“Our goal is to be as transparent as humanly possible, and to put every bit of information that we have at the forefront, and willing to cooperate with anybody that is looking into the matter,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy White House press secretary, at the Wednesday
So, to that end: When did Donald Trump learn about the infamous meeting his son Don Jr. had with a Russian lawyer with the promise of damaging information about Hillary Clinton? Sanders had told reporters on Monday the president found out about the meeting—which his son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort also attended—in “the last couple of days.” So could the White House provide a more precise day when Trump learned about this meeting?
“I don’t have anything more to add than what I’ve said the last few days,” Sanders said in a follow-up email to THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Trump’s outside counsel could also not answer the question with any specificity. Both the White House and Trump’s counsel were non-responsive to questions about how Trump found out. Was it via inquiries from the New York Times, which first reported on the meeting on Saturday? Did Don Jr. tell him? Or Kushner?
When and how Trump learned about the meeting is important for a couple of reasons. First, the Times reported Tuesday that White House staff helped draft Trump Jr.’s initial statement to the paper for its first story on the meeting, and that the president himself “signed off” on it. Sanders did not confirm or deny the Times’s reporting on this when asked at the Wednesday briefing, though she promised to “check.” Trump Jr.’s first statement was misleading—he said his meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Kremlin-linked lawyer, was primarily about Russian adoption policy. If President Trump signed off on the statement, was he aware of the true reason his son and his campaign officials attended the meeting? If so, why sign off on a statement that was incomplete at best and untrue at worse?
Secondly, a firm, on-the-record answer on when Trump became aware of the meeting would answer a nagging and important question: Did Trump actually have knowledge of the meeting contemporaneously? And if so, was the future president aware that Trump Jr. had agreed to the meeting under the pretext that he would be receiving helpful campaign information from a Russian government source? An answer from the White House would be clarifying.
“You Hope People Learn From their Mistakes”
There’s frustration all around the White House and among the various outside counsel teams over how the story of Trump Jr.’s meeting has unfurled. I’m told the president’s private legal team, led by lawyer Marc Kasowitz, is irritated by “unhelpful” leaks about the meeting that provided the background for the Times’s coverage. In addition, the tendency for some within the White House to act without full consultation of lawyers—including the revelation in the Times that White House staff and the president helped draft Trump Jr.’s statement to the press—has annoyed the Kasowitz team.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Swan at Axios reports Trump’s legal team “wants to wall off Jared Kushner from discussing the Russia investigation with his father-in-law.” The Times had reported the day before that Kasowitz has grown frustrated with how Kushner speaks directly to Trump about the Russia investigation. Someone close to Trump’s legal team tells me there’s no particular animus against Kushner. But that in general when White House staff freelances by making and acting on decisions without the advice of lawyers, the person said, it hurts the interests of the president.
“You hope people learn from their mistakes,” said the person.
Jamie Gorelick, one of the personal lawyers for Kushner, declined to comment.
Bonjour Trump
The president arrived to Paris early Thursday morning aboard Air Force One. Trump is visiting France, in part, to take place in a Friday celebration of Bastille Day. He will also hold a bilateral meeting with the new French president, Emmanuel Macron, on Thursday, followed by a joint press conference (Trump’s first such press conference since June 9).
After a couple of frosty meetings between the populist American president and the centrist, technocratic Macron, Trump’s visit will likely focus on the longstanding alliance between France and the United States. In addition to Bastille Day, the Friday parade will also acknowledge the 100-year anniversary of America’s entry into World War I.
“Troops from the U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division, the first unit to arrive on French soil in 1917, will march in the parade, and U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds will conduct a flyover with planes with the French air force,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday.
