Donald Trump Jr. released a statement that the meeting related to potential damaging information on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. | AP Photo Trump Jr. met with Russian lawyer who promised damaging Clinton info 'I asked Jared and Paul to attend, but told them nothing of the substance. We had a meeting in June 2016,' Donald Trump Jr. said in a statement.

Donald Trump Jr. confirmed Sunday that he met last year with a Russian lawyer who had ties to the Kremlin, saying she told him at the June 2016 meeting she had information that could damage Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

President Donald Trump’s oldest son said in a statement that an acquaintance from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which was held in Moscow, had asked him to meet “with an individual who I was told might have information helpful to the campaign.” He was not given a name prior to the meeting, he said.


The news of the Trump Tower meeting injected fresh life into a Russia story that has engulfed the president’s administration. President Trump has repeatedly dismissed allegations of possible ties between his associates and Moscow as “fake news” and a “hoax," as investigations continue into the Kremlin's role in meddling with the 2016 election. On Sunday, Donald Trump Jr. confirmed that some members of the campaign had at least discussed the race and Clinton with a person with Kremlin ties.

The White House sought to downplay Donald Trump Jr's sit-down with Natalia Veselnitskaya after the New York Times first reported Saturday that the two had met, along with senior White House adviser Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, at the time the president’s campaign chairman.

On Saturday, Donald Trump Jr. told the paper the meeting was about a program for the adoption of Russian children, which had been cut off by the Kremlin in retaliation for a U.S. law that targeted Russian human rights abusers. On Sunday, he gave new information to the Times, saying the meeting related to potential damaging information Veselnitskaya claimed to have on Clinton.

“I asked Jared and Paul to attend, but told them nothing of the substance. We had a meeting in June 2016,” Trump Jr. said in his statement. “After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton.”

“Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense,” he continued. “No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”

He said she then switched to discussing the adoption issue and the U.S. human rights law. Trump Jr. said he told Veselnitskaya that his father was a private citizen and could not address the issue. He said the meeting lasted 20-30 minutes.

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Kushner and Manafort declined to comment on the news Sunday. Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the president’s legal team, said the president was not aware of the meeting. Veselnitskaya did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus had called the meeting a “big nothing burger” on Sunday morning before Donald Trump Jr released his statement.

“It was a nothing meeting,” Priebus said on “Fox News Sunday.” “What I can tell you is from my communication with our team on the subject, there was nothing to it. It was a 20-minute meeting. It ended after everyone was decidedly sitting there saying there’s nothing happening here.”

Clinton campaign veterans and Democrats in Congress seized on reports about Donald Trump Jr.’s involvement. “By WH’s own admission in latest NYT story, Don Jr met with Russians to try to hurt Clinton,” tweeted Brian Fallon, Clinton’s former spokesman. “Collusion becoming harder and harder to deny.”

House Intelligence Committee ranking member Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told CNN’s “State of the Union” earlier in the day Sunday that his panel may want to speak to the three campaign aides about what they discussed in the meeting with Veselnitskaya.

“There’s no reason for this Russian government advocate to be meeting with Paul Manafort or with Mr. Kushner or the president’s son if it wasn’t about the campaign and Russia policy,” Schiff said. “Obviously, they were trying to influence one of the candidates, the leading candidate at that time on the Republican ticket.”

The president has long been criticized for seeming too complimentary of Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom he spent more than two hours Friday on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in Germany.

President Trump alarmed allies and critics alike in Washington earlier Sunday when he declared “it is time to move forward in working constructively with Russia!”

In a series of tweets, he said he “strongly pressed” Putin “twice about Russian meddling in our election.” Putin “vehemently denied it,” he said, but “I’ve already given my opinion,” which as of late last week was that Russia or other countries may have interfered with the campaign.

“Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded and safe,” he tweeted. He then went on to criticize Democrats who were hacked by Russians and questioned President Barack Obama’s lack of action to punish Moscow during the 2016 campaign.

