Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to President Trump, dismissed notions that Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer last year was anything but normal, and said Trump Jr.’s attempts to gain damaging information against Hillary Clinton are “what political campaigns do.”
“They wanted the original agenda. They wanted the dirt,” CNN host Alisyn Camerota said of Trump Jr.’s meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya in June 2016.
“Which is what political campaigns do,” Gorka responded.
Gorka and Camerota were discussing reports that the president’s son, Trump Jr., met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer, Veselnitskaya, who said she had information that would be damaging to Clinton.
The meeting took place at Trump Tower last year, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, also attended.
Trump Jr. acknowledged he set up the meeting in hopes Veselnitskaya “might have information helpful to the campaign,” but said the Russian lawyer’s statements were “vague, ambiguous and made no sense.”
The conversation between the Trump Jr. and Veselnitskaya then turned to the issue of American adoptions of Russian children.
During his interview with CNN, Gorka argued Veselnitskaya isn’t connected to the Kremlin, and said the meeting ended after Trump Jr., Kushner, and Manafort realized she had requested the meeting under false pretenses.
“She was a private lawyer who had an interest with regards to the Russian adoption program and used a pretext to get a meeting with the campaign, which the campaign representatives almost immediately realized was not done in good faith, that she had another agenda, and that’s when the meeting ended,” Gorka said.
The White House has maintained Trump Jr.’s meeting with Veselnitskaya was short and in the course of normal campaign activities, but the New York Times reported late Monday night Trump Jr. was told in an email the damaging information Veselnitskaya had about Clinton was part of a Russian effort to help Trump’s candidacy.
The report from the New York Times has raised eyebrows among House and Senate Democrats, who believe the existence of an email could indicate Trump Jr. and the Trump campaign sought Russia’s help in defeating Clinton.
Several congressional committees and the FBI are investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. So far, though, no evidence has suggested that there was collusion between the two.
