a Russian lawyer in June 2016 was not related to his father's presidential campaign, the Washington Post reported on Monday.
Trump Jr.
released emails earlier in July that showed he eagerly agreed last year to meet
a woman he was told was a Russian government lawyer who might have damaging
information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as part of
Moscow's official support for his father. The New York Times was first to
report the meeting.
The
Washington Post said Trump advisers discussed the new disclosure and agreed
that Trump Jr. should issue a truthful account of the episode so that it
"couldn’t be repudiated later if the full details emerged."
The
president, who was flying home from Germany on July 8, changed the plan and
"personally dictated a statement in which Trump Jr. said he and the
Russian lawyer had 'primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian
children,'" the Post said, citing unnamed people with knowledge of the
deliberations.
It said the
statement, issued to the New York Times as it prepared to publish the story,
emphasized that the subject of the meeting was “not a campaign issue at the
time.”
An attorney
for Trump, Jay Sekulow, issued a statement in response to the Post report:
“Apart from being of no consequence, the characterizations are misinformed,
inaccurate, and not pertinent.”
The White
House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the Post
story, nor did Trump Jr.'s attorney, Alan Futerfas.
U.S.
investigators are probing whether there was collusion between the Kremlin and
Trump’s Republican presidential campaign.
U.S.
intelligence agencies have concluded that Moscow sought to hurt Clinton and
help Trump in the 2016 election. Russia denies any interference, and Trump has
denied collusion with Russia.The president applauded his son's
"transparency" after he released the email exchanges on July 11.
"It
remains unclear exactly how much the president knew at the time of the flight
about Trump Jr.’s meeting," the Washington Post said.
David
Sklansky, a professor of criminal law at Stanford Law School, said that if
Trump, as reported by the Post, helped craft a misleading public statement
about the meeting, he may have bolstered a potential obstruction of justice
case against himself.
To build a
criminal obstruction of justice case, federal law requires prosecutors to show
that a person acted with "corrupt" intent. A misleading public
statement could be used as evidence of corrupt intent, Sklansky said.
"Lying
usually isn't a crime," he said. But "it could be relevant in
determining whether something else the president did, like firing (former FBI
Director James) Comey, was done corruptly."
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