President says meeting to get dirt on Clinton was legal; was admission problematic?
President Donald Trump. Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock.com
President Donald Trump tweeted Sunday that Donald Trump Jr.'s 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer, held “to get information on an opponent,” was “totally legal and done all the time in politics.”
Trump added that the meeting “went nowhere. I did not know about it!” Coverage is here by New York Times and here, here and here by the Washington Post.
The New York Times says Trump’s tweet was “the starkest acknowledgment yet that a statement he dictated last year about the encounter was misleading.” The statement, issued by Donald Trump Jr., said the meeting was about adoptions of Russian children. Trump’s lawyers later acknowledged to the special counsel that Trump had written the statement.
Some experts say the meeting, attended by Trump Jr., could have broken the law because it is illegal to accept help from a foreign individual or government, according to the articles. It could also constitute conspiracy to break the law through cyberhacking or interfering with the election, the Post says. Trump’s tweet may also be evidence that the statement Trump wrote for his son constituted obstruction of justice, according to one of the Post stories.
Trump’s insistence that he didn’t know about the meeting in advance followed a report by CNN that Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen claims Trump did know about the meeting in advance. The story was based on anonymous sources, and Cohen reportedly did not have any tape to back up his claim.
In an ABC News appearance, Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow said he was wrong when he previously denied that the president wasn’t involved in drafting the statement. Sekulow also said no one could point to a rule or regulation broken by holding the meeting. Collusion “is not a legal term,” Sekulow said, and it’s just one theory.
Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. 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!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2018
