White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Tuesday that the president did not dictate Donald Trump Jr.’s misleading statement about his meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer, saying instead that he merely “weighed in” on it.
“The statement that Don Jr. issued is true, there’s no inaccuracy in the statement. The president weighed in, as any father would, based on the limited information that he had,” Sanders said, adding that Democrats continued to use the issue “as a PR stunt.”
Trump Jr. released his statement last month as the New York Times prepared to publish a story about the meeting he had with a Russian lawyer under the auspice of getting dirt on Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign.
“We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at that time and there was no follow up,” he said in the statement.
But the following day, he released a new statement — and a few days later, a series of emails leading up to the meeting — that showed he had agreed to the meeting because he thought he’d be getting damaging information about Clinton.
A reporter asked Sanders during Tuesday’s briefing to what degree the president “weighed in” on Trump Jr.’s initial statement, which misrepresented his reasons for meeting with the lawyer.
“He certainly didn’t dictate, but you know, he, like I said, he weighed in, offered suggestion, like any father would do,” she said.
“Like I said, the statement that was issued was true and there were no inaccuracies in the statement,” she added. “I think what the bigger question is, everybody wants to try to make this some story about misleading.”
—Nidhi Prakash
