Two years after First Boy Donald Trump Jr. accepted a meeting with a Russian lawyer in the hopes of getting damaging information about Hillary Clinton, the story is continuing to give the White House headaches. The Washington Post reported this weekend that President Trump was worried Don Jr. might have exposed himself to legal liability by agreeing to the meet, prompting a Twitter denial from the president on Sunday:
Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2018
This is the part where we do a freeze-frame, a record scratch, and a voice-over of the president saying “Yup, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got here.”
(1) DJTJ, Take 1: The White House’s Trump Tower story began with a quote from Don Jr. on the day the meeting was first reported. He insisted that the meet had really been about U.S. adoptions of Russian children.
“It was a short introductory meeting,” Don Jr. said in a statement on July 8, 2017. “We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow-up.”
(2) DJTJ, Take 2: Don Jr. changed his tune a day later, after the New York Times reported that the Trump campaign had been promised damaging information about Clinton prior to the meeting: “I was asked to have a meeting by an acquaintance I knew from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant with an individual who I was told might have information helpful to the campaign,” he said on July 9. “Her statements were vague, ambiguous, and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”
(3) DJTJ, Take 3: Another day and the Times had gotten their hands on the emails that had set up the meeting. To get ahead of the story, Don Jr. tweeted them out himself, citing a desire “to be totally transparent.”
The emails showed that a publicist named Rob Goldstone had emailed Don Jr. in June 2016 to indicate that “the crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning, and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.”
Don Jr. responded: “If it’s what you say I love it, especially later in the summer.”
(4) Lawyer Time: Now that it was clear that the meeting was about the campaign and that Don Jr. had known about this purpose in advance, people wanted to know if the president been complicit. Trump’s lawyers insisted for a week that he had not been: “The response came from Donald Trump Jr. and, I’m sure, in consultation with his lawyer,” said Jay Sekulow. “The president was not involved in the drafting of the statement and did not issue the statement.”
(5) Father Knows Best: On July 31, however, the Washington Post reported that Trump hadn’t just played a role in drafting the statement—it had even been his decision to use the statement in an attempt to mislead about what had taken place in the Trump Tower meeting.
The White House disputed this account, with Sarah Sanders explaining that Trump had “weighed in” on the statement and had “offered suggestions like any father would do.” She insisted, however, that Trump himself “certainly didn’t dictate” the statement.
Sekulow was even more unequivocal in his denial of the Post’s allegations: “Apart from being of no consequence, the characterizations are misinformed, inaccurate, and not pertinent.”
(6) Actually . . . Part 1: This remained the party line until September, when Don Jr. testified under oath that Trump had played a minor role in writing the statement. Asked whether Trump’s comments had made it into the statement, Don Jr. responded that “I believe some may have been, but this was an effort through lots of people, mostly counsel.”
(7) Actually . . . Part 2: In a January 2018 court filing, Trump’s lawyers casually admitted that the Post report had, after all, been correct: “the president dictated a short but accurate response to the New York Times article on behalf of his son, Donald Trump Jr.” Oops!
(8) Actually . . . Part 3: Sunday’s Trump tweet finally admits, from the president’s own mouth, that the meeting with the Russian lawyer was “a meeting to get information on an opponent.”
