Didn’t vet Junior’s Russia meet: Secret Service TRUMP BACK ON OFFENSIVE AFTER RESPITE IN PARIS

Washington, July 17: The US secret service on Sunday denied a suggestion from President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer that it had vetted a meeting between the President’s son and Russian nationals during the 2016 campaign.

Donald Trump Jr. has acknowledged that he met in New York with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya after he was told she might have damaging information about his father’s rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

“Well, I wonder why the secret service, if this was nefarious, why the secret service allowed these people in. The President had secret service protection at that point, and that raised a question with me,” Jay Sekulow, a member of Mt Trump’s legal team, said on Sunday on an ABC programme.

Secret service spokesman Mason Brayman said the younger Trump was not under secret service protection at the time of the meeting, which included Mr Trump’s son and two senior campaign officials.

“Donald Trump, Jr. was not a protectee of the USSS in June, 2016. Thus we would not have screened anyone he was meeting with at that time,” the statement said.

According to emails released by Mr Trump Jr. last week, he eagerly agreed to meet Ms Veselnitskaya, who he was told was a Russian government lawyer. MS Veselnitskaya has said she is a private lawyer and denies having Kremlin ties.

The meeting appears to be tangible evidence of a connection between Mr Trump’s election campaign and Russia. Moscow has denied any interference and the president and Trump Jr. have denied any collusion. Washington, July 17: Donald Trump, fresh from a political holiday in Paris, went back on the offensive Sunday as a new poll showed his popularity dropping amid doubts about Russian election meddling and deepening frustrations over stalled health care legislation.

In an early morning tweet, Mr Trump used some of his toughest language against a favoured target, the press, saying, “With all of its phony unnamed sources & highly slanted & even fraudulent reporting, #Fake News is DISTORTING DEMOCRACY in our country!”

The US President also sent one of his private lawyers, Jay Sekulow, onto five Sunday talk shows to argue that there was nothing illegal about his eldest son Donald Trump Jr’s meeting last year with a Russian attorney following a promise of damaging information on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

“What took place at the meeting... is not a violation of any law, statute or code,” Mr Sekulow told NBC's Meet the Press.

He repeated an earlier assertion that Mr Trump is not the subject of any current probe into alleged Russian meddling.