Donald Trump has defended his son in public over his meeting with a Russian lawyer last year, telling a press conference in Paris “most people would have taken that meeting” and ignoring questions about whether offers of political assistance from potential agents of foreign governments should be reported to the FBI.

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Pre-empting the New York Times, which first reported the meeting, Trump Jr this week released emails in which he appeared eager to accept information from the Russian government that could have damaged Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.



An intermediary had told Trump Jr the contact was a Russian government lawyer who could provide information damaging to Clinton.

Trump Jr, who is not a member of the Trump administration but was a prominent campaign surrogate, attended a meeting with the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, at Trump Tower on 9 June 2016.

Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner and then campaign manager Paul Manafort were also present, and were copied on the emails released by Trump Jr. On Wednesday, Senate Democrats called for Kushner to lose his security clearance.

On Thursday, the president was appearing with Emmanuel Macron, his French counterpart. His remarks came shortly after, in Washington, the chairman of the Senate judiciary committee said he would ask Trump Jr to testify before the panel, and would subpoena the president’s eldest son if necessary.

“Most people would have taken that meeting,” Trump said. Describing his son as a “wonderful young man”, he also said the Russian lawyer was not a government lawyer, and in the end it was a meeting that “went very, very quickly, very fast, two other people in the room. I guess one of them [Kushner] left almost immediately and the other [Manafort] was not really focused on the meeting.

“I do think this, that taken from a practical standpoint … most people would’ve taken that meeting. It’s called opposition research, or even research into your opponent. I’ve only been in politics for two years, but I’ve had many people call up, ‘Oh gee, we have information on this factor or this person’, or, frankly, Hillary.

“That’s very standard in politics. Politics is not the nicest business in the world, but it’s very standard where they have information and you take the information, and I think the press made a very big deal out of something that really a lot [of people] would do.”

Trump also failed to acknowledge that the offer of damaging political intelligence came, according to the intermediary, from a foreign government. And he did not engage with a question about whether his son should have contacted the FBI when the approach about the Russian meeting was made.



The questioner referred to events in Washington on Wednesday when Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Christopher Wray, appeared before the Senate judiciary panel.

Asked by the South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham if Trump Jr should have agreed to his meeting with a Russian lawyer, Wray said: “Any threat or effort to interfere with our election by any nation state or any non-state actor is the kind of thing the FBI would want to know.”

In Washington on Thursday, Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican who chairs the Senate panel, said he wanted Trump Jr to appear “pretty soon”, possibly as early as next week. The committee – like the FBI, special counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate intelligence committee – is investigating Russian meddling in the presidential election.



Grassley would not say what he wanted to hear from the president’s eldest son, but said members of his committee would not be restricted “from asking anything they want to ask”.

Also on Thursday, the justice department released a heavily blacked out page from Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ security clearance application, made public in response to a lawsuit from a government watchdog group.

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The application page asks whether Sessions, who was a senator from Alabama before joining the Trump administration, or anyone in his immediate family had contact within the past seven years with a foreign government or its representatives. There is a “no” listed, but the rest of the answer is blacked out.

The department has acknowledged that Sessions on his form omitted meetings he had with foreign dignitaries, including the Russian ambassador. A department spokesman said the FBI agent who helped with the form said those encounters did not have to be included, given that they were routine contacts as part of Senate duties.

Earlier on Thursday, on Air Force One on the way to France, Trump told reporters his son should testify to the Senate committee “if he wants to”. He also said he would invite Russian president Vladimir Putin to the White House.

“I don’t think this is the right time, but the answer is yes, I would,” Trump said.

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