The Russian government said Monday it did not know about a 2016 meeting that occurred between Donald Trump Jr. and a Kremlin-linked lawyer who claimed to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
During a conference call with reporters, Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, told reporters the Kremlin didn’t know the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, who met with Trump Jr. last year.
Veselnitskaya represents business executives with ties to the Russian government.
Peskov said the Kremlin “cannot track all the Russian lawyers in the country and abroad,” according to Tass, Russia’s state-owned news service.
The New York Times reported Sunday that Trump organized a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 with Veselnitskaya, who promised she had information about Clinton. Included in the meeting were Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Both Kushner and Manafort reported the meeting on revised forms that are required to obtain a security clearance.
“After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Mrs. Clinton,” Trump Jr. said in a statement to the New York Times. “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.”
Trump Jr. denied that the meeting was inappropriate and said Veselnitskaya then turned the conversation to the subject of adoption of Russian children and the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 law that bans suspected Russian human rights abusers from the U.S.
Putin and other Russian officials despise the law, and its passage prompted Putin to stop American adoptions of Russian children.
News of the meeting between Trump Jr. and the Kremlin-linked lawyer come amid multiple investigations into ties between Trump campaign associates and Russian officials.
Numerous congressional committees and the FBI are investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians, but so far, there isn’t any evidence to suggest that occurred.
