Boris Johnson denies asking Trump to arrange ‘ambush’ with grieving parents and US woman involved in their son’s death

President claimed: ‘I spoke with Boris, he asked me if I’d do that and I did it’

Downing Street has denied Donald Trump's claim that Boris Johnson asked him to arrange a meeting between the grieving family of British teenager Harry Dunn and the American woman allegedly responsible for his death.

The prime minister’s spokesperson said he was not aware the US president planned to bring the couple to the White House at the same time as Anne Sacoolas, who fled the UK following the car crash that killed the 19-year-old in August.

The family’s spokesperson accused Mr Trump of having “ambushed” Dunn’s parents by inviting them to the Oval Office and then revealing Ms Sacoolas, whose husband is a US intelligence official, was in the next room.

The president later claimed: “I spoke with Boris, he asked me if I’d do that and I did it.”

But a Number 10 spokesperson said on Thursday: “The PM and the president spoke last Wednesday and the PM asked the president to do all he could to resolve the issue.

“During the conversation, the president raised a possibility of a meeting with Anne Sacoolas at the White House but at that stage we weren’t aware of any plans for the family to go [to the US] so it wasn’t discussed further.”

The parents, Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn, travelled to the US this week in the hope of pressuring Ms Sacoolas to return to the UK to co-operate with a police investigation into the teenager’s death.

They received a call “out of the blue” inviting them to the White House on Tuesday, their spokesperson Radd Seiger said. After they arrived, Mr Trump “sprung the surprise” that Ms Sacoolas was in the building and wanted to meet them.

The shocked parents declined the meeting, saying they felt it was “not appropriate” and too soon after the death of their son, who died when his motorbike was hit by Ms Sacoolas’s car near an RAF airbase in Northamptonshire.

“We’ve been saying from the start we want to meet Mrs Sacoolas but we want to do it in the UK so the police can interview her,” said Mr Dunn, adding the family did not want to be “railroaded” into “a meeting we weren’t prepared for”.

Mark Stephens, a lawyer acting for the parents, said US national security adviser Robert O’Brien had wanted to bring Dunn’s family together with Ms Sacoolas before inviting assembled media to photograph them hugging.

He said Mr O’Brien had “heaped grief and pain on the family by making them go through this but not allowing them to get the closure they need”.

Ms Sacoolas left Britain under a disputed claim of diplomatic immunity in the days after the crash which killed Dunn on 27 August. Despite apologising for his death and confirming she was driving on the wrong side the road at the time of the collision, she has refused to return to the UK to answer police questions.

During Tuesday’s meeting with the president, Dunn’s family were told “emphatically” that Ms Sacoolas would “never” return to Britain to face justice, their spokesperson said.

Ms Charles said the family also “didn’t get the answers that we wanted” after why Northamptonshire Police were told Ms Sacoolas had diplomatic immunity, before the Foreign Office later clarified she did not.