In this fact-checking video, CNN’s Jake Tapper looks at a false claim Rudy Giuliani made about the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya and Trump campaign officials.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City who is now one of President Donald Trump’s private attorneys, told host Chuck Todd that campaign officials prior to the meeting “didn’t know she was a representative of the Russian government.”
That’s wrong and the president’s son released emails last year that prove it.
A June 3, 2016, email from music publicist Rob Goldstone said that Russian pop star Emin Agalarov had asked Goldstone to contact Trump Jr. on behalf of his father, Aras Agalarov, a Russian real estate developer who has ties to Donald Trump Sr., including his 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.
Goldstone told Trump that the “Crown prosecutor of Russia … offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary [Clinton].” Goldstone described the information as “obviously very high level and sensitive” and “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
Trump Jr. responded minutes later, saying that “if it’s what you say I love it.”
In follow-up emails, Trump agreed to meet with a “Russian government attorney” at Trump Tower.
In June 9, 2016, Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, then-Trump’s campaign chairman, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and now senior adviser, met with Veselnitskaya. Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian American lobbyist, Ike Kaveladze, a Russian real estate company executive, and Anatoli Samochornov, a translator and a former State Department contractor, also attended the meeting.
Tapper’s latest video, which is based on our story “Giuliani Misleads on Trump Tower Meeting,” is part of a collaboration with CNN’s “State of the Union with Jake Tapper.” Previous videos can be found on our website.