Donald Trump Jr. on Monday downplayed a blockbuster New York Times report that he met with a Russian lawyer who promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign.
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. https://t.co/ccUjL1KDEa
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 10, 2017
On Saturday, Trump told the Times he had primarily discussed the adoption of Russian orphans by Americans when he — along with Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, at his invitation — met with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with close ties to the Kremlin, in June 2016.
Trump’s story changed on Sunday, after the Times cited three unnamed advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting, “and two others with knowledge of it,” who claimed Trump had been promised damaging information on Clinton before attending the meeting.
Veselnitskaya’s claims at the meeting were “vague, ambiguous and made no sense,” Trump said, reflecting on the promised Clinton dirt in a statement to the Times Sunday. He added separately that “the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting.”
Trump tweeted a column by the New York Post’s Michael Walsh, who acknowledged the reporting that Trump met with Veselnitskaya for opposition research on Clinton and asked: “[W]ho wouldn’t? And also: So what?”
The Times 'exposé' on Donald Trump Jr. is a big yawn https://t.co/96GiWk87qq via @nypost
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 10, 2017
Trump also denied that his statements about the meeting were contradictory.
No inconsistency in statements, meeting ended up being primarily about adoptions. In response to further Q's I simply provided more details. https://t.co/FdT1D4hfhz
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 10, 2017
This post has been updated.
