The White House was forced to shift from denying contact between the Trump campaign and Russia to defending a meeting that US President Donald Trump's eldest son had in the midst of the presidential race with a Russian lawyer purportedly offering damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
The White House sought to play down the significance of that encounter even as new details emerged indicating that it had been arranged at the behest of a Russian family that has ties to the Kremlin and a history of pursuing business deals with President Trump - including preliminary plans for a Trump Tower in Moscow. The controversy deepened with a new report that Donald Trump jnr had been informed via email that the information on Clinton was part of a Russian Government plan to help his father's campaign. The New York Times, which broke the story, cited three unnamed people who had seen the email.
The revelations put the Trump Administration again on the defensive about its relationship with Moscow, and they seemed to add to a pattern of not disclosing Kremlin contacts or providing false information about them.
The latest information centres on Donald Trump jnr, whose concession this week that he took part in the June 9, 2016, meeting contradicted statements he had made in recent months. It comes as investigators in Congress and the special counsel's office probe the Trump campaign's interactions with Russia.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said yesterday that the President had learned of his son's meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya only "in the last couple of days" and sought to play down its significance.
"The only thing I see inappropriate about the meeting is the people that leaked the information about the meeting after it was voluntarily disclosed," she said.
She appeared to be referring to updated federal disclosures filed by Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, acknowledging that he had attended the meeting.
"Don jnr didn't collude with anybody to influence the election," she said. But Sanders offered no explanation for why Trump officials had not previously disclosed the meeting publicly or why their account of the meeting's purpose had shifted so dramatically in the past several days.
Donald Trump Jnr, the son of President Donald Trump. Photo / AP
Trump jnr said earlier this year with the New York Times that he had not participated in any "set up" meeting with a Russian individual. Then, after learning that the New York Times planned to publish an article about his meeting with Veselnitskaya, Trump jnr provided evolving explanations for what had been discussed. At first he said the talk focused on policies restricting the ability of US families to adopt Russian children. Then, on Monday, he issued a statement acknowledging that the premise of the meeting was that Veselnitskaya claimed to have potentially damaging information about Clinton. Trump jnr said that Veselnitskaya failed to deliver. But his participation on those terms, as well as the attendance of Kushner and then-Trump campaign aide Paul Manafort, amount to fresh evidence that the Trump campaign was willing to consider accepting help from a Russian source tarnishing Clinton. Emails hacked from the DNC were posted online a few weeks after the meeting. US intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia orchestrated the hacks with the intention of helping to elect Trump.
Senate Intelligence Committee senior Democrat, Senator Mark Warner, said: "This is the first time the public has seen clear evidence that senior-level officials of the Trump campaign met with potentially an agent of a foreign government to try to obtain information that would discredit Hillary Clinton. I think that's pretty significant."
Illustration / Rod Emmerson
New details point to other Trump links to Moscow. The session was set up at the request of Emin Agalarov, a Russian pop star whose Kremlin-connected family has done business with Trump in the past, according to the person who arranged the meeting. Rob Goldstone, a music publicist who represents Agalarov, confirmed that he requested the meeting at Agalarov's request. Emin Agalarov and his father, Aras Agalarov, a Moscow real estate developer, helped sponsor the Miss Universe pageant, then owned by Trump, in Russia in 2013. The Agalarovs signed a deal with Trump to build a tower bearing his name in Moscow, though the deal has been on hold.
Goldstone previously said that he set up and attended the meeting so Veselnitskaya could discuss the adoption of Russian children by Americans. In a new statement, he confirmed that he enticed Trump jnr by indicating that Veselnitskaya could provide damaging information about Democrats.
The New York Times reported that it was Goldstone who had emailed Trump jnr before the meeting indicating that the negative material about Clinton was related to a Russian Government effort to assist the Trump campaign.
On Monday, Goldstone had told the Washington Post that he did not believe the Russian Government was involved with seeking the meeting.
The involvement of the Agalarovs brings the meeting closer to Trump's past business interests and to the Kremlin. Trump has spent time with both Emin Agalarov and his father - appearing in a music video for the pop singer that was filmed at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton hotel in 2013. The Agalarovs are also close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
