Trump denies knowledge of meeting his son had with Russians before 2016 elections

US President Donald Trump has denied knowledge of a meeting his on had with Russians prior to the 2016 polls.

Trump on Friday denied knowing about the meeting his son Donald Trump Jr. and other campaign staff held at Trump Tower with a group of Russians who offered damaging information about Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

“I did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don jr,” Trump wrote in on Twitter after a CNN report cited his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen as saying Trump had known about the meeting in advance.

Trump’s denial is coming hours after his former campaign manager revealed that he believes Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential elections which brought his former boss to power.

In a exclusive interview with Al Jazeera JD Gordon, a former Pentagon spokesman and Trump campaign national security director conceded that Russia interfered with the polls.

Read also: Trump, Putin meeting overshadowed by Russian hacking charges

“I think that Hillary Clinton as secretary of state was trying to destabilise Russia in 2014. I think that [Russian President Vladimir Putin] saw her as an enemy, and I think that he felt he wanted to attack the United States, and this is the way they did it,” Gordon said during the interview, which airs Friday at 20:00GMT.

It was “cheaper than fighting a war” with the US, he added.

However, Gordon said he does not believe Russia impacted the election as far as “swinging the vote”.
He insisted that accusations of collusion between Russia and US President Donald Trump himself were “a hoax” and referred to it as the “witch-hunt of the century”.

“You had people doing things they should not have been doing, taking meetings they shouldn’t have taken, travelling to places they should not have travelled to, but that’s not collusion; it is poor judgment, but it’s not collusion,” Gordon said.

 

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