Donald Trump Jr: Meeting with Russian lawyer a ‘waste of time’

DONALD Trump Jr has remained defiant, insisting he did nothing wrong in meeting with a Kremlin-based lawyer during the US election campaign.

Donald Trump Jr was interviewed by host Sean Hannity on his Fox News Channel television program, where he dismissed the firestorm over Russian connections swirling around his father’s administration. Picture: Richard Drew/AP

DONALD Trump Jr has remained defiant, insisting he did nothing wrong in meeting with a Kremlin-based lawyer during the US election campaign.

In an exclusive interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News Channel, Trump Jr called the meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya a waste of time that came to nothing.

The eldest son of the US President found himself at the centre of a political scandal after the New York Timesobtained an email exchange between him and acquaintance Rob Goldstone.

The email chain showed the pair discussing plans to meet with a Russian lawyer over potentially damaging information on Hillary Clinton ahead of the US presidential election.

Trump Jr said he didn’t tell his father about the meeting because it came to nothing and he had only attended as a courtesy to his acquaintance.

“It was such a nothing (meeting), there was nothing to tell,” he said.

“It was literally a wasted 20 minutes, which is a shame.”

Trump Jr claimed the meeting was so fruitless, in fact, that Mr Goldstone immediately apologised to him afterwards.

“He apologised for wasting my time,” Trump Jr said.

President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, also attended the meeting.

Trump Jr said Manafort was on his phone the whole time while “Jared left after about five minutes.”

Trump Jr told Hannity, one of his father’s biggest supporters in the media, that his meeting with Ms Veselnitskaya was the extent of his formal contact with Russia officials and associates.

He also admitted while “he has probably met with other people from Russia” he did not attempt to co-ordinate to impact the election or try to damage Mrs Clinton.

Trump Jr told Sean Hannity the meeting came to nothing. Picture: Richard Drew/AP

Trump Jr also used the interview to blast accusations of collusion as “ridiculous” and “overplayed” insisting his father knew nothing about the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower.

“For me this was opposition research, they had something you know maybe concrete evidence to all the stories I’d been hearing about, probably under reported for years not just during the campaign so I think I wanted to hear it out,” he said.

“But really it went nowhere and it was apparent that wasn’t what the meeting was about.”

He told Hannity he agreed to meet with the lawyer, who he hadn’t heard of, as a favour and she didn’t present any information on Mrs Clinton.

Instead the meeting mainly focused on adoption which “wasn’t a campaign issue.”

Trump Jr gave the interview hours after releasing an email chain in which he said he would “love” to receive damaging information about Clinton from the Kremlin-connected lawyer.

He also said radars didn’t go up about the Russia issue because it was “pre Russia mania.”

“This was 13 months ago before world building narrative was building about Russia, my antennas didn’t go up because it wasn’t an issue,” he said.

He also said she wasn’t a government official and told Hannity, “we didn’t know who she was before the meeting.”

The younger Trump also used the interview to take swipe at the mainstream media for attacking his family, saying the bias was unfair, particularly when it was directed at his younger sister Ivanka.

“We are so far out from the political elite,” he said.

“Look at Ivanka, if she was anyone else’s daughter she’d be a feminist icon ... they (mainstream media) try and belittle her at every chance.”

The interview comes as the lawyer who met with Trump Jr insists she had no compromising information on Mrs Clinton to offer.

Ms Veselnitskaya’s comments are in contrast to what the email exchange released by Trump Jr suggests, the Associated Press reported.

Asked if she had compromising information on Mrs Clinton, Ms Veselnitskaya said it “not true” and Trump Jr “was told so.”

“I never had compromising information and could not have had,” she said insisting she does “not represent anyone other than myself.”

The lawyer said she was “offered to meet with Trump Jr” in a “private setting not connected to the fact that he is the son of the presidential candidate” and claims she wasn’t even sure that Mr Trump had won the Republican nomination by then.

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