Trump Jr.: Not troubled by Russian meeting
WASHINGTON — Questioned intently by a Senate committee, President Donald Trump’s son struck a firmly unapologetic tone, deflected queries and said he didn’t think there was anything wrong with meeting a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in hopes of getting election-season dirt on Hillary Clinton, according to transcripts released Wednesday.
Asked last year if he was troubled by the idea that the meeting in June 2016 was part of a Russian government effort to help his father in the presidential race, Donald Trump Jr. said he didn’t give it much thought.
“I don’t know that it alarmed me,” Trump Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee in the closed-door interview. “I didn’t think that listening to someone with information relevant to the fitness and character of a presidential candidate would be an issue, no,” he said.
The committee released more than 1,800 pages of transcripts of interviews with Trump Jr. and others who attended the New York meeting at which they expected to receive compromising information about Clinton. The panel also released more than 700 pages of exhibits including numerous emails, heavily redacted phone logs and court depositions.
The Trump Tower meeting is a key point of interest in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible election collusion between Trump aides and the Kremlin.
According to the transcripts, Trump Jr. responded to dozens of queries by saying he could not recall or had “no idea.” He said he did not alert his father to the meeting beforehand and he had never discussed with him the FBI’s investigation into Russian election interference.
The transcripts reveal some new details about how the meeting came to be arranged and efforts afterward to mitigate the political damage arising from its disclosure.
They also show the dissatisfaction of Trump Jr. and other campaign figures, including brotherin-law Jared Kushner, when the meeting failed to yield harmful Clinton information.
After music publicist Rob Goldstone promised him “very interesting” information, including documents “that would incriminate Hillary,” he responded via email, “if it’s what you say I love it.”
The transcripts also reflect an aggressive Russian outreach to Trump before and after the New York meeting, including an effort to arrange a follow-up gettogether that November with a member of the transition team that never happened.
Though the transcripts show he repeatedly answered questions by saying he couldn’t recall, Trump Jr. described himself as “candid and forthright” in a statement Wednesday.
Trump Jr. also made several calls to blocked numbers as he was setting up the meeting, but said he didn’t remember who he had called.
Senate Judiciary Democrats said the transcripts are just “one piece of a much larger puzzle” and do not tell the entire story because some meeting participants were not interviewed or subpoenaed.
Some of the questioning of Trump Jr. centered on a statement drafted just as news of the meeting was about to break, saying that the meeting primarily concerned a Russian adoption program. The White House has said the president was involved in its drafting.
The transcripts provide a timeline of the days leading up to the meeting as well as misgivings about its appropriateness.