The Russian lawyer who meet with Donald Trump Jr. and top officials from President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign dangled the possibility of handing over damaging information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in order to get a meeting at Trump Tower.
The New York Times said Sunday that Natalia Veselnitskaya -- a powerful Kremlin-aligned international attorney -- contacted now-President Donald Trump's eldest son with an offer of information that would be damaging Clinton's presidential run.
The meeting took place on June 9 at Trump Tower -- just after Trump secured the Republican nomination for the 2016 presidential race -- and included then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Three current White House advisers told the Times about Veselnitskaya's offer, but none could say for certain whether the Russian attorney followed through with the offer.
The Times said the new information "points to the central question in federal investigations of the Kremlin’s meddling in the presidential election: whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. The accounts of the meeting represent the first public indication that at least some in the campaign were willing to accept Russian help."