The White House has confirmed Donald Trump played a role in drafting a misleading statement about his son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer. On Tuesday, the press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, contradicted Trump’s attorney, Jay Sekulow, who said the president had had no involvement. “The statement that Don Jr issued is true,” Huckabee Sanders said at the daily press briefing. “There is no inaccuracy in the statement. The president weighed in as any father would.”

Trump “weighed in based on the limited information that he had”, she said.

The White House was rocked on Monday night by another revelation in the investigation into potential ties between his campaign and Russia. The Washington Post first reported that the president had dictated a statement which dismissed the significance of a meeting between his son Donald Trump Jr, top campaign aides Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, and the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in June 2016. On Tuesday, Huckabee Sanders said: “He certainly didn’t dictate. But he weighed in, offered suggestions, like any father would do.” The statement, which was issued by Donald Trump Jr’s lawyer, required repeated updates as more details of the meeting leaked out.

Initially, Trump Jr said he and the Russian lawyer “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children”. Further reporting revealed that Trump Jr had, in fact, taken the meeting after having been offered incriminating information about Hillary Clinton, forcing the president’s son to release the email exchange leading up to the meeting.(theguardian)…[+]