Trump acknowledges, defends 2016 meeting between son, Kremlin-aligned lawyer

While “collusion” is not mentioned in U.S. criminal statutes, Mueller is investigating whether anyone associated with Trump coordinated with the Russians, which could result in criminal charges if they entered into a conspiracy to break the law, including through cyberhacking or interfering with the election.

.. He concluded by further distancing himself from the meeting his son arranged, writing, “I did not know about it!”

.. On Sunday, one of the president’s attorneys defended the 2016 meeting as something that would not have been illegal under any federal statute.

“The question is: How would it be illegal?” Jay Sekulow asked on ABC News’s “This Week,” sug­gesting that there are no laws prohibiting campaign operatives from meeting and working with foreign agents. “Nobody’s pointed to one.”

.. The president’s attorneys at first denied Trump’s involvement in drafting the response to the Times, but months later, in a letter intended to explain why Mueller should not interview Trump, they agreed that the president had, in fact, been the author of the statement.

.. They described the statement, which had not mentioned that the Russian lawyer was expected to bring damaging information about Clinton, as “short but accurate.”

And they said Trump Jr., Kushner and White House staffers had made a “full disclosure” about that session to Mueller and Congress.