WASHINGTON -- Before arranging a meeting with a Russian lawyer he believed would offer compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father's presidential candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.
The email to Trump was sent by Rob Goldstone, a publicist who helped broker the June 2016 meeting. In a statement Sunday, Trump acknowledged that he was interested in receiving damaging information about Clinton, but he gave no indication that he thought the lawyer might have been a Kremlin proxy.
Goldstone's message, described to The New York Times by the three people, indicates that the Russian government was the source of the potentially damaging information.
It does not elaborate on the wider effort by Moscow to help then-candidate Donald Trump's campaign, and there is no evidence to suggest that the promised damaging information was related to Russian government computer hacking that led to the release of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails.
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The meeting was set up at the request of Emin Agalarov, a Russian pop star whose Kremlin-connected family helped sponsor the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant in Russia, according to Goldstone.
The revelations about the meeting come as federal prosecutors and congressional investigators explore whether the Trump campaign coordinated and encouraged Russian efforts to intervene in the election to hurt Clinton and elect Trump.
The report is the first public word that Trump Jr. took the meeting with the understanding that he would be presented with damaging information about his father's political opponent and that the material could have emanated from the Kremlin.
Alan Futerfas, the lawyer for the younger Trump, said his client had done nothing wrong but pledged to work with investigators if contacted.
"In my view, this is much ado about nothing. During this busy period, Robert Goldstone contacted Don Jr. in an email and suggested that people had information concerning alleged wrongdoing by Democratic Party front-runner, Hillary Clinton, in her dealings with Russia," he said to The New York Times in an email Monday. "Don Jr.'s takeaway from this communication was that someone had information potentially helpful to the campaign and it was coming from someone he knew. Don Jr. had no knowledge as to what specific information, if any, would be discussed."
It is unclear whether Goldstone had direct knowledge of the origin of the potentially damaging material. One person who was briefed on the email said it appeared that he was passing along information that had been given to him by others.
Goldstone, who wrote the email more than a year ago, denied in an interview earlier Monday that he had any knowledge of involvement by the Russian government in the matter, saying that never dawned on him. "Never, never ever," he said. Later, after the email was described to the Times, efforts to reach him for further comment were unsuccessful.
Trump Jr. tried to brush off the significance of the meeting, tweeting, "Obviously I'm the first person on a campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent ... went nowhere but had to listen."
He later tweeted to rebut the notion that his explanation for the meeting had changed.
"No inconsistency in statements, meeting ended up being primarily about adoptions," Trump Jr. said. "In response to further Q's I simply provided more details."
Trump Jr. said on Twitter that he was willing to work with the Senate Intelligence Committee, one of the panels probing possible campaign collusion, "to pass on what I know."
Lawmakers on the committee from both parties said they indeed wanted to talk with the president's son. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the panel "needs to interview him and others who attended the meeting."
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the panel, said, "This is the first time that the public has seen clear evidence of senior-level members of the Trump campaign meeting with Russians" to obtain information damaging to Clinton.
Warner said the revelations "move us forward, and we expect much more to come."
The White House on Monday flatly denied that any Trump campaign officials colluded with the Russian government to influence the election, while referring most questions about Trump Jr.'s meeting with the lawyer to outside attorneys.
"The only thing I see inappropriate about the meeting was the people that leaked the information on the meeting after it was voluntarily disclosed," White House spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
She appeared to be referring to updated federal disclosures filed by Trump's son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner, acknowledging that he had attended the meeting, along with then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
"I've been on several campaigns, and people call offering information, as I know many of you receive calls of people offering information," she said. "Don Jr. took a very short meeting from which there was absolutely no follow-up.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Monday that the Kremlin doesn't know the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and "cannot keep track" of every Russian lawyer who holds meetings in Russia or abroad. Although she has not been publicly linked with the Russian government itself, Veselnitskaya represented the son of a vice president of state-owned Russian Railways in a New York money-laundering case settled in May before a trial.
Magnitsky Act
The sequence of events that led to the June 2016 meeting highlighted the web of relationships that investigators now are sorting through.
The president's son said the meeting was arranged by an acquaintance he knew through the 2013 Miss Universe pageant Trump held in Moscow. Trump Jr. didn't name the acquaintance. Goldstone has said he was the acquaintance.
Goldstone said the Russian lawyer stated that she had information about purported illegal campaign contributions to the Democratic National Committee that she thought Trump Jr. might find helpful.
Goldstone had previously told The Washington Post that he set up and attended the meeting for Veselnitskaya so that she could discuss the adoption of Russian children by Americans.
During the meeting, Goldstone said, Veselnitskaya made comments about campaign funding "that were not specific," then turned the subject.
She then proceeded to discuss the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 U.S. law that imposed sanctions on Russia for its alleged human-rights abuses. Angered over the law, Russia retaliated by halting U.S. adoptions of Russian children.
The acts are named for Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian auditor who died under mysterious circumstances in a Moscow prison in 2009 after exposing a corruption scandal.
Veselnitskaya, for her part, denied that the campaign or compromising material about Clinton came up at all. She said she never acted on behalf of the Russian government.
Agalarov and his father, Aras Agalarov, a wealthy Moscow real estate developer, helped sponsor the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant in Russia.
During his 2013 visit to Moscow, Trump spent time with Emin Agalarov, appearing in a music video with him and several contestants in the pageant. Aras Agalarov sought to partner with Trump on a hotel project in Moscow and tried to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin during the Miss Universe contest. The hotel deal has been on hold since Trump began running for president.
According to The Washington Post and several other media accounts, the elder Agalarov paid Trump $14 million to $20 million to stage the pageant in Moscow but was unable to persuade Putin to meet with Trump. Putin canceled the session, sending Trump a friendly letter and a lacquered box in appreciation, the Post has reported.
Meanwhile, the Agalarovs are also close to Putin. Aras Agalarov's company has been awarded several large state building contracts, and shortly after the pageant, Putin awarded the elder Agalarov the Order of Honor of the Russian Federation, a prestigious designation.
Emin Agalarov told the Post last year that he had spoken with Trump numerous times about the need to build stronger ties between Russia and the United States.
Information for this article was contributed by Chad Day, Nekesa Mumbi Moody, Eric Tucker, Mary Clare Jalonick, Andrew Taylor, Stephen Braun, Julie Bykowicz and Nataliya Vasilyeva of The Associated Press; by Rosalind S. Helderman, Tom Hamburger, Greg Miller, David Filipov, Natalya Abbakumova, Brian Murphy and John Wagner of The Washington Post; by Michael A. Memoli of Tribune News Service; and by Matt Apuzzo, Jo Becker, Adam Goldman and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times.
A Section on 07/11/2017