intervene in the election to hurt Clinton and elect Trump.
In his statement, Trump Jr. said he did not know the lawyer’s name, Natalia Veselnitskaya, before attending at the request of an acquaintance. He said the woman told him that “she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton.”
“No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information,” he said, asserting that he concluded that claims of helpful information for the campaign had been a “pretext” for setting up the meeting.
Neither Manafort nor his spokesman responded to requests for comment. Kushner’s representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
Veselnitskaya’s client roll includes people close to the Kremlin.
She told the Times in a statement that she had never acted on behalf of the Russian government and that the meeting included no discussion of the presidential campaign.