President Donald Trump said Sunday that he is not concerned that his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is target of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, adding that his son’s June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Kremlin-linked attorney was “totally legal.”
“Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower,” Trump tweeted Sunday morning.
“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!” Trump added.
Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. 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!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2018
Trump’s latest tweet follows reports published on Saturday in the Washington Post and CNN that he is concerned his eldest son will get caught up in the Russia investigation.
The president’s tweet contradicts a statement from more than a year ago that the Trump Tower meeting was focused on a Russia adoption program.
“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,” the statement said.
The president, his son, and his legal team have also issued further contradicting statements since The New York Times first reported the Trump Tower meeting
Trump Jr. revealed shortly after the statement that the meeting was about a Russian adoption program that he had agreed to meet with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya since she offered information on his father’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, The Huffington Post reports.
The Times reported that Trump signed off on his son’s first statement regarding the meeting, and his lawyer, Jay Sekulow, insisted that he was not involved in the drafting of the statement.
Later White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the president was involved, but denied a Washington Post report that he personally dictated the statement.
In a January memo, however, Trump’s attorneys admitted that he did dictate the statement. In June, Rudy Giuliani confirmed that the legal team’s “final position” was that the president dictated the statement.
According to NBC News, Sekulow said Sunday that he “had bad information” when he previously stated that Trump was not involved in the drafting Trump Jr.’s original statement.
“Over time, facts develop,” Sekulow said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Sekulow also went on to downplay Mueller’s investigation during his interview on “This Week.”
“The question is what law, statute or rule or regulation has been violated? And nobody has pointed to one,” Sekulow said, later adding that “there are irregularities in this investigation, the likes of which we have not seen.”