In Shift, Trump Says Tower Meeting Was Held to Get Clinton Dirt
Trump defends son’s meeting with Russians as `totally legal’, says he was unaware of it when it was held at the Trump Towers.
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump tweeted that he didn’t know about his son’s meeting at Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign, adding that a gathering that included a Russian lawyer with links to the Kremlin was held to “get information on an opponent” -- Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
That, Trump said, is a routine part of politics, “totally legal and done all the time.” The new rationale, though, contradicted a statement Trump helped craft in 2017, which said the meeting had been focused on U.S. policies for adopting Russian children.
Trump has said in recent weeks that he didn’t know about the meeting at the time.
On July 27, the president said on Twitter that “I did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don jr,” in response to reports that his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was ready to tell authorities that Trump had known. “Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam,” Trump said of Cohen.
CNN reported that Cohen was prepared to tell federal investigators that the president knew ahead of time about the meeting, at which the Kremlin-linked lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was expected to deliver damaging information about Clinton.
Manafort, Kushner
Such testimony by Cohen, a longtime fixer for Trump, would contradict the testimony and public denials of the president, his son, and other campaign officials who’ve repeatedly said the president wasn’t informed about the meeting until more than a year later.
The meeting was attended by the president’s son as well as Paul Manafort, then chairman of Trump’s presidential campaign; Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner; and several Russians, including Veselnitskaya, and their representatives.
Appearing on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday less than an hour after the president tweeted, Trump attorney Jay Sekulow said nobody had identified any law potentially violated by Trump’s son by participating in the meeting.
“The question is, how would it be illegal?” he said. ABC correspondent George Stephanopoulos noted that conspiracy to defraud the U.S. has been suggested as a possible charge.
Sekulow, who’s not representing Trump Jr., also said he had no knowledge of the president’s son being told he’s a target of the special counsel’s investigation, or whether he’s been interviewed by the special counsel.
Fatherly Advice
In an ABC interview more than a year ago, Sekulow denied that the president had played any role in drafting a statement about the nature of the meeting. Weeks later, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump had, in fact, weighed in “as any father would” to the document drafted on Air Force One as the president and his entourage flew back from a meeting in Germany.
“He certainly didn’t dictate. But, you know, he -- like I said, he weighed in, offered a suggestion,” Sanders said at a press conference in August 2017.
Representative Adam Schiff, top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on Twitter that Trump’s comments weren’t “normal or credible.”
“The Russians offered damaging info on your opponent. Your campaign accepted. And the Russians delivered,” said Schiff. “You then misled the country about the purpose of the Trump Tower meeting when it became public.”
FBI Agent
Trump’s lawyers subsequently told Mueller’s office, in January, that the president had been involved. On Sunday, Sekulow said that “I got that one wrong,” referring to his original denial, and he blamed having at the time only recently joined the president’s defense team.
The president’s attorney alluded to what he called “irregularities” in the special counsel’s investigation -- including the role of FBI agent Peter Strzok, who sent anti-Trump messages to another agent and was dismissed from Mueller’s team a year ago.
Sekulow said the president has the constitutional power to shut down the Mueller probe. He also said no decision has been made as to whether Trump would answer questions from Mueller but that a subpoena to do so could spark a court battle.
“A subpoena for live testimony has never been tested in court as to a president of the United States,” he said. Citing 32 witness interviews and the White House turning over 1.4 million documents, Sekulow asked, “Why is the president’s testimony needed here?”
Trump kept up the pressure on Mueller’s probe on Sunday, terming the investigation “the most one sided Witch Hunt in the history of our country.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Ros Krasny in Washington at rkrasny1@bloomberg.net;Andrew Harris in Washington at aharris16@bloomberg.net;Nour Al Ali in Dubai at nalali1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Christopher Kingdon at ckingdon@bloomberg.net, Ros Krasny, Mark Niquette
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