President Donald Trump's attorneys knew weeks ago about the meeting his son Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner and former campaign chair Paul Manafort had with a Russian lawyer.
According to two sources familar with the handling of the matter, Trump's legal team was informed of the controversial email chain that many are saying proves the campaign was willing to collude with the Russians three weeks ago, said a Yahoo News report.
On Wednesday Trump told Reuters that he just learned of the email exchange "a couple of days ago." Thus, Trump either lied to the reporters or his attorneys have kept him out of the loop.
Trump repeated the same claim while talking with reporters aboard Air Force One Wednesday while en route to Paris.
“I only heard about it two or three days ago,” Trump said according to a White House transcript.
However, sources told Yahoo that Trump's foul-mouth attorney Marc Kasowitz and legal officer for the Trump Organization Alan Garten both knew of the emails by the third week of June, after Kushner's attorneys discovered them.
Kushner was forced to file an SF-86 form for his top-secret security clearance. It required that he disclose any and all meetings or communications with foreigners. Kushner filed the form with few if any disclosures and his attorney told government officials that Kushner would send along amendments to the form that listed the meetings. The form was finally filled in and filed with nearly 200 pages of information previously undisclosed. When the emails were found, it required Kushner to amend the SF-86 once more because the meeting wasn't disclosed, despite Kushner's knowledge of it.
It's unclear why the attorneys would not have informed the president of the emails, but a spokesperson for Kasowitz refused to comment citing "privileged information." The revelation also raises questions about the White House's statements about the email and the timeline around discovering its existence.
