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| Kellyanne Conway defends Donald Trump Jr's meeting with Russian lawyer | Kellyanne Conway defends Donald Trump Jr's meeting with Russian lawyer |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Kellyanne Conway has defended Donald Trump Jr's previously undisclosed meeting with a Russian lawyer in 2016 who said she had incriminating evidence on Hillary Clinton. | |
| Mr Trump Jr met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who is connected with the Kremlin, in June of last year just a few weeks ahead of his father clinching the Republican nomination for President. | |
| At first, the President's eldest son said the 9 June meeting with her was about the Magnitsky Act, a US law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers, according to the New York Times. | |
| President Vladimir Putin retaliated by halting adoptions of Russian children by Americans. | |
| It was also reported that White House adviser Jared Kushner and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort were also at the meeting. | |
| Mr Trump Jr said initially in a statement that it was "primarily" about Russian adoptions, which was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up." | |
| However, he followed up on 9 July with another statement that he took the meeting at the request of a contact from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant that took place in Moscow. | |
| Mr Trump Jr said "the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms Clinton." | |
| He noted that her statements were "vague...and made no sense...it was clear she had no meaningful information". | |
| The new information for the reason of the meeting sparked criticism amid ongoing investigations being conducted by the FBI, Senate, House, and special prosecutor Robert Mueller about alleged ties between Russia and the Trump campaign team. | |
| Ms Conway said all these reports were just attempt to ""convert wishful thinking into hard evidence" and played into an anti-Trump bias in the mainstream media. | |
| More follows... | More follows... |