The lawyer of US President Donald Trump’s eldest son on Monday night acknowledged that his client received an e-mail last year offering a meeting with someone who had potentially damaging information on then-US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, hours after a report that he had been told it was part of a Russian effort to help his father’s campaign.
The entreaty to Donald Trump Jr came via e-mail from Rob Goldstone, a former British tabloid journalist and marketing executive linked to his father through the Miss Universe Pageant.
Goldstone suggested the information concerned Clinton’s dealings with Russia, said Alan Futerfas, an attorney for the younger Trump.
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The New York Times reported earlier on Monday that Goldstone told Donald Trump Jr in the e-mail the information was coming from a Russian lawyer as part of a Russian government effort to help his father’s White House bid.
The newspaper cited three people familiar with the content of the e-mail.
The younger Trump met with the Russian lawyer, a woman named Natalia Veselnitskaya, in June last year, days after his father secured the Republican nomination.
Futerfas, a New York criminal defense attorney retained by the younger Trump, called the Times’ report “much ado about nothing.”
“Don Jr had no knowledge as to what specific information, if any, would be discussed,” Futerfas said in an e-mail.
He said that there was no commitment made about accepting or using the information and that after a 20 to 30-minute meeting, “nothing came of it.’’
Veselnitskaya told NBC News in an interview that aired yesterday that she never worked for the Russian government and had no damaging information about Clinton.
“It’s quite possible that maybe they were looking for such information, they wanted it so badly,” Veselnitskaya said. “I did not have Clinton info they wanted.”
However, that short encounter — which included then-campaign manager Paul Manafort and Trump Jr’s brother-in-law Jared Kushner — now may draw the president’s son into special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.
He is also facing two complaints from watchdog groups of possible violation of election laws that prohibit campaigns from knowingly accepting from a foreign national money, contributions or any “other thing of value.”
That could include information or opposition research, election lawyers said.
US Senator Susan Collins, a Republican member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, said the panel should interview the younger Trump as part of its investigation of Russian interference in the campaign.
“This is the first time that the public has seen clear evidence of senior level members of the Trump campaign meeting with Russians to try to obtain information that might hurt the campaign of Hillary Clinton,” said US Senator Mark Warner, the top-ranking Democrat on the intelligence panel.
“Rest assured, Donald Trump Jr will be somebody that we want to talk to,” Warner said.
Trump Jr has said he is open to speaking with the intelligence panel.
“We will work with any committee or office to convey what he knows,” Futerfas said. “The bottom line is that Don Jr did nothing wrong.”
“I have been representing people in investigatory matters for almost 30 years, and I see nothing here,” he added.
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