Donald Trump Jr met the Russian, Natalia Veselnitskaya, in
June 2016, during the presidential election campaign, at Trump Tower in New
York. Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence
Committee, says the panel ‘absolutely’ wants to speak to the president’s son
about the meeting he had with a Russian lawyer who promised damaging
information about Hillary Clinton during the campaign.
Donald Trump Jr reportedly told in
email of Russian government efforts to help campaign
President’s son faces calls to testify before Senate over Russia meeting
Donald Trump Jr met Russian lawyer
who promised information on Clinton
The revelation that Donald Trump Jr attended a meeting with a Russian
lawyer is the first public evidence that members of the Trump campaign were
willing to accept Russian assistance.
David Smith and Ben Jacobs in Washington, Jon Swaine in New
York and Shaun Walker in Moscow
Monday 10 July 2017 20.16 BST Last modified on Tuesday 11
July 2017 05.40 BST
Donald Trump Jr was informed in an email ahead of a meeting
with a Russian lawyer that damaging information about Hillary Clinton to be
handed over was part of an effort by the Russian government to help the Trump
campaign, the New York Times has reported.
The Times did not publish the email – sent by Rob Goldstone,
the intermediary who set up the meeting – but reported that three different
people had described it to them.
Trump Jr’s meeting is the first “clear evidence” in public
of senior Trump campaign members meeting with Russians while looking for such
material, a leading Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee said on
Monday.
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Marc Kasowitz, the president’s
private attorney handling the Russia investigation, said simply: “The president
was not aware of and did not attend the meeting.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
A spokeswoman for the DNC said: “Donald Jr was willing to
accept the help of a hostile foreign government to sway the election. In the
ensuing months, the Trump family watched as news of the Kremlin’s hacking
campaign developed and they did nothing but celebrate and encourage it to
continue.”
Top Democrat calls Trump Jnr meeting with Russia lawyer
‘remarkable’
But Alan Futerfas, appointed Trump Jr’s lawyer to represent
him in the Russian investigations, described the New York Times report as “much
ado about nothing”.
In a statement issued on Monday evening, Futerfas said May
and June 2016 had been “an intensely busy time for Don Jr”.
The statement went on: “During this busy period, Robert
Goldstone contacted Don Jr in an email and suggested that people had
information concerning alleged wrongdoing by Democratic party front-runner,
Hillary Clinton, in her dealings with Russia. Don Jr.’s takeaway from this
communication was that someone had information potentially helpful to the campaign
and it was coming from someone he knew.
“Don Jr had no knowledge as to what specific information, if
any, would be discussed. Further, at no time was there ever any understanding
or commitment that he, or anyone else, would find the information, whatever it
turned out to be, to be reliable, credible or of interest, or would even
survive due diligence. The meeting lasted about 20-30 minutes, and nothing came
of it. His father knew nothing about it. The bottom line is that Don, Jr. did
nothing wrong.”
The statement said that Natalia Veselnitskaya, the lawyer
who met Trump Jr, “was not a government official”, adding that he “has not
received any request from any committee or office. If we do, we will work with
any committee or office to convey what he knows.”
Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the
intelligence committee, said he “absolutely” wanted to speak to the president’s
son about the meeting. “This is the first time that the public has seen clear
evidence of senior-level members of the Trump campaign meeting with Russians”
to obtain information damaging to Clinton, Warner added.
Trump Jr attended the meeting in June 2016 at Trump Tower in
New York – allegedly brokered by Goldstone, a British music publicist – with
Veselnitskaya, a lawyer who reportedly has ties to the Kremlin; Paul Manafort,
who was the Trump campaign’s chairman at the time, and Donald Trump’s
son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The revelation, first reported by the New York
Times, was the first public evidence that members of the Trump campaign were
willing to accept Russian assistance.
Earlier, Susan Collins of Maine told reporters that “our
intelligence committee needs to interview him and others who attended the
meeting” as part of its investigation into Russian interference in the
presidential election. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence
committee, has made a similar demand.
