Attorneys for Donald Trump Jr. sought to coordinate public statements for attendees of a June 2016 meeting between a Kremlin-connected lawyer and top Trump campaign aides after news broke of the controversial sitdown, according to transcripts released Wednesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The 2016 meeting at Trump Tower — attended by Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and indicted former campaign chairman Paul Manafort — was billed as an opportunity for Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya to share damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
But after the meeting became public last year, Trump Jr. claimed that Russian adoption policy was discussed. And even before reporting revealed the meeting, the new transcripts show that his lawyer had begun reaching out to multiple participants to get their accounts straight regarding the day in question.
These discrepancies — and the meeting itself — have since become a key part of special counsel Robert Mueller's
investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia on its attempts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election. Intelligence leaders believe the Kremlin was trying to undermine Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump in his White House bid.
The passages revealing the work Trump Jr.’s attorney did to get attendees on the same page are part of more than 2,500 pages of transcripts and exhibits released Wednesday by the judiciary panel that stem from interviews with six attendees of the June 2016 meeting.
Trump Jr. attorney Alan Futerfas contacted three participants in the meeting — publicist Rob Goldstone, Russian singer Emin Agalarov and Russian executive Ike Kaveladze — to discuss their memories of the day, according to transcripts of interviews with Goldstone and Kaveladze.
On July 10, two days after a New York Times
report first revealed the Trump Tower meeting in 2016, exhibits released by the committee show that Goldstone forwarded Agalarov and Kaveladze a proposed “statement drafted by Trump lawyers, which they have asked me to release.”