2016 ELECTION/DONALD JR/RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump said on Sunday [8-5-18] that a Trump Tower meeting between top campaign aides and a Kremlin-connected lawyer was designed to ‘get information on an opponent’ — the starkest acknowledgment yet that a statement he dictated last year about the encounter was misleading. Mr. Trump made the comment in a tweet on Sunday morning that was intended to be a defense of the June 2016 meeting and the role his son Donald Trump Jr. played in hosting it. The president claimed that it was ‘totally legal’ and of the sort ‘done all the time in politics.’ But the tweet also served as an admission that the Trump team had not been forthright when Donald Trump Jr. issued a statement in July 2017 saying that the meeting had been primarily about the adoption of Russian children. That statement is being scrutinized by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is examining a broad array of Mr. Trump’s tweets and public statements to determine whether he made them as part of an effort to deceive investigators.”
–Michael D. Shear and Michael S. Schmidt, “President Admits Trump Tower Meeting Was Meant to Get Dirt on Clinton,” The New York Times online, August 5, 2018