President Donald Trump said the conversation occurred during what he characterized as a 15-minute series of "pleasantries" with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump to NYT: Putin and I discussed adoption during G-20 talk President says he didn't know his son, Donald Trump Jr., discussed the same issue with Russians in Trump Tower last year.

President Donald Trump told The New York Times on Wednesday that he and Russia's president Vladimir Putin discussed adoption when they huddled on the sidelines of the G-20 in Germany last month.

Russia banned Americans from adopting Russian children in 2012 in retaliation for a round of sanctions the Obama administration slapped on prominent officials with Kremlin ties that year over alleged human rights abuses.


Adoption — and therefore the correlated sanctions — were also the subject that Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., says was on the agenda when a group of Kremlin-connected officials met with him in Trump Tower last year. Though the younger Trump later disclosed he had expected the Russians to deliver incriminating information about Hillary Clinton, one of the meeting participants — lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya — has been advocating for the United States to rescind its 2012 sanctions, Trump told the Times he was unaware of his son's meeting when he discussed the issue with Putin in Germany.

“I actually talked about Russian adoption with him,’’ he said, in the Times interview. “Which is interesting because it was a part of the conversation that Don had in that meeting.”

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Trump said the conversation occurred during what he characterized as a 15-minute series of "pleasantries" with Putin on the sidelines of a dinner for all the world leaders in attendance. That meeting was only disclosed this week, and Trump has since worked to downplay the significance of the separate talk.