What happened between Donald Trump Jr and the Russian lawyer? Everything we know so far

The meeting took place two weeks after Donald Trump had clinched the Republican nomination for president.

(Getty Images)

Donald Trump Jr, Donald Trump’s eldest son, is the latest member of the Trump campaign to be in hot water for potential ties to Russia.

Who did Mr Trump Jr meet with and why?

Mr Trump’s eldest son met with the Kremlin-connected lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya after being told she had information that might be “helpful to the campaign”. The meeting took place at Trump Tower on 9 June 2016, two weeks after Mr Trump had clinched the Republican nomination for president.

Three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it told The New York Times that Mr Trump Jr was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet with Ms Veselnitskaya.

Mr Trump Jr said he was asked to meet with her by “an acquaintance I knew from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant.” He said he was not told Ms Veselnitskaya’s name prior to the meeting.

It has also been revealed that Rob Goldstone – a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped broker the June 2016 meeting – told the elder Trump son in an email that that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy. Mr Goldstone’s message, as 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 the Trump campaign.

What happened at the meeting?

When he was first asked about the meeting, the President's eldest son told The Times that it was primarily about adoptions and mentioned nothing about Ms Clinton. The Russian government had retaliated against the US’s passage of the Magnitsky Act – a law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers – by halting adoptions of Russian children by Americans.

But when presented with The Times’s findings, Mr Trump offered more details: “After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Mrs Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”

He said Ms Veselnitskaya then began discussing the adoption of Russian children and mentioned the Magnitsky Act. “It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting,” Mr Trump Jr said.

Why could this be a scandal?

There are multiple federal investigations into whether Trump campaign advisers colluded with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election. The accounts of Mr Trump Jr’s meeting are the first public indication that at least some in the campaign were willing to accept Russian help.

The President and people in his orbit have frequently denied any connections to Russia – assertions that keep on getting debunked.

Mr Trump Jr has said he would be “happy” to work with the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting its own Russia investigation, to share what he knows. Democratic Senator Mark Warner, the vice chairman of the committee, told reporters that it is “remarkable” that Mr Trump Jr did not report the meeting and that the committee “absolutely” wants to meet with him.

Who else attended the meeting?

Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law and adviser, and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort also attended the meeting. Mr Manafort and Mr Kushner recently disclosed the meeting, though not its content, in confidential government documents described to The Times.

How have the President and the White House responded?

During a White House press briefing, Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she believes the President learned about the meeting “in the last couple of days”. Mr Trump Jr said in his statement that his “father knew nothing of the meeting or these events.”

Mark Carollo, a spokesperson for the President’s personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, said in a statement, “We have learned from both our own investigation and public reports that the participants in the meeting misrepresented who they were and who they worked for.”

Mr Carollo went on to say, “Specifically, we have learned that the person who sought the meeting is associated with Fusion GPS, a firm which according to public reports, was retained by Democratic operatives to develop opposition research on the President and which commissioned the phony Steele dossier.”

Fusion GPS, based in Washington DC and established by former Wall Street Journal reporters Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, found itself in the spotlight earlier this year after it was revealed that it was behind an opposition research dossier containing unproven and salacious allegations about the President.

Fusion GPS told CBS that “any claim that Fusion GPS arranged or facilitated this meeting in any way is absolutely false.”