Reporters asked Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Monday why she said on August 1, 2017 the president did not dictate a misleading statement about his son's June 9, 2016 meeting when a just-revealed letter Trump's attorneys wrote in January 2018 stated the president did.
CNN:
"You're referencing a letter that came directly from outside counsel and I would refer you to them," Sanders said Monday during the White House briefing. "I'm not going to get into a back and forth."
(...)
Sanders was pressed by three different reporters Monday about the contradictory statements and each time she referred questions to the President's personal attorneys.
Asked how the public can trust her comments from the podium, Sanders demurred.
"Once again, I can't comment on a letter from the President's outside counsel," she said.
The outside counsel said what he wrote in that letter is accurate.
After the briefing, Trump's attorney Jay Sekulow said Monday he stands by the assertion in the legal team's letter to the special counsel claiming the President "dictated" the Trump Jr. statement.
"The statement in the January letter reflects our understanding of the events that occurred," Sekulow said in a statement to CNN.
When asked how this squares with his own prior statements on multiple occasions the president did not dictate the letter, Sekulow dodged.
The New York Times has compiled those past contradictory statements.
“He certainly didn’t dictate,” said the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
“The president was not involved in the drafting of that statement,” his lawyer Jay Sekulow told NBC News.
“That was written by Donald Trump Jr., and I’m sure in consultation with his lawyer,” Mr. Sekulow told CNN.
“The president didn’t sign off on anything,” he told ABC.
But in a confidential, hand-delivered memo to the special counsel, Mr. Trump’s lawyers acknowledged that, yes, Mr. Trump had dictated the statement, which attempted to deflect questions about a meeting with a Kremlin-tied lawyer at Trump Tower. Prosecutors are asking whether the statement was part of an effort by the president to obstruct a federal investigation.
The Times also notes Sekulow, in particular, did not just lie but also accused the media of being wrong when he knew they were not.
The New York Times reported last July that, during the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Trump’s eldest son, hosted a meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer who had promised to bring political dirt on Hillary Clinton. The lawyer was offering the meeting, emails showed, as part of the Russian government’s support for the Trump campaign.
But when approached by journalists, the younger Mr. Trump issued a statement that omitted all of that. Instead, the statement said that the meeting had primarily been about Russian adoption policy. When The Times reported that the president himself had “signed off on” the statement, Mr. Trump’s advisers pushed back hard.
“They’re incorrect,” Mr. Sekulow said on CNN.
“The New York Times is wrong?” he was asked.
“Yeah, I know, is that shocking that sometimes they make a mistake?” Mr. Sekulow said.
Then The Washington Post reported that Mr. Trump had not only approved it, but had personally dictated it. Mr. Sekulow responded, “Apart from being of no consequence, the characterizations are misinformed, inaccurate and not pertinent.”
The Times has since obtained a confidential memo to Mr. Mueller acknowledging that “the president dictated a short but accurate response to The New York Times article on behalf of his son, Donald Trump, Jr.” The memo adds that “this subject is a private matter with The New York Times.”
This all begs to question why the president and his team continued to lie to the press and the public about President Trump's dictated statement. Natasha Bertrand reminds us the president had met with Vladimir Putin the day before he decided what to say.
The initial statement Donald Trump Jr. provided to the press, which was reportedly dictated by his father, read:
"It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up. I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand."
The statement did not mention that Donald Trump Jr. had been offered compromising information about Hillary Clinton in exchange for taking the meeting. And it was crafted by the president one day after he discussed "adoptions" with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a dinner at the G20 summit.
Asked about that dinner later, Trump told the New York Times that he and Putin "just talked about things. Actually, it was very interesting; we talked about adoptions."
The fact that Trump and Putin spoke about the adoption issue — which is intimately connected to the US' sanctions policy— the night before Trump reportedly crafted his son's statement about the Trump Tower meeting raises questions about whether Putin played a role, directly or indirectly, in influencing the version of events Trump's team relayed to the press.
Sarah Sanders refuses to explain false statement on Trump Tower meeting (CNN)
Trump Team Pushed False Story Line About Meeting With Kremlin-Tied Lawyer, Memo Shows (NYT)
Trump discussed adoption policy with Putin one day before 'dictating' son's statement about 'adoptions' (Business Insider)