White House backs son of Trump
His confirmation of Russia meeting contradicts denials
Washington — The White House on Monday was forced to shift from denying contact between the Trump campaign and Russia to defending a meeting that President Donald Trump's eldest son had in the midst of the presidential race with a Russian lawyer purportedly offering damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
The White House sought to play down the significance of that encounter even as new details emerged indicating that it had been arranged at the behest of a Russian family that has ties to the Kremlin and a history of pursuing business deals with President Trump — including preliminary plans for a Trump Tower in Moscow.
The revelations put the Trump administration again on the defensive about its relationship with Moscow, and they seemed to add to a pattern of not disclosing Kremlin contacts or providing false information about them.
The latest information centers on Donald Trump Jr., whose concession this week that he took part in the June 9, 2016, meeting contradicted statements he had made in recent months. It comes as investigators in Congress and the special counsel's office probe the Trump campaign's interactions with Russia.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday that the president had learned of his son's meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya only “in the last couple of days” and sought to play down its significance.
“The only thing I see inappropriate about the meeting is the people that leaked the information about the meeting after it was voluntarily disclosed,” she said.
She appeared to be referring to updated federal disclosures filed by Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner, acknowledging that he had attended the meeting with Veselnitskaya in Trump Tower.
Asked whether the president was concerned about the encounter, Sanders said no and described such meetings as routine occurrences during campaigns. “Don Jr. didn’t collude with anybody to influence the election,” she said.
But Sanders offered no explanation for why Trump officials had not previously disclosed the meeting publicly or why their account of the meeting’s purpose had shifted so dramatically in the past several days.
Trump Jr. said in an interview earlier this year with the New York Times that he had not participated in any “set up” meeting with a Russian individual. Then, after learning that the Times planned to publish an article about his meeting with Veselnitskaya, Trump Jr. provided evolving explanations for what had been discussed.
At first he said the talk centered on policies restricting the ability of U.S. families to adopt Russian children. Then, on Sunday, he issued a statement acknowledging that the premise of the meeting was that Veselnitskaya claimed to have potentially damaging information about Clinton.
Trump Jr. said that Veselnitskaya failed to deliver and that “it quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.” But his participation on those terms, as well as the attendance of Kushner and then-Trump campaign aide Paul Manafort, amount to fresh evidence that the Trump campaign was willing to consider accepting help from a Russian source tarnishing Clinton.
Emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee were posted online a few weeks after the meeting. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia orchestrated the hacks with the intention of helping to elect Trump.
On Monday, New York lawyer Alan Futerfas confirmed that he had been hired to represent Trump Jr. in the Russia probes.
The Trump Tower meeting drew the attention Monday of members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, told reporters that the panel “needs to interview” Trump Jr. and others who attended the meeting. Her point was echoed later in the day by the senior Democrat on that committee, Sen. Mark Warner, Va. “This is the first time the public has seen clear evidence that senior-level officials of the Trump campaign met with potentially an agent of a foreign government to try to obtain information that would discredit Hillary Clinton,” he said. “I think that’s pretty significant.”
New details from others involved in arranging the meeting point to other Trump links to Moscow. The session was set up at the request of Emin Agalarov, a Russian pop star whose Kremlin-connected family has done business with Trump in the past, according to the person who arranged the meeting.
Rob Goldstone, a music publicist who represents Agalarov, confirmed Monday that he requested the Trump Tower meeting at Agalarov’s request. Emin Agalarov and his father, Aras Agalarov, a wealthy Moscow real estate developer, helped sponsor the Miss Universe pageant, then owned by Trump, in Russia in 2013.
After the pageant, the Agalarovs signed a preliminary deal with Trump to build a tower bearing his name in Moscow, though the deal has been on hold since Trump started his campaign for president.
Goldstone previously told The Washington Post that he set up and attended the meeting so Veselnitskaya could discuss the adoption of Russian children by Americans.
In a new statement, Goldstone confirmed what Trump Jr. said Sunday: that he enticed the then-candidate’s son by indicating that Veselnitskaya could provide damaging information about Democrats.
“The lawyer had apparently stated she had some information regarding illegal campaign contributions to the DNC which she believed Mr. Trump Jr. might find important,” he said.