President's lawyer insists nothing 'nefarious' in Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with Russians
Washington • A senior member of President Trump's personal legal team said Sunday that there was nothing improper in the meeting that Donald Trump Jr., the president's oldest son, took with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton.
"If this was nefarious, why did the Secret Service allow these people in?" Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for the president, said on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." "The president had Secret Service protection at that point, and that raised a question with me."
Initially Donald Trump Jr. said the meeting focused on Russia's moves to halt adoptions by American families, but changed his story after new details emerged. Emails released last week show that Trump Jr. believed he was meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with possible ties to the Kremlin, who would provide damaging information about Clinton as part of a Russian broader effort to assist his father's presidential campaign. He was joined at the meeting by Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law; Paul Manafort, then a top campaign aide; and Rinat Akhmetshin, a lobbyist and possible intelligence agent in the former Soviet Union.
Donald Trump Jr. has said that nothing came of the discussion.
Sekulow reiterated that he has seen no indication that the president is under investigation by either the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III or the House or Senate intelligence committees' probes.
"We have had no notification," Sekulow said on CBS's "Face the Nation. "Nothing has changed since James Comey said three times that he wasn't under investigation."
Sekulow also reiterated that there was nothing illegal in the meeting with the Russian lawyer and a Russian American lobbyist .
"Here is the reality: The meeting in and of itself of course, as I've said before, is not a violation of the law," Sekulow said "This Week." He added that "the president was not aware of the meeting and did not participate in it."