Trump Jr dismisses legal concerns over Russian lawyer meeting

Washington, Aug 8 (IANS) US President Donald Trump’s son has said his 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer was about "essentially nothing" relevant to claims of collusion.

Donald Trump Jr called the media uproar over the meeting "the ultimate distraction" from his father’s success, BBC reported on Tuesday.

Trump Jr’s meeting with a Kremlin-linked attorney at Trump Tower in New York could constitute a breach of US campaign rules, experts say.

The president argued the Trump Tower meeting was legal in a tweet on Sunday.

Trump said his son took the meeting to "get information on an opponent", contradicting a previous statement from the Trump camp.

Speaking on the Laura Ingraham Show on Monday night, the president’s son said the meeting with lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya lasted 20 minutes and primarily focused on Russian adoptions.

Trump Jr has previously admitted he agreed to the introduction after he was promised damaging information about his father’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

He told Ingraham that adoptions were "the primary thing that we had spoken about in the meeting".

"You know that’s not the premise that got them in the room… it was essentially a bait and switch to talk about that, and everyone has basically said that in testimony already," he said.

"It ended up being about essentially nothing that was relevant to any of these things. That’s all it is and that’s all they’ve got."

The president’s eldest son also blamed Democrats for wanting to detract from his father’s achievements.

"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."

The meeting is being investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of his inquiry into Russia’s alleged role to help Trump win the presidency.

Moscow has repeatedly denied claims it interfered in the November 2016 presidential elections.

President Trump and his son deny any collusion, and the president has tweeted that "collusion is not a crime".