“The president weighed in as any father would, based on the limited information that he had," said Sarah Huckabee Sanders. | Evan Vucci/AP Sanders: Trump 'weighed in' on initial statement about son's Russia meeting

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump “weighed in” on a misleading statement issued by his son last month in response to reports that he met in 2016 with a Russian attorney, an acknowledgment that criminal law experts say opens the president and his attorneys up to serious questions about the president’s desire to quash the Russia investigation.

Sanders’ concession that Trump was involved in that initial statement’s drafting contradicts assertions by one of the president’s outside attorneys, Jay Sekulow, who said last month on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “the president was not involved in the drafting of the statement.”


“He certainly didn't dictate, but ... he weighed in, offered suggestion, like any father would do,” Sanders said at Tuesday’s White House news briefing.

The Washington Post reported Monday that Trump had personally dictated the first statement, which was presented as being from Donald Trump Jr. and given to The New York Times in July. In it, Trump Jr. said a June 2016 meeting with a Russian attorney had mainly focused on adoptions of Russian children by U.S. parents, an issue tied to human rights sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States.

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Trump Jr. later conceded that he had met with the lawyer because he had been told she possessed negative information on Hillary Clinton sourced from the Russian government, although he has insisted no useful information came of his meeting, which also was attended by then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a top White House aide.

“Look, the statement that Don Jr. issued is true. There's no inaccuracy in the statement,” Sanders said. “The president weighed in as any father would, based on the limited information that he had. This is all discussion, frankly, of no consequence.”

Nonetheless, the president’s role could be fodder for special counsel Robert Mueller as he explores whether Trump obstructed justice to undermine the larger investigation into his campaign's ties to Russia, said Alex Whiting, a Harvard Law School professor and former federal prosecutor.

“Based on what we know now, it likely does not itself rise to the level of obstruction of justice, but it shows Trump's state of mind and could be relevant to proving Trump's intent when he more directly tried to interfere with the ongoing investigation," Whiting said, pointing to Trump's decision to fire former FBI Director James Comey.

While President Trump has insisted he had no knowledge of the June 2016 meeting that his son and senior campaign staff attended with the Russians under the auspices of obtaining dirt on Clinton, Sanders’ admission that he was actively engaged last month in trying to tamp down the subsequent news accounts “raises the question of whether the president had independent knowledge of the meeting or its aftermath,” said Renato Mariotti, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago.

Trump’s role in crafting his son’s statement gives Mueller several more significant lines of questioning, Mariotti added, including: what Trump Jr. told the president about the contents of the meeting; who was the source of the misleading language in Trump Jr’s statement; and whether Trump Jr. objected to any of the language his father drafted.

Sekulow is also exposed under legal ethics rules over his statements to the media that Trump wasn’t involved in the drafting of the statement, Mariotti said. That response “appears to be false” and “suggests that the president lied to Sekulow or hid the truth from him.”

“I expect Sekulow to be asked tough questions [by Mueller] about what the president told him,” Mariotti said.