The special counsel has requested that the White House preserve all documents related to the June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump, Jr. and a Kremlin-linked lawyer, CNN reported Friday.
An anonymous source who viewed the letter to the White House told CNN that staff were asked to save “any subjects discussed in the course of the June 2016 meeting” and “any decisions made regarding the recent disclosures about the June 2016 meeting.”
This implies that special counsel Robert Mueller is not just interested in what happened during the Trump Tower meeting that Trump Jr. arranged after being promised dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of a Russian government effort to help his father’s campaign. Mueller also wants to know how the White House formulated its response to revelations about the meeting’s existence, which came to light earlier this month.
Trump Jr., the White House, and the President last week offered up a number of halting, occasionally conflicting, statements about the purpose of the meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. The President’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort also attended the meeting.
According to CNN, Mueller’s document preservation request includes text messages, emails, notes, voicemails and other communications and documentation, as well as any related communication since then.
Some of the participants in the meeting and the White House have dismissed the meeting’s importance, saying Trump Jr. did not obtain the damaging information he sought. But Mueller’s letter said that the sit-down “is relevant to the investigation,” according to CNN.