President Trump approved the initial statement put out by his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., explaining why he met last summer with a lawyer linked to the Russian government, according to a report Tuesday night.
The New York Times said that Trump signed off on the statement, in which Trump Jr. said the meeting had been primarily related to a ban on adoptions by American families of Russian children.
The original statement was drafted aboard Air Force One by advisers and then approved by Trump himself.
Follow-up statements offered more details, and after the Times reported over the weekend that Trump Jr. accepted the June 9, 2016, meeting with the Kremlin-connected lawyer after being promised information damaging to Hillary Clinton, his father’s Democratic opponent, Trump Jr. changed his explanation.
He admitted the attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya, offered him information on Clinton, but he said the information was not “meaningful.”
On Tuesday, after the Times obtained an email chain in which Trump Jr. pronounced “I love it” when presented with a chance to meet with Veselnitskaya, he published the emails in full on Twitter.
Trump Jr. told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Tuesday that in retrospect, “he probably would have done things a little differently.” He also said he did not discuss the meeting with his father, at least not until news about it broke this weekend. “It was just a nothing. There was nothing to tell. I mean, I wouldn’t have even remembered it until you started scouring through this stuff. It was literally just a wasted 20 minutes, which was a shame,” Trump Jr. said.
The Times reported Tuesday that the president is more frustrated with the negative media attention than he is with Trump Jr. The president has reportedly expressed his frustration to his team of personal lawyers, headed by Marc Kasowitz, which could lay the groundwork for Kasowitz’s exit.