At the White House press briefing on Monday, the spokeswoman
Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted “the only thing inappropriate” about Trump Jr’s
meeting was “the people who leaked” the details. She added that she did not
know of any other meetings between Trump Jr and Russian nationals and that
Donald Trump had only learned of the meeting “in the last several days”.
Alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow is
the subject of an investigation by a special counsel. The president, who met
his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, for the first time last week, has
dismissed the claims as “fake news”.
Trump Jr has come under particular scrutiny as he appeared
to offer shifting explanations for the meeting. On Monday, the 39-year-old
businessman tweeted sarcastically: “Obviously I’m the first person on a
campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent … went nowhere
but had to listen”.
That appeared at odds with his first statement on Saturday
when he omitted any mention of Clinton, saying the discussion focused on a
defunct programme that had allowed American adoptions of Russian children.
Then, on Sunday, as the New York Times broke fresh details,
Trump Jr admitted that Veselnitskaya told him “she had information that
individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee
[DNC] and supporting Ms Clinton”. He added: “No details or supporting
information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had
no meaningful information.”
He said he concluded that claims of information on Clinton
had been a “pretext” for setting up the meeting to talk about adoptions, and
that his father had been unaware of the meeting. On Monday, he posted on
Twitter: “No inconsistency in statements, meeting ended up being primarily
about adoptions. In response to further Q’s I simply provided more details.”
Veselnitskaya is a Russian criminal defence lawyer who has
had a number of clients with links to Russian government officials. Her
highest-profile case was the defence of Denis Katsyv, a Russian businessman
accused of laundering a portion of the proceeds from a $230m tax fraud
uncovered by the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who later died in jail.
The US imposed sanctions on officials considered complicit
in Magnitsky’s death, which caused so much anger in Moscow that the Kremlin
banned US adoptions of Russian children in response. This is the context in
which Veselnitskaya might have raised “adoptions” with Trump Jr.
Veselnitskaya’s defence of Katsyv also fed into other parts
of a campaign to discredit Magnitsky and Hermitage Capital, the investment fund
that had retained him. She was involved in promoting a dubious film that
attacked Magnitsky, attempting to organise its showing in the European
parliament, and securing a screening in Washington last June, shortly after the
meeting at Trump Tower.
Trump Jr said he was approached about the meeting by an
acquaintance from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which his father owned at
that time. Trump Jr did not name the acquaintance, but Goldstone, a British
music publicist and former tabloid journalist, told the Associated Press he had
set up the meeting on behalf of a client named Emin Agalarov, the son of a
Moscow-based developer who tried to partner with Trump in a hotel project.
Donald Trump appeared in a music video with Agalarov in 2013
that featured several Miss Universe contestants. In November that year, Trump
tweeted to Agalarov: “I had a great weekend with you and your family. You have
done a FANTASTIC job. TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next. EMIN was WOW!”
Goldstone’s statement added that the Russian lawyer claimed
she had information about alleged illegal campaign contributions to the DNC
that she thought Trump Jr might find helpful. Trump Jr agreed to fit the
meeting into a busy schedule.
Trump raised the hacking issue with Putin in their talks on
the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Hamburg last week, but critics say he
failed to press it sufficiently or confront Moscow with any meaningful
punishment. The US president was forced to backtrack on a promise of a joint
“cybersecurity unit” after it was widely derided.
The New York Times said the Trump Jr meeting was disclosed
in recent days to government investigators when Kushner filed a revised version
of a form needed to obtain a security clearance. Manafort also recently
disclosed the meeting to congressional investigators, the paper said.
In March, Trump Jr told the New York Times that he had never
met Russians in a campaign capacity. Other senior figures have repeatedly said
there were no contacts between the campaign and Russians.
On Monday, the White House vehemently denied that Trump Jr’s
meeting was improper. Kellyanne Conway insisted that “there’s no evidence of
collusion” between Trump Jr and Veselnitskaya. “No information was received
that was meaningful or helpful and no action was taken,” she said on ABC
television’s Good Morning America. “There was no follow-up whatsoever.”
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on Monday the Kremlin
did not know Veselnitskaya and “cannot keep track” of every Russian lawyer who
holds meetings in Russia or abroad.
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