President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., organized a meeting at Trump Tower last year with a Russian lawyer connected to the Kremlin just a few weeks after clinching the Republican nomination, according to a report Saturday.
Trump’s son-in-law and now adviser Jared Kushner and former campaign manager Paul Manafort attended the meeting alongside Trump Jr. on June 9, 2016. News of the meeting comes as criminal and congressional probes are examining Russian interference with the 2016 election.
Multiple U.S. intelligence agencies have confirmed that Russia sought to interfere with the election in order to tip it in Trump’s favor.
The attorney at the meeting was Natalia Veselnitskaya, according to the report from the New York Times, which sites knowledge of confidential government records. Veselnitskaya has fought a U.S. law called the Magnitsky Act that blacklists suspected human rights abusers and she has close ties to the Russian government, the Times said.
Donald Trump Jr. said in a statement to the Times that it was a short and introductory meeting.
“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,” according to a statement provided to the Times.
Trump Jr. told the Times back in March that he didn’t participate in any campaign-related meetings with Russian nationals.
Kushner’s lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, told the Times that he submitted information during the campaign and transition on calls and meetings from representatives of more than 20 countries.
Manafort was President Trump’s campaign manager but was forced to resign after revelations about his business ties with Russia.
Both Manafort and Kushner as being looked at as part of the special prosecutor’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2017 election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.
President Trump’s outside legal team later sent out a statement suggesting that the meeting may have set up to create the appearance of impropriety.
“We have learned from both our own investigation and public reports that the participants in the meeting misrepresented who they were and who they worked for,” wrote Mark Corallo, spokesperson for President Trump’s outside counsel, in a statement. “Specifically, we have learned that the person who sought the meeting is associated with Fusion GPS, a firm which according to public reports, was retained by Democratic operatives to develop opposition research on the President and which commissioned the phony Steele dossier,” he continued, referencing the discredited anti-Trump dossier from Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent.
“These developments raise serious issue as to exactly who authorized and participated in any effort by Russian nationals to influence our election in any manner,” Corallo added.
