July 10: President Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign, according to three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it.
The meeting was also attended by his campaign chairman at the time, Paul J. Manafort, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Manafort and Kushner recently disclosed the meeting, though not its content, in confidential government documents described to The New York Times.
The Times reported the existence of the meeting on Saturday. But in subsequent interviews, the advisers and others revealed the motivation behind it.
The meeting - at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, two weeks after Donald J. Trump clinched the Republican nomination - points to the central question in federal investigations of the Kremlin's meddling in the presidential election: whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. The accounts of the meeting represent the first public indication that at least some in the campaign were willing to accept Russian help.
While President Trump has been dogged by revelations of undisclosed meetings between his associates and the Russians, the episode at Trump Tower is the first such confirmed private meeting involving his inner circle during the campaign - as well as the first one known to have included his eldest son.
It came at an inflection point in the campaign, when Donald Trump Jr, who served as an adviser and a surrogate, was ascendant and Manafort was consolidating power.
It is unclear whether the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, actually produced the promised compromising information about Hillary Clinton. But the people interviewed by The Times about the meeting said the expectation was that she would do so.
When he was first asked about the meeting on Saturday, Donald Trump Jr said that it was primarily about adoptions and mentioned nothing about Hillary Clinton.
But yesterday, presented with The Times's findings, he offered a new account. In a statement, he said he had met the Russian lawyer at the request of an acquaintance from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which his father took to Moscow. "After pleasantries were exchanged," he said, "the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Hillary Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information."
He said she then turned the conversation to adoption of Russian children and the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers. The 2012 law so enraged President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that he halted American adoptions of Russian children. "It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting," Trump said.
Two persons briefed on the meeting said the intermediary was Rob Goldstone, a former British tabloid journalist and the President of a company called Oui 2 Entertainment who has worked with the Miss Universe pageant. He did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
