President Donald Trump was never told about his eldest son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer, the president’s attorney said Wednesday.
“The president did not see any emails relating to this at all,” Jay Sekulow told NBC’s “Today” show. “The president was not aware and did not attend this meeting and was only made aware of the email, and this chain of emails... yesterday when it was released.”
Donald Trump Jr. on Tuesday confirmed that he sat down with a Kremlin-linked lawyer in June 2016 an attempt to gain negative information on Hillary Clinton, who was then running for president. Trump Jr. published the emails that show him arranging that meeting, in what he said was an effort to be transparent but which appears to be attempt to get out ahead of a New York Times report on the same topic.
The timing of the emails has only raised further questions. Hours after Trump Jr. set up the lawyer’s visit, his father hinted in a speech on June 7, 2016, that he had new dirt on the Clintons. Trump Jr. has said that he never told his father about the meeting.
The president on Tuesday defended Trump Jr. as a “high-quality person” and on Wednesday said his son was an “innocent” victim of “the greatest Witch Hunt in political history.”
Sekulow’s comments seem to contradict a report from The New York Times that the president over the weekend personally signed off on his son’s statement about the meeting.