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Trump's 'Russia thing' becomes a family affair as his son admits Clinton link

Paul McGeough

Washington: Despite Donald Trump's efforts to spin his meeting with Vladimir Putin as putting "the Russia thing" behind him, his son Donald jnr seems to have put his foot in it - big time.

Trump has variously described US intelligence agencies' conclusion that Moscow did meddle in the 2016 election with the objective of helping Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton as "a hoax" and "fake news".

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Trump jnr met Russian for dirt on Clinton

The New York Times reported on Sunday that President Donald Trump's son met with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign after being promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

More recently he has taken to equivocating, as he did in Warsaw last week, saying: "I think it could very well have been Russia, but I think it could well have been other countries. I won't be specific. I think a lot of people interfere. I think it's been happening for a long time."

But on Sunday, Donald jnr dropped this clanger. Just after his father clinched the Republican nomination in June 2016, Donald jnr had attended a meeting with a Russian lawyer who by all accounts does Moscow's dirty work in the US, on the promise of receiving damaging information about Clinton.

And it seemed to be such a good thing that he dragged along his brother-in-law and now White House adviser Jared Kushner and Trump's then campaign manager Paul Manafort.

At the weekend, Donald jnr was clearly having difficulty getting his ducks in a row.

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On Saturday, when The New York Times broke the story of the previously undisclosed meeting, he brushed it off as of no moment, saying: "We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children … but it was not a campaign issue at the time … I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance."

But on Sunday, by which time unnamed US government officials had briefed the Times on lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya's promise of dirt on Clinton, Donald jnr cast the meeting in a very different light, saying in a 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. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered."

It was then, he said, that the conversation turned to the issue of adoptions, adding: "It became clear to me that [the adoption issue] was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting."

Consider the implications. This goes to the heart of investigations by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and various congressional committees into the Russian election meddling and the extent of any collusion by the Trump campaign - and here is the first evidence to date of three key figures in the Trump campaign demonstrating a willingness to accept Russian help.

That's not so-called "fake news" being attributed to an unnamed government insider. That's the son of the President, at the time a key campaign figure and a surrogate for his father, volunteering that "the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting".

Seemingly the three saw no reason to hesitate before turning up to hear what the Russian lawyer had to offer. And if, as he claims, Donald jnr did not tell Kushner and Manafort what the meeting was about, it raises questions about why they would have bothered to break away from campaigning to attend.

It must have been a thrilling prospect at a time when Clinton was ahead by a few points in polling averages, but it seems they only remembered the meeting, which took place at Trump Tower in New York, in recent days.

Despite the FBI, Congress and the media's obsessive focus on any meeting by campaign figures with Russians, the Times is reporting that Kushner disclosed the June 9 "adoptions meeting" only "in recent days", when he filed a revised disclosure document connected with his White House security clearance.

It was Kushner's second such revision - in April he remembered that he had forgotten to offer up information on meetings with the Russian ambassador to Washington and with the chief of a Russian bank.

Manafort, too, disclosed his attendance at the adoptions meeting "recently" - though it is not clear which of Kushner or Manafort first made the disclosure, and the extent to which the other was then prodded to get his story straight.

Donald jnr's bombshell managed to distract from his father's first public comments - in tweets, of course - on his Friday meeting with Putin.

In the face of scepticism on the extent to which he had "pressed" Putin on the election interference, the President claimed he had done so "strongly" twice during their meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit.

And despite so much investigative energy still being directed at the Russian meddling in Washington, Trump declared it was "time to move forward" in a constructive relationship between the US and Russia.

But here's a strange thing - in keeping with his curious disinterest in what the Russians are alleged to have done, Trump made no effort to challenge Moscow's spin on their encounter - particularly Putin's claim that Trump had accepted his denial of Russian hacking.

In multiple tweets, Trump said: "I strongly pressed President Putin twice about Russian meddling in our election. He vehemently denied it. I've already given my opinion … we negotiated a ceasefire in parts of Syria, which will save lives. Now it is time to move forward in working constructively with Russia!"

Trump did not hold the customary presidential press conference at the close of the summit. But Putin, who ordinarily doesn't make himself available for media questioning, did, saying during a long press conference that Trump had "agreed" with his comments on the election meddling.

"He raised many questions on the issue," Putin said, according to a report in Russian news agency Sputnik.

"I answered all these questions, as far as I could. I think that he took it into account and agreed. Actually, you would better ask him how he found it."

The previous day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who took part in the Trump-Putin meeting, went further, claiming that, in accepting Putin's denial, Trump had also said that meddling charges were being "exaggerated" without proof by some in the US.

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, who was not in the Hamburg meeting, claimed on Sunday that Trump "absolutely did not believe the denial of President Putin".

And US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley was similarly strident: "President Trump still knows that they meddled … this is Russia trying to save face, and they can't … everybody knows that Russia meddled in our elections."

And if Trump figures that his proposal for a joint American-Russian "impenetrable Cyber Security unit" - also first mooted on Twitter - to thwart future breaches is a solution to the problem of election interference, the response from some of his Republican colleagues was scathing.

South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham declared: "It's not the dumbest idea I've ever heard, but it's pretty close."

Florida senator Marco Rubio didn't hold back either. "Partnering with Putin on a 'Cyber Security Unit' is akin to partnering with [Syria's Bashar] Assad on a 'Chemical Weapons Unit'," he tweeted.

Democrats joined in, with California congressman and House Intelligence Committee member Adam Schiff denouncing the proposed cyber security unit as "dangerously naive".

"I don't think we can expect the Russians to be any kind of a credible partner in some cybersecurity unit," he told CNN's State of the Union. "If that's our best election defence, we might as well just mail our ballot boxes to Moscow."

So it was perhaps fitting that what was initially proposed on Twitter also died there, with Trump returning later on Sunday to tweet: "The fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn't mean I think it can happen."