"Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower," President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter. | Alex Wong/Getty Images Trump: I’m not worried about Don Jr.’s role in Trump Tower meeting

President Donald Trump on Sunday disputed reports that he is worried about his son's involvement in the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, adding that the gathering was innocuous because participants were there just to "get information on an opponent."

"Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower," the president wrote on Twitter on Sunday morning, part of a stream of tweets about the news media, his tariffs and the Russia probe.


"This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics — and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!"

On Saturday, multiple news outlets reported Trump is concerned his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., may have inadvertently broken the law in regard to the meeting between top campaign officials and people linked to the Russian government. CNN, citing anonymous sources close to the White House, reported the president has been concerned for months that special counsel Robert Mueller's probe would ensnare his family and thus has stepped up attacks against what he calls "a witch hunt."

The president's statement that the meeting was "to get information on an opponent" contradicts the initial statement Trump Jr. provided to The New York Times in July 2017, when the episode first came to light. That statement made no mention of gathering dirt on Hillary Clinton, then the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and instead said participants "primarily discussed" an adoption program for Russian children.

"It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by," Trump Jr. said in a statement, referring to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Paul Manafort, who was then Trump‘s campaign chairman. "We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow-up.”

A day later, Trump Jr. released a second statement as the Times reported that a Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, had promised dirt on Clinton. This time he claimed he was told that Veselnitskaya "had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Mrs. Clinton." But her claims were "vague, ambiguous and made no sense," and the Trump campaign officials soon realized that there was nothing substantive to gain, the statement said.

The Trump Tower meeting reportedly remains a source of questions for Mueller's probe.