THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

"You have received all of the notes, communications and testimony indicating that the President dictated a short but accurate response to the New York Times article on behalf of his son, Donald Trump, Jr.," the letter said, according to The New York Times, which published a copy of it.[...]

The misleading statement, issued in July 2017 to The New York Times, obfuscated the true nature of the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower, which was attended by Donald Trump Jr., then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is now a senior White House adviser, and a group of Kremlin-tied Russians.

One of those Russians, lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, brought up the Magnitsky Act at the meeting, a 2012 American law punishing Russian human rights violators that she has lobbied extensively to overturn. She reached out to Trump's team after he was elected to try to lobby on the Russian sanctions, CNN has reported.

While the premise of the Trump Tower meeting was for the Russians to deliver damaging information about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, the statement initially put out in Trump Jr.'s name said the participants "primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children" and omitted mention of Clinton.

After the initial statement came out, news outlets reported Trump was involved in preparing the statement. Some reports said he helped draft it, others said he personally "dictated" the words. Trump Jr., meanwhile, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in private testimony in September, released last month, that he didn't speak to his father about the statement, but that the President "may have commented through Hope Hicks," the then-White House aide, and that some of those comments might have made it into the statement.

In their public responses to the news reports, however, Sekulow and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders denied Trump's role.

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