The original purpose of the infamous Trump Tower meeting was for members of the Trump campaign to get dirt on Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said Sunday, contradicting a July 2017 statement dictated by Trump.
“The meeting was originally for the purpose of getting information about Clinton. The meeting turned into a meeting … about another subject,” Giuliani told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Giuliani further argued that any candidate would take a meeting with a third party promising damaging information on their opponent.
“All they knew was a woman with a Russian name wanted to meet with them. They didn’t know she was a representative of the Russian government, and indeed she’s not a representative of the Russian government,” he said.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. White House adviser and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and campaign chairman Paul Manafort also attended the meeting with the lawyer, who was thought to have damaging information about Clinton.
However, there is evidence to suggest Trump Jr. was informed ahead of time that Veselnitskaya had links to the Kremlin.
In setting up the meeting, British music promoter Rob Goldstone informed Trump Jr. that a “Russian government attorney” would provide “very high level” dirt on Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” according to the New York Times. In reply, Trump Jr. said “I love it.”
After the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower came to light last summer, an initial misleading statement dictated by the president on behalf of Trump Jr. said the meeting was about Russian adoption policy. A follow-up statement provided a fuller account of the lead-up to the meeting, explaining that it was predicated on the promise of damaging information on Clinton, but that no such dirt was given and instead the meeting quickly turned to the adoption of Russian children.
Veselnitskaya has denied that she was acting on behalf of the Russian government, but reporting this year revealed she had closer ties to the Kremlin than previously known.
Earlier this month, the Washington Post and CNN reported that Trump was growing increasingly concerned how “innocent and decent people” in his life, most likely Trump Jr., could be caught up in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. The Trump Tower meeting is a focus in Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.
Trump lashed out at the reports, calling out what he dubbed a “complete fabrication” while also appearing to concede that it was a meeting to “get information on an opponent.”
“Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “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!”
