President Trump reportedly fears that his son Donald Trump Jr. may have inadvertently gotten himself into legal trouble.
The Washington Post reported Saturday that Trump has told advisers and close confidants he doesn’t believe his son knowingly broke any law, but said Trump Jr. could have unwittingly crossed a legal line.
Special counsel Robert Mueller is examining Trump Jr. for his role in arranging a June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower between a Russian lawyer and Trump campaign officials, including himself.
Music publicist Rob Goldstone told Trump Jr. in an email that the Russians were offering damaging information on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton as part of their support for Trump.
“If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer,” Trump Jr. replied to Goldstone.
Trump Jr. later called the meeting a waste of time and said they only discussed Russian adoption policies.
CNN reported last month that Trump’s former longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen is willing to tell Mueller that then-candidate Trump approved the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, though Cohen reportedly does not have evidence to back up his claims.
Trump and others, including Trump Jr., have asserted numerous times that the president did not know about the meeting until The New York Times first reported about it last July.
Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani said after the CNN report that the president did not know about the meeting, calling Cohen’s claims “flat out untrue.”
Trump Jr. testified before Congress last year that his father did not know about the meeting.
Still, an ex-Trump Organization executive pushed back on the president and his allies’ claims that then-candidate Trump was unaware of the meeting, saying it was “impossible” for Trump not to have known about such an arrangement.
“Impossible, in my opinion, based on my experience working with Trump and everybody that worked with Trump,” Barbara Res told CNN when asked if it was possible that Trump Jr. would not relay a message to his father about Moscow’s support for Trump’s presidential bid.
“Something major, something newsworthy, something press-worthy would always go before Trump.”