Trump's team is skirting a huge question on Donald Trump Jr.'s 'staggering admissions' about meeting with a Russian lawyer

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Donald Trump Jr.

• Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer to obtain information on Hillary Clinton.
• The development raises new questions about the extent to which Trump campaign officials interacted with Russian officials.
• Experts say the new revelations bring up a key question: Why Did Trump Jr. turn to a Russian national for potentially damaging information on Clinton?

Experts say the disclosure that Donald Trump's eldest son met with a Russian lawyer after being promised damaging information on Hillary Clinton raises new questions in the ongoing saga over President Donald Trump's ties to Russia.

The New York Times reported that Trump Jr. met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya last year, just weeks after Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination. Trump Jr. was joined at the meeting by Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, who served as Trump's campaign manager at the time.

Veselnitskaya has strong ties to the Kremlin. She was married to a former deputy transportation minister of the Moscow region, and her clients have included Russian state-owned businesses.

In a statement issued to The Times on Saturday, Trump Jr. said it was a "short introductory" meeting that focused on an adoption program Russian President Vladimir Putin had cut off as a retaliatory measure against the Magnitsky Act, which blacklisted Russians suspected of human-rights abuses. He made no mention of Clinton in the statement.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to during a meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017.

In response to Sunday's story, which revealed his motivation for meeting Veselnitskaya, Trump Jr. issued a second statement.

"After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton," the statement said. "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."

Trump Jr. said she steered the conversation to the adoption program Putin had cut off and 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," he said.

Trump Jr.'s revelations ignited a firestorm, and he has defended himself since the Times' stories were published. He tweeted with a hint of sarcasm Monday, "Obviously I'm the first person on a campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent ... went nowhere but had to listen." He also said he would comply if congressional investigators want to talk to him.

But experts say the question is not why Trump Jr. wanted damaging information on Clinton, but why he turned to a Russian national to obtain that information.

A 'devastating' development

"These are pretty staggering admissions by Donald Trump Jr.," said Andrew Wright, an associate professor at Savannah Law School. "He confirms that Trump's son, son-in-law, and campaign chair met with a Russian lawyer for the express purpose of receiving damaging information about Trump's political opponent in an American presidential election."

Associated Press/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

Senior adviser Jared Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump arrive for news conference with President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Friday, March 17, 2017.

Benjamin Wittes, the editor-in-chief of Lawfare, called the developments "devastating." He said on Twitter that "it shows that the Trump folks were willing to cooperate with Kremlin in exchange for dirt on Hillary."

Wittes also said Trump Jr.'s second statement to the Times indicated his "ONLY interest" in the meeting with Veselnitskaya "was the dirt the Russians might provide on Clinton."

Trump's legal team released a statement following the Times' stories saying "the president was not aware of and did not attend the meeting."

Veselnitskaya also told the Times on Saturday that "nothing at all about the presidential campaign" was discussed. She added that she had "never acted on behalf of the Russian government" and "never discussed any of these matters with any representative of the Russian government."

The Times' stories shed light, however, on the first confirmed meeting that shows direct contact between Trump's inner circle and a Russian national with ties to the Kremlin. And Trump Jr.'s statements, regardless of the content of the meeting, "show intent - a clear-cut willingness to have Russian support - and they reveal specific actions undertaken to obtain it," wrote Bob Bauer, who served as White House counsel to President Barack Obama.

The developments also added another layer to a question that has dogged Trump's administration since he took office: Did the Trump campaign collude with Russia in an effort to tilt the 2016 election in his favor? That question is currently a central focus of multiple congressional inquiries, as well as an FBI counterintelligence investigation.

The clearest indication of intent so far

Whether or not the Trump campaign colluded with Russia is a difficult question to answer, experts say, because it requires the establishment of intent - that members of Trump's inner circle, and possibly the president himself, knowingly worked with Russian operatives in an effort to damage Clinton's candidacy and win the presidency. So far, a slew of media reports have hinted at the possibility of collusion, but experts say the weekend's developments may be the clearest indication of intent so far.

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Donald Trump Jr.

Trump Jr.'s assertion that he gained no meaningful information on Clinton from his meeting with Veselnitskaya is not relevant, Bauer wrote, because "the president's son is admitting that the campaign arranged the meeting solely to get this information."

At the very least, the meeting points to Trump Jr.'s motive, said Jens David Ohlin, an associate dean at Cornell Law School and an expert on criminal law.

"In other words, it demonstrates that at least some members of the Trump campaign were interested in procuring damaging information about Clinton and were willing to meet with Russians to get it," he said.

Trump Jr. said Saturday that he was "asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance but that he did not know the name of the person he was meeting. Jason Miller, a CNN political commentator and the Trump campaign's communications adviser, echoed that defense Monday morning.

Though it may be plausible that Trump Jr., Kushner, and Manafort didn't know who they were meeting before they accepted, they would have become aware "when she came in and introduced herself," Bauer wrote.

And although current information indicates Veselnitskaya had no valuable information on Clinton to provide to Trump Jr. and used it as a pretext for the meeting, Ohlin said the fact that Trump surrogates took the meeting "raises the question: Did they meet with others who were closer" to Russia's effort to meddle in the election?

The culmination of these factors - that Trump Jr. met with a Russian national to obtain damaging information about a political opponent, and that the meeting was not subsequently disclosed - are "important points of evidence of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia," Wright said.

He continued: "They go to intent. Trump's inner circle was willing to obtain information from Russian foreign nationals in order to influence our election."

The meeting also raises a host of other questions, including whether Veselnitskaya was acting as an agent of the Russian state and whether the meeting triggered further actions by Veselnitskaya, other Russian operatives, or Trump campaign officials.

On Sunday, it emerged that the meeting was arranged by Rob Goldstone, a music publicist who represents the son of a wealthy Azerbaijan-Russian developer and is friendly with the Trump family. Goldstone told The Washington Post that he arranged the meeting between Trump Jr. and Veselnitskaya at the behest of a Russian client, who he subsequently said was Russian pop star Emin Agalarov. He said he attended the meeting along with Veselnitskaya.

It's unclear why Goldstone arranged the meeting, and Wright said additional details that emerge in coming months will be crucial to evaluating whether, and to what extent, there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.