he doesn t know when and if the president learned of the e-mail. when it comes to president trump s involvement about the meeting, trump jr. seemed to suggest he was involved through former white house communications director hope hicks. in the initial july statement, trump jr. told the new york times the meeting with lawyer veselnitskaya was about russian adoptions. he didn t mention the fact that he agreed to the meeting at a british publicist named rob goldstone said that the person might have information to help hillary clinton s campaign. the washington post said the president dictated the statement on air force one. the committee asked if that was correct to which trump jr. said i don t know. i never spoke to my father about it. he was later asked did the president provide any edits to the state or input. trump jr. said he may have commented through hope hicks. next question. do you know if his comment through hope hicks were
meeting and the subsequent explanations of it initially. the president s son told the new york times the meeting was mostly about russian adoptions. never mentioning the fact that he agreed to the meeting after being told the person had information that might hurt clinton s campaign. some called trump jr. s initial statement misleading and not long after the washington post reported that president trump actually dictated it on air force one. the committee asked that the washington post report was correct to which trump jr. replied, i don t know, i never spoke with my father about it. later in the interview, mr. trump suggested that the president was involved in drafting the statement through former white house communications director hope hicks. he also said that she wanted to know if i spoke to him and i chose not to because i didn t want to bring him into something that he had nothing to do with. trace? ellison, what else are democrats in the senate judiciary committee saying
in which trump jr. was told he was going to receive compromising information about hillary clinton. well, he refused to comment on that saying you will have to ask the people that are there or those that organized it and publicists of his son. but, he did score more generally on the idea that russia could have influenced the presidential election. take a listen. were you working with the kremlin or russian officials to try to influence the outcome of the u.s. presidential election? translator: do you think it s funny to ask this question? i m not joking. the american people want the answer to that question. translator: america is a great country with 300 million people. with a budget of $16 trillion,
questions behind closed doors. closest of the russia invest gayses have co investigation has come to the president himself. a copy s donald trump s prepared statement to the committee in which trump jr. says he took the meeting to get the dirt of hillary clinton s fitness for office and talking about propriety of using any information learned at that meeting. and manu raju joins us live. a big day for donald trump jr. and part of an escalation of these committee investigations to try to get what i ll call to the inside players? right. donald trump jr. has spent more than three hours behind closed doors with staff of the senate judiciary committee going through that opening statement, which really did not deviate much from what he said publicly, but what i m told from senators who attended the staff meeting, listened in,sying there are still a lot of questions they want answered.
meeting with senate judiciary committee staff and senators were also invited. they can come down and meet with don jr. in this transcribed interview that they will be discussing that trump tower meeting from june of 2016 in which trump jr., of course, as he said, was promised dirt from the russians on the clinton campaign. jared kushner, paul manafort also attended that meeting. this will be the first time he does sit down with anyone from capitol hill. he had said publicly in the aftermath of the revelations, don jr. said publicly he would be willing to testify under oath before congress, but once he was invited by this committee to talk in public, instead he wanted to go behind the scenes, behind closed doors. it s uncertain, brooke, if he will, in fact, testify in a public session. other committees like the house and senate intelligence committee also want to talk to donald trump jr. but we know now that he has agreed to a date for this closed door session with the senate judiciary