Rudy Giuliani falsely claimed that when Donald Trump Jr. and other Trump campaign officials agreed to meet Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in June 2016 “they didn’t know she was a representative of the Russian government.”
In a recent tweet, President Donald Trump said the Trump Tower meeting was “to get information on an opponent” and was “totally legal and done all the time in politics.” Some legal experts disagree.
In a recently disclosed letter, President Donald Trump’s attorneys said the president “dictated” his son’s statement to the New York Times about a June 2016 meeting between top Trump campaign aides and a Russian lawyer. That contradicts earlier claims by Trump’s representatives.
There have been several instances in which Trump administration and campaign officials have made public statements about issues concerning Russia that turned out not to be true.
In this fact-checking video, CNN’s Jake Tapper and FactCheck.org examine Donald Trump Jr.’s shifting statements about his June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower.
President Donald Trump emphasized that an attorney who met with his eldest son in 2016 was a “Russian lawyer” and “not a [Russian] government lawyer.” That may be true, but Donald Trump Jr. had agreed to sit down with a “Russian government attorney,” according to his emails.
We now know that Donald Trump Jr., during the presidential campaign, met with a Russian lawyer offering information that was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” And we now know that the president’s eldest son was less-than-forthcoming in his previous statements on the issue.
FactCheck.org’s Lori Robertson discusses fact-checking Day 2 of the Republican National Convention with USA Today’s Paul Singer.
The speakers went too far in their claims on guns, Benghazi, coal jobs, Keystone and more.