Donald Trump’s eldest son denied colluding with any foreign government but told Senate staffers that when he accepted a now infamous meeting with a Russian lawyer last year, he was open to receiving information about Hillary Clinton’s “fitness, character or qualifications” for the presidency.
Donald Trump Jr made the comment in an opening statement delivered on Thursday to staff of the Senate judiciary committee, who were interviewing him privately as part of investigations into links between Trump aides and Russia.
Trump Jr and the committee negotiated the meeting. Senators were allowed to sit in but not ask questions.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, attended part of the interview and said it was “cordial”. He would not discuss details but said there were “a lot of areas that need to be pursued for more information”. Trump mostly spoke for himself, Blumenthal said, instead of his lawyers speaking for him.
The statement focused on the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower involving Trump Jr, then Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, senior Trump adviser Jared Kushner, the lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and others including other Russians.
The meeting is also of interest to special counsel Robert Mueller. The appearance before the Senate staffers was the first known instance of Trump Jr giving his version of the meeting in a setting that could expose him to legal jeopardy. It is a crime to lie to Congress.
Trump Jr said he only remembered seven people attending the meeting. Eight have been publicly reported. The seven Trump Jr identified were himself, British music publicist Rob Goldstone, Manafort, Kushner, Veselnitskaya, a translator and Irakli Kaveladze, who worked for the Agalarov family, which has done business with the Trump Organization.
Trump Jr did not mention Russian American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet counterintelligence officer who has said he attended the meeting at Veselnitskaya’s invitation and who has testified about his recollection of it before a Washington grand jury used by Mueller.
Trump Jr has faced scrutiny since the first report of the meeting, which happened in June 2016. An email exchange released by Trump Jr revealed his eagerness to receive the information. “I love it,” he wrote to Goldstone, who brokered the meeting.
Goldstone told Trump Jr “the crown prosecutor of Russia” had offered “to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father”. Trump Jr later insisted that the meeting had turned out to be “a nothing”.
In his statement on Thursday, he said he was skeptical but had thought he “should listen to what Rob and his colleagues had to say”.
“To the extent they had information concerning the fitness, character or qualifications of a presidential candidate, I believed that I should at least hear them out,” Trump Jr said.
Seeking to explain his “I love it” remark, Trump Jr said it was “simply a colloquial way of saying that I appreciated Rob’s gesture”.
Trump Jr said he knew Goldstone through the family of Aras Agalarov, the Trump Organization’s partner on the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Trump Jr said he did not attend the pageant, noting that he has not traveled to Russia since 2011. He met Goldstone, he said, when Agalarov’s pop singer son, Emin, performed at a March 2014 golf tournament at a Trump course in Doral, Florida.
Trump Jr said that Goldstone would “intermittently” contact him to offer congratulations or support. When he received the email that led to the Russian meeting, Trump Jr said, he had not heard from Goldstone in “quite some time”.
In addition to detailing the timing of phone calls and emails leading up to the meeting, Trump Jr provided explanations of why he said he could not be sure about parts of his recollection.
He said Goldstone did not give him a list of who would attend. Trump Tower security also has no record, Trump Jr said, because Goldstone was able to bring the “entire group up” by only giving his name to a guard in the lobby.
“There is no attendance log to refer back to and I did not take notes,” Trump Jr said.
Trump Jr agreed to the interview after the judiciary committee chairman, Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa, threatened to subpoena him. Manafort and Kushner spoke to investigators on Capitol Hill in July. In a statement at the time, Kushner echoed Trump Jr’s denial, saying: “I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government.”
Grassley said in July that Trump Jr and Manafort would be questioned by senators in a public hearing, though he declined to say in recent days whether that would still happen.
Trump Jr is also expected to appear before the Senate intelligence committee. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on that panel, said the senators want to speak with others who attended the meeting before interviewing Trump Jr.
“We want to do this in a thorough way that gets the most information possible,” Warner said.
In a statement after the hearing, Trump Jr said he “answered every question posed by the committee ... until both sides had exhausted their lines of questioning. I trust this interview fully satisfied their inquiry”.
The New York Times was first to report Trump Jr’s statement.
