In the interview Monday, Trump Jr. said the session lasted 20 minutes, and maintained the central focus was on adoptions — even as he conceded the Clinton dirt was how the Russian lawyers secured the meeting in the first place.
“(Adoptions) was the primary thing that we had spoken about in the meeting,” Trump Jr. said. “You know that’s not the premise that got them in the room and then they started it was essentially a bait and switch to talk about that, and everyone has basically said that in testimony already.”
He decried media scrutiny surrounding the episode, saying it was an attempt to deter attention from his father’s accomplishments.
“That is, I guess, the ultimate distraction from what’s really going on in this country which is, you have a Republican president, a very conservative president, who is getting stuff done,” Trump Jr. said. “And they can’t handle that. They will do anything they can to try to stop that, to try to block that, to try to prevent that from happening.”
The meeting, which occurred at Trump Tower in Manhattan, has been partially the subject of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether or not members of Trump’s team colluded with Russians.
“This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics — and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!” Trump tweeted on Sunday.