Trump lawyers say he 'dictated' statement on Trump Tower meeting, contradicting past denials

[Eugene]

Source: CNN

Trump lawyers say he 'dictated' statement on Trump Tower meeting, contradicting past denials

By Marshall Cohen
Updated 0128 GMT (0928 HKT) June 3, 2018

(CNN) — In a confidential letter to special counsel Robert Mueller in January, President Donald Trump's legal team acknowledged for the first time that Trump "dictated" the first misleading statement put out about his son's controversial 2016 meeting with Russians at Trump Tower.

"You have received all of the notes, communications and testimony indicating that the President dictated a short but accurate response to the New York Times article on behalf of his son, Donald Trump, Jr.," the letter said, according to The New York Times, which published a copy of it. "His son then followed up by making a full public disclosure regarding the meeting, including his public testimony that there was nothing to the meeting and certainly no evidence of collusion."

The acknowledgment was tucked away in the letter, which largely focused on defending Trump from a potential subpoena for testimony and asserted broad executive powers to avoid a high-stakes interview with Mueller. The letter, which CNN previously reported on, was signed by Trump's attorneys at the time, John Dowd and Jay Sekulow. Dowd left the legal team in March, while Sekulow continues representing the President.

The misleading statement, issued in July 2017 to The New York Times, obfuscated the true nature of the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower, which was attended by Donald Trump Jr., then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is now a senior White House adviser, and a group of Kremlin-tied Russians.

-snip-

Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/02/politics/trump-lawyers-statement-trump-tower-russians/index.html

[Botany]

1. Obstruction of justice by Donald Trump end of story.

From the link:

<The misleading statement, issued in July 2017 to The New York Times, obfuscated the true nature
of the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower, which was attended by Donald Trump Jr., then-Trump
campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is now a senior White House
adviser, and a group of Kremlin-tied Russians.

One of those Russians, lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, brought up the Magnitsky Act at the meeting,
a 2012 American law punishing Russian human rights violators that she has lobbied extensively to
overturn. She reached out to Trump's team after he was elected to try to lobby on the Russian sanctions,
CNN has reported.

While the premise of the Trump Tower meeting was for the Russians to deliver damaging information
about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, the statement initially put out in Trump Jr.'s name said the
participants "primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children" and omitted mention
of Clinton.>

[hedda_foil]

2. This account admits Trump knew all about the meeting.

[Botany]

3. And right after that meeting Donald Trump started tweeting and talking about HRC's emails and ....

... and the Russians told Trump Jr, Kushner, and Manafort that they had stolen those
emails from HRC's server at that meeting too.

[Gothmog]

4. They have confessed to obstruction of justice

Link to tweet