RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP FAMILY/DONALD JR: “Sen. Lindsey Graham said Tuesday [8-1-17] that a report that President Donald Trump personally dictated his son’s misleading statement regarding a meeting last summer with a Russian attorney ‘bothers me a lot,’ as do the president’s regular requests that the Senate do away with the legislative filibuster, a non-starter, according to the South Carolina lawmaker.
Still, Graham (R-S.C.) said the possibility still exists for Trump’s presidency to ‘still be very consequential’ if the president is able to refocus on health care and other legislative priorities.
‘It bothers me a lot because, one, he put his son in jeopardy,’ Graham said on NBC’s ‘Today’ show of a Monday Washington Post report that Trump had reportedly dictated his son Donald Trump Jr.’s statement explaining his meeting last summer with a Russian lawyer. Trump Jr. had been led to believe that the lawyer was in possession of Russian government-sourced damaging information on Democrat Hillary Clinton.
That initial statement from Trump Jr. first indicated that the meeting had been about adoption issues related to sanctions imposed on Russia by the U.S. But Trump Jr. was later forced to concede, when emails related to the meeting were published, that he took the meeting based on the promise of information on Clinton.
An outside lawyer for the president had previously said Trump had no role in drafting his son’s statement and characterized the assertions in the Post’s report as ‘misinformed, inaccurate, and not pertinent.’ “
-Louis Nelson, “Graham troubled by report of Trump’s role in son’s Russia meeting response,” Politico, Aug. 1, 2017 08:23am