Vice President Mike Pence did not know Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with a lawyer linked to the Russian government during the 2016 presidential race, a spokesman for Pence said Tuesday.
“He was not aware of the meeting,” Pence’s spokesman said. “He is also not focused on stories about the campaign — especially those pertaining to the time before he joined the campaign.”
Donald Trump Jr. posted pages of emails on Tuesday that confirmed he accepted a meeting, arranged by an entertainment publicist, with an attorney connected to the Kremlin under the belief that she would provide him with “sensitive” information about Hillary Clinton.
The meeting took place in June 2016. President Trump did not select Pence, then the governor of Indiana, as his running mate until July 2016.
The White House has not yet responded to the publication of Trump Jr.’s emails, which suggest that Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, and Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, attended the meeting last summer and knew about the supposed reasons for it.
Pence has never been tied to any allegations of Russian collusion involving the Trump campaign.
