President Trump’s attorney Jay Sekulow said that he had “bad information” and made a “mistake” when he denied last summer that the president had any role in crafting a statement about Donald Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer offering dirt on Hillary Clinton.
During an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Sekulow was pressed on the topic days after the New York Times obtained and reported a letter the Trump legal team wrote to special counsel Robert Mueller, acknowledging that the president did dictate an initial misleading statement on behalf of Trump Jr. about the premise of the Trump Tower meeting. A follow-up statement for Trump Jr. provided a fuller account of the lead-up to the meeting, explaining that it was predicated on the promise of damaging information on Clinton, but that no such dirt was given and instead the meeting quickly turned to the adoption of Russian children.
The letter, sent in January, was signed by Sekulow and former Trump attorney John Dowd.
“This Week” host George Stephanopoulos pressed Sekulow to respond to his own declaration in the summer of 2017, when he claimed to have no involvement in the initial statement. He also had said Trump was not involved. “I wasn’t involved in the statement drafting at all, nor was the president. I’m assuming that was between Mr. Donald Trump Jr., between Don Jr. and his lawyer,” he said at the time.
“I had bad information at that time and made a mistake in my statement.” Sekulow explained to Stephanopoulos on Sunday, adding that he had only been working on the case for a couple of weeks at that point in time.
Pres. Trump’s attorney Jay Sekulow on previously denying that the president was involved in putting out a statement on the Trump Tower meeting: “I had bad information at that time and made a mistake in my statement … over time facts develop” https://t.co/GlcWTIu29g #ThisWeek pic.twitter.com/rLLHMmOs2K
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) August 5, 2018
The Trump Tower meeting was been thrust back into the public eye late last month after CNN reported that Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen claimed was prepared to tell Mueller that the president personally approved the Trump Tower meeting. Trump and his team denies he had any advance knowledge that the meeting was taking place.
