President Trumps legal team was informed more than three weeks ago about the email chain showing that his son Donald Jr. met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer last June, two sources familiar with the handling of the matter told Yahoo News.
Trump told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that he learned just a couple of days ago that his son, Donald Trump Jr, had met with the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, after receiving emails that she would supply him with information that would incriminate Hillary and was part of Russia and its governments support for Mr. Trump. That was the day after Donald Jr. released the email exchanges himself, after learning they would be published by the New York Times.
But the sources told Yahoo News that Marc Kasowitz, the presidents chief lawyer in the Russia investigation, and Alan Garten, executive vice president and chief legal officer of the Trump Organization, were both informed about the emails in the third week of June, after they were discovered by lawyers for Kushner, who is now a senior White House official.
The discovery of the emails prompted Kushner to amend his security clearance form to reflect the meeting, which he had failed to report when he originally sought clearance for his White House job. That revision his second to the so-called SF-86, was done on June 21. Kushner made the change even though there were questions among his lawyers whether the meeting had to be reported, given that there was no clear evidence that Veselntiskya was a government official. The change to the security form prompted the FBI to question Kushner on June 23, the second time he was interviewed by agents about his security clearance, the sources said.
But the information that Trumps lawyers were told about the emails in June raises questions about why they would not have immediately informed the president. Trumps campaign is under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into possible collusion with Russian government officials. The emails appear to be the first hard evidence of contacts between top campaign officials and someone connected to the Kremlin.
https://www.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/sources-trump-lawyers-knew-russia-emails-back-june-000320831.htmlAside from questions about the credibility of White House statements, the disclosure of the emails potentially has raised new questions about Kushners security clearance. He initially filed his SF-86 on Jan. 18, leaving out any mention of meetings with foreign government officials during the transition and the campaign. His lawyers have said this was inadvertent and that a member of his staff had prematurely hit the send button for the firm before it was completed. Within twelve hours, they have said, Kushner notified the FBI that he would make amendments and disclose his meetings with foreign officials.
This was followed by a revised security clearance submission on May 11 in which Kushner reported more than 100 meetings with officials from over 20 countries, including a meeting with the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and another with Sergey Gorkov, the head of Russian state-owned bank.
The revised security clearance led to Kushners first FBI interview about the matter in mid-May, the sources said. The bureau is now reviewing Kushners second amended form following the new disclosure about his meeting with the Russian lawyer. His lawyers are confident that it wont raise any additional problems since, as they have asserted, Kushner had forgotten the meeting he was only briefly present and had no intent to conceal it. In the meantime, he has an interim security clearance, sources said.